Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU Benchmarks Show Up To 21% Gain Over Raptor Lake, Over 2x iGPU Performance

Intel's internal performance benchmarks for the upcoming Raptor Lake-S Refresh & Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs have been revealed by Igor's Lab.

According to Igor's Lab, the performance projections were done by Intel to summarize what one could expect from the Raptor Lake-S Refresh and Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU lineup. While Igor's Lab itself has done performance projections in the past, these latest benchmarks allegedly come straight from Chipzilla itself.

So starting off with the performance details, it is pointed out that Intel is using the same core and thread configurations across all three lineups. This includes an 8+16 chip that rocks 24 cores and 32 threads. This is pretty much what you get on the current flagship, the Core i9-13900K & which is also expected to be retained on the Raptor Lake-S Refresh CPUs such as the flagship i9-14900K. It cannot be confirmed if the 8+16 Arrow Lake-S SKU used here will end up as the flagship config or if there will be an even higher-end variant since rumors did mention up to 8+32 core configurations.

Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh & Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU "Projected" Performance

All CPUs were set to their highest PL2 rating of 253W for the Raptor Lake-S & Refresh chips and 250 Watts for the Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs. The Core i9-13900K was used as the baseline and Raptor Lake-S Refresh and Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs were shown with their respective gains over it.

6-Application-Based "Projected" Performance Uplift Over Raptor Lake:

In terms of performance, the Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh Core i9-14900K delivered a sub-5% gain in performance which could be coming directly from a clock gain of 6.0-6.2 GHz over the 13900K. The Arrow Lake-S CPU on the other hand is shown to offer a much more noticeable gain of up to 21%.

In all benchmarks except the single-core SPECrate tests, the Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU offers a double-digit gain in performance do remember, that these are very early benchmarks & the clock speeds definitely won't be final as these chips are more than a year away from launch, giving them time to mature in terms of process and firmware optimization.

Also, a 21% projection means that AMD's Zen 5-based Ryzen 8000 CPUs can expect up to 20-25% performance uplift from the blue team by the time Arrow Lake launches within its final form. Whether this uplift will be enough or will AMD impress us with another major performance uplift with its next iteration of Ryzen CPUs remains to be seen.

Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh & Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU "Projected" iGPU Performance:

CPU benchmarks aren't the only segment where the Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs see a big boost. The iGPU also delivers over a 2x gain in performance thanks to the latest Alchemist GPU architecture embedded within the graphics tile. That's quite a significant boost that is going to translate superbly into GPU performance on laptops and Mini PCs.

The Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh Desktop CPU lineup will be supported on the existing LGA 1700 socketed motherboards within the 600 and 700-series lineup and launches in October 2023. The Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU lineup is planned to release in late 2024 and will be supported by the LGA 1851 socketed motherboards within the 800-series family. The company has an Innovation event planned for 19th September so we can expect more details then.