The new Intel Core Ultra 200 series desktop processors, codenamed Arrow Lake, launched to very disappointing reviews in October. Now the American company has compiled five problems that it claims are to blame for the difference between its own performance expectations and what reviewers experienced, and four of the five problems described have already been resolved through BIOS, Windows or updates. applications, and additional performance improvements. to arrive in January 2025.
For context, our review of the Core i9 285K and Core i5 245K saw performance improvements for the 285K over the outgoing 14900K in three titles (Crysis 3 Remastered, Dragon's Dogma 2, and Forza Horizon 5), while the 14900K retained its crown in the another eight games that put them to the test, often by extreme margins.
Here are the five problems, their root cause and their current status, cited in Intel's statement:
| Performance issue | Main cause | State |
|---|---|---|
| Unusual scheduling, high variation between runs, low single thread scores, intermittent ~1.5x increase in DRAM latency, lower performance on Windows 11 24H2 vs 23H2 | Intel untimely implemented operating system power plan (“PPM”) settings, which customize DVFS, core parking, and C-states. This resulted in a 6-30% performance loss. | Resolved in Windows 11 26100.2161 or later |
| Intel Application Performance Optimiser (APO) does not show expected performance results | Lack of PPM puts the CPU in a state where APO profiles cannot be applied; selected reviewer BIOSes also set APO to disabled by default. This resulted in a 2-14% yield loss on APO profile securities. | Resolved in Windows 11 26100.2161 or later |
| BSOD when starting Easy Anti-Cheat titles in Windows 11 24H2 | Known issue with Easy Anti-Cheat KMD and Windows 11 24H2, issue exacerbated by disabling virtualization-based security (VBS) | Solved with the new Easy Anti-Cheat driver distributed by Epic |
| Select misconfigured performance settings in some pre-release BIOSes | Intel has not sufficiently verified the consistency of VIP performance configurations, including ReBAR, Intel APO, compute ring frequency, IMC equipment, and sustained/transient power limits. This caused a 2 to 14% performance loss. | Solved in client BIOS now available |
| New BIOS performance improvements | New optimizations developed for upcoming BIOS updates, currently being validated by Intel and partners, estimated single-digit performance improvement over a geometric average of 35 games. | Motherboard BIOS planned for January 2025 |
The table makes for interesting reading, and Intel's community blog on the topic also goes into more detail on each issue identified. In it, Intel promises “a full performance overview, including January BIOSes” at CES early next year, so we should have a better idea of exactly what performance differences we should expect with the five fixes applied.
We also saw extremely poor performance in Cyberpunk 2077 in particular, and that appears to have been resolved in the game's 2.2 update, if the patch notes are to be believed.
If you're one of the few people running a Core i5 245K, Core i7 265K or Core i9 285K system, then you've probably already updated to the latest versions of Windows and BIOS, but it's worth doing it now if you haven't. , and again in mid-January when more BIOS updates are available, to ensure your system is delivering peak performance. Intel says the January BIOSes can be “identified by Intel microcode version 0x114 and Intel CSME Firmware Kit 19.0.0.1854v2.2 (or newer).”
We'll try to retest the Core i9 285K and Core i5 245K once these January BIOS updates are available, as we saw much worse performance than we expected and it would be nice to see what these processors are actually capable of. We expect to hear more from Intel at that time, as well as its rivals AMD and Nvidia, so stay tuned for our CES reports in the new year.