Intel Arrow Lake Refresh reportedly features clock speed bump and new NPU
Intel isn't quite done with the Arrow Lake platform, even though it has released 22 SKUs since its debut. An update to the Arrow Lake-S desktop lineup is reportedly planned for release in the second half of 2025.
The Arrow Lake Refresh has been mentioned a few times in the past, but ZDNet Korea (via Tom's Hardware) has now expanded on it with some extra details. Importantly, this refresh will still use chipsets from the 800-series and keeps the LGA 1851 socket. This guarantees that existing motherboards will continue to be compatible.
The anticipated NPU4 is the biggest improvement coming with the Arrow Lake-S update. Like last year's Lunar Lake mobile chips, this next-generation NPU should offer 48 TOPS of performance, meeting Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PC requirements (+40 TOPS). Considering the current NPU used on Arrow Lake chips only delivers about 13 TOPS, that's a significant bump.
Intel's branding strategy for this update is still unclear; it may stay under the Core Ultra 200 series umbrella or move into a different tier. As the company gets ready for the more architecturally significant Nova Lake, which is still reportedly set for a 2026 release on the Intel 18A node, this move is probably a calculated attempt to prolong Arrow Lake's market lifespan.
KitGuru says: Nothing is official yet, but it sounds like we'll be getting some slightly faster Arrow Lake CPUs later in the year.
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