Top Intel Core Ultra 9 "Arrow Lake-S" Part Boost Clocks Surface

[btarunr]

Intel Core Ultra "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors are expected to debut later this year, and introduce the new Lion Cove P-cores, along with Skymont E-cores to the desktop platform. Engineering samples and qualification samples with specs close to retail chips seem to already be in the hands of PC OEMs and motherboard vendors, given the volume of leaks over the past few days. Jaykihn0, one of the more influential sources of these leaks, revealed a few interesting details of the maximum boost frequencies of these chips.

The QS of a top Core Ultra 9 "Arrow Lake-S" SKU, probably the flagship model that succeeds the current Core i9-14900K, is described as having a maximum P-core boost frequency of 5.70 GHz, and an all-P-core boost frequency of 5.40 GHz. The maximum E-core boost frequency, which is also the all-E-core boost frequency, is said to be 4.60 GHz. Let's unpack this. "Arrow Lake" uses the same mix of "Lion Cove" P-cores and "Skymont" E-cores as "Lunar Lake," albeit arranged along a ringbus, and sharing an L3 cache, unlike on "Lunar Lake," where the P-cores have their own exclusive L3 cache, and the E-cores are arranged in a low-power island, with the fabric of the SoC tile connecting the two.



We know from the "Lunar Lake" deep-dive from Intel, that the company claims a 14% IPC gain for "Lion Cove" over the previous generation "Redwood Cove" P-core found in "Meteor Lake." Given that "Redwood Cove" cores have been tested in the real world to offer roughly similar IPC to the "Raptor Cove" P-cores powering "Raptor Lake," if Intel's IPC claims for "Lion Cove" hold, then at 5.70 GHz, the P-cores of "Arrow Lake-S" should be 14% faster than "Raptor Cove." It's worth noting here that "Lion Cove" cores lack Hyper-Threading, but "Arrow Lake-S" has 8 of these, and as our recent "Zen 5 without SMT" article has shown, games largely aren't affected with the lack of SMT/HTT if the core count is as high as 8.

The cache sub-system of "Arrow Lake-S" is another interesting factor that could influence its gaming performance. Each "Lion Cove" P-core on the Core Ultra 9 "Arrow Lake-S" is expected to have 3 MB of dedicated L2 cache, and the 8 P-cores share 36 MB of L3 cache along with the four "Skymont" E-core clusters. Thread Director tends to avoid scheduling game workloads on the E-cores, unless there are specific optimizations within the game that use them (eg: for processing game physics, audio DSPs, network stack, etc).

Intel has promised a massive IPC leap for the "Skymont" E-cores over the current "Gracemont," with the company claiming an IPC resembling that of the "Raptor Lake" P-core. Of course there are some riders—"Skymont" cores don't boost nearly as high as "Raptor Cove" P-cores do, even in this top Core Ultra 9 SKU, the maximum E-core boost frequency is a moderate 4.60 GHz. Also, the SPECrate2017 benchmark Intel uses in its IPC calculations isn't memory intensive; "Skymont" cores are clustered into groups of four cores, and made to share a 4 MB L2 cache on "Arrow Lake-S."

All in all, with these frequencies, the top Core Ultra 9 "Arrow Lake-S" part seems to be gunning for the gaming performance leadership crown from AMD, which has held the bragging rights of selling the fastest gaming processor for 16 months now (since the April 2023 launch of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D).

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Crazybc]

This stuff has been all over my Facebook too and I'll say the same here . I will believe it once I see reviews and benchmarks on Arrow Lake done by reputable forums and reviewers on launched available hardware .

 

[john_]

is described as having a maximum P-core boost frequency of 5.70 GHz, and an all-P-core boost frequency of 5.40 GHz

 

[Kapone33]

This sounds like the marketing for the MSI Claw.

 

[rv8000]

I hope they get TDP and temps under wrap, would hate to see clocks fall off a cliff after 40-50secs of a heavy MT workload.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

View attachment 359225

Is it secret? Is it safe?

 

[kondamin]

View attachment 359225

well if that rumor of u7 and u9 being made by tsmc maaaaaybe.

 

[GhostRyder]

Ok so 14% IPC is claimed, but boost clocks seems to be a decent chunk lower than the 14900KS. Maybe I am misreading the plan with these chips. Probably going to need to see benchmarks to understand how what they are announcing with these chips is going to benefit.

 

[dtoxic]

Remember boys and girls do not rush and buy these things when they release,let time pass who knows you might avoid the fiasco like with the 13-14gen

 

[freeagent]

Doubtful. Someone got fired over that for sure lol

 

[persondb]

Ok so 14% IPC is claimed, but boost clocks seems to be a decent chunk lower than the 14900KS. Maybe I am misreading the plan with these chips. Probably going to need to see benchmarks to understand how what they are announcing with these chips is going to benefit.

To be fair the 14900KS was released months later, the comparison should be against the 14900K, as that would be more comparable. For all we know 3~6 months after Arrow Lake launch, we could get a i9 KS part that has boosted clocks.

The 14900K has turbo clocks up to 6GHz, so there is indeed a 300 MHz degradation, just not 500 MHz as it would be from 14900KS

 

[ZoneDymo]

View attachment 359225

cant tell ya, its a secret

 

[InVasMani]

Remember boys and girls do not rush and buy these things when they release,let time pass who knows you might avoid the fiasco like with the 13-14gen

14 Gen consumers pretty much got blindsided by the problem Intel's been facing. It was pretty much a very minor refresh of 13th Gen with Intel offering a actual proper 13700K for 14th Gen. They did almost nothing otherwise except shipped some binned chips with a minor bump in clock speeds by like 100MHZ or 200MHz over previous generation of chips. It's essentially the same chip generation with binning. The issue is the problems didn't really surface and come to light immediately and reviewers didn't exactly know about or cover them and convey that to the end users. We basically were sucker punched by Intel's higher up's shipping faulty hardware.

 

[RandallFlagg]

To be fair the 14900KS was released months later, the comparison should be against the 14900K, as that would be more comparable. For all we know 3~6 months after Arrow Lake launch, we could get a i9 KS part that has boosted clocks.

The 14900K has turbo clocks up to 6GHz, so there is indeed a 300 MHz degradation, just not 500 MHz as it would be from 14900KS

Theoretically, that loss of 300Mhz would give it about 9% boost on low thread count P-core performance vs 14900K.

The big one is the E-cores. The theoretical IPC gain looks to be very high, but with smaller cache it's not likely to be fully realized in all use cases, possibly not at all in situations where the e-core idles waiting on cache. Still, I can't imagine it not having a significant impact on highly threaded scenarios.

The other unknown is the impact of moving from monolithic to tiles. That is going to exact some kind of performance penalty.

Overall I have some expectation of a +10% overall performance increase, much lower than that with single/light thread apps and higher than that with more threaded apps.

This is pretty well borne out by some of the early benchmark leaks :

Performance leap: Arrow Lake 9 285K up to 18% faster than 14900K? | igor´sLAB

The first benchmarks of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K “Arrow Lake-S” desktop CPU flagship have recently emerged. These leaks offer valuable insights into the performance of the new CPU generation and…

www.igorslab.de

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

It's on TSMC, right? So of course it wasn't going to have higher clocks than other TSMC chips.....this also means arrowlake has a node advantage over zen5 because arrowlake is N3B and Zen5 is 4nm...so with over 3x the R&D budget AND a node advantage, Arrowlake better be 20% faster than Zen5 overall

 

[persondb]

Theoretically, that loss of 300Mhz would give it about 9% boost on low thread count P-core performance vs 14900K.

The big one is the E-cores. The theoretical IPC gain looks to be very high, but with smaller cache it's not likely to be fully realized in all use cases, possibly not at all in situations where the e-core idles waiting on cache. Still, I can't imagine it not having a significant impact on highly threaded scenarios.

If the +14% IPC increase holds true, P core to P core, it would be about 9%, yes. We will have to see how it varies since some applications might actually like the new cache level that the P core has more than others(which might see no difference).

I don't know what you are talking about for smaller cache in the E-cores, they still have the same amount of Cache which actually has some improvements, which is the improved shared L2 bandwidth and L1 to L1 transfers, where before it would need to do so through L3.

A big issue was that there was simply not enough bandwidth when the 4 E-Cores were being used with only 64B/cycle, but now with 128B/cycle that is going to be a big improvement.

The E-cores themselves were 4.5 GHz on 14900KS and 4.4 GHz on 14900K, so there is a 100~200MHz improvement there.

Those aren't going to be a making a big impact on gaming though.

 

[RandallFlagg]

It's on TSMC, right? So of course it wasn't going to have higher clocks than other TSMC chips.....this also means arrowlake has a node advantage over zen5 because arrowlake is N3B and Zen5 is 4nm...so with over 3x the R&D budget AND a node advantage, Arrowlake better be 20% faster than Zen5 overall

It's on a bunch of nodes. It's clear as mud exactly what part is on what node. To make it worse - some have said midrange and upper range parts could have some tiles on a different node than lower end parts.

I don't know what you are talking about for smaller cache in the E-cores, they still have the same amount of Cache which actually has some improvements, which is the improved shared L2 bandwidth and L1 to L1 transfers, where before it would need to do so through L3.

I mean that a higher IPC part, with higher clock, will run through the cache quicker than a lower IPC lower clock part. These components have to be in balance, a high clock/high ipc part will just wind up idling while waiting for cache.

It remains to be seen if they achieve a good balance there with the E-cores, IPC increase or not.

A big issue was that there was simply not enough bandwidth when the 4 E-Cores were being used with only 64B/cycle, but now with 128B/cycle that is going to be a big improvement.

And, it'll run through cache quicker.

The E-cores themselves were 4.5 GHz on 14900KS and 4.4 GHz on 14900K, so there is a 100~200MHz improvement there.

Those aren't going to be a making a big impact on gaming though.

Maybe not, but Tom's is reporting that the Ultra 7 265KF (I see this as the 14600K replacement) outpaced the 14900K in single thread by 4%, and the 14700K by 7% while tying the 14700K in multi-thread.

There should be an Ultra 9 275 and Ultra 9 285K above the 265K in the Arrow Lake lineup.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Maybe not, but Tom's is reporting that the Ultra 7 265KF (I see this as the 14600K replacement) outpaced the 14900K in single thread by 4%, and the 14700K by 7% while tying the 14700K in multi-thread.

There should be an Ultra 9 275 and Ultra 9 285K above the 265K in the Arrow Lake lineup.

View attachment 359248

How they are priced will dictate what they replace if the Ultra 7 is 400+ usd it doesn't really matter what Intel wants to call it it'll be compared to other 400-500 usd chips.

 

[Hecate91]

But is it going to be safe from degradation? I have doubts of these being reliable as there is a rumor of the temp limit being increased to 115C.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

But is it going to be safe from degradation? I have doubts of these being reliable as there is a rumor of the temp limit being increased to 115C.

Let the intel fanboys beta test them and in 8-12 months post launch they'll be cheaper and we will likely know if they degrade.

I'm guessing they do not but with how every launch seems to be rushed these days better to just let it play out.

Intel really can't afford another blunder with how their earning reports are going and how much staff they're having to cut so you'd think they be damn sure it doesn't prior to launch. Maybe it'll be delayed from October we will see.

 

[Broken Processor]

Wonder how this will all turn out with Jim Keller no longer part of the picture and Royal core being cancelled or cut back.

It didn't harm AMD when Jim left after designing Zen but with Royal core's Beast lake cancelled what will intel replace it with are we going to see stagnation after Panther lakes cougar core's?

 

[RandallFlagg]

How they are priced will dictate what they replace if the Ultra 7 is 400+ usd it doesn't really matter what Intel wants to call it it'll be compared to other 400-500 usd chips.

There's some truth to that, but launch prices are never the same as mid and late cycle prices. MSRPs are pretty useless past launch day.

 

[GhostRyder]

To be fair the 14900KS was released months later, the comparison should be against the 14900K, as that would be more comparable. For all we know 3~6 months after Arrow Lake launch, we could get a i9 KS part that has boosted clocks.

The 14900K has turbo clocks up to 6GHz, so there is indeed a 300 MHz degradation, just not 500 MHz as it would be from 14900KS

Good point, its not as much but it is a drop. I just wonder how in the real world it will all play out as these chips with these big changes.

It's on a bunch of nodes. It's clear as mud exactly what part is on what node. To make it worse - some have said midrange and upper range parts could have some tiles on a different node than lower end parts.



I mean that a higher IPC part, with higher clock, will run through the cache quicker than a lower IPC lower clock part. These components have to be in balance, a high clock/high ipc part will just wind up idling while waiting for cache.

It remains to be seen if they achieve a good balance there with the E-cores, IPC increase or not.



And, it'll run through cache quicker.



Maybe not, but Tom's is reporting that the Ultra 7 265KF (I see this as the 14600K replacement) outpaced the 14900K in single thread by 4%, and the 14700K by 7% while tying the 14700K in multi-thread.

There should be an Ultra 9 275 and Ultra 9 285K above the 265K in the Arrow Lake lineup.

View attachment 359248

I mean that is interesting if its all true. I think the TDP is interesting on some of them, but I am curious how that translates under load.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Good point, its not as much but it is a drop. I just wonder how in the real world it will all play out as these chips with these big changes.

I mean that is interesting if its all true. I think the TDP is interesting on some of them, but I am curious how that translates under load.

I honestly don't care about TDP at all unless it will overwhelm my AIO. The math / cost of that just doesn't add up to squat.

I'm interested in this platform as a possible upgrade later this year.

For me since Zen 5 wound up being a nothingburger, its main competition is the 14700K which is a quick easy $350 plug in upgrade. I don't think +5% single and +10% multi will be worth a $200 motherboard upgrade and all the hassle that goes with that (drivers, maybe need to re-install Windows and so on), unless there's something else there.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

There's some truth to that, but launch prices are never the same as mid and late cycle prices. MSRPs are pretty useless past launch day.

All I mean is if it's priced like an i7 it'll be compared to an i7 and anything else in that general price range.

Doesn't matter if it should be an i5 like the 9700X should be an R5 7600X replacement in my book but price dictates what it actually is.

Same for you you'll have to look at it vs a 14700k and decide if a platform upgrade is justified based on it performance.