Intel unleashes Arrow Lake gaming performance updates – more are coming

Intel has released a range of fixes for their Core Ultra 200S Arrow Lake CPUs – Is gaming performance fixed?

Today, Intel issued a “Performance Status” update for its Core Ultra 200S “Arrow Lake” CPUs. This update revealed a series of fixes that have improved the gaming performance of these new Arrow Lake series CPUs. Most of these fixes are now available, though the company has confirmed that more performance optimisations are coming.

Thanks to these updates, Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs should now perform as expected in gaming workloads. However, another update will be released in January to deliver further performance enhancements.

Arrow Lake’s five problems

After a large internal investigation, Intel has uncovered the root cause of Arrow Lake’s gaming woes. These issues are detailed in the infographic below. For the most part, these issues are addressed by Windows 11 updates and motherboard BIOS updates.

For some games, these fixes will deliver substantial performance enhancements for Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. In others, performance gains will be much smaller. This means that performance gains will vary wildly on a game-by-game basis. Regardless, these updates should provide the largest gains in games where Arrow Lake presented the most issues.

• A missing Performance & Power Management (PPM) Package
• Intel Application Performance Optimizer (APO) could not take effect
• BSODs when attempting to launch games using Easy Anti-Cheat
• Select performance settings misconfigured on reviewer and early enabling BIOSes
• New BIOS performance optimizations

(Image Provided by Intel)

Has Intel fixed its Gaming Performance on Arrow Lake

Yes, Intel has now addressed the primary issues that impacted the launch of their Arrow Lake CPU platform. Now, Intel’s latest CPUs should perform as they should in gaming workloads. However, that doesn’t mean that no further updates are on the horizon.

Intel has confirmed that new microcode 0x114 BIOS’ will be released that implement new optimisations for Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs. These optimisations are currently being validated by Intel and their partners and should arrive in the first half of January. However, this release schedule could vary significantly depending on your motherboard and its manufacturer.

At CES 2025, Intel plans to give gamers a “comprehensive performance update”, which will include a “full performance sweep” and issue-by-issue” A/B analysis of their fixes. This will fully explain why Arrow Lake performed so poorly in games at launch, and showcase the full impact of their fixes and new optimisations.

Note that Intel’s 0x114 BIOS update delivers a “single-digit performance enhancement” across their suite of 35 games.

Intel seems to have a QA problem

Intel has uncovered, and root caused, five problems that were present when they launched their Arrow Lake processors. For the most part, these problems were preventable, and Intel should have uncovered them before launch. Intel even says outright that there were “performance settings not sufficiently validated by Intel” within the BIOS’ of motherboards.

Intel must ensure these issues are not present in future CPU launches. Arrow Lake now has a bad reputation among gamers, and it will be difficult for Intel to fix that. While their new fixes have greatly increased the gaming potential of their Arrow Lake CPUs, they aren’t a magic bullet that will push Intel to the top of the gaming CPU market.

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