In a bold move, Intel has finally killed Hyper-Threading on its desktop CPUs. The new Arrow Lake range, dubbed Core Ultra 200S, ditches the simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) feature that has been an Intel staple for over a decade. According to Intel, the removal of Hyper-Threading doesn’t hinder performance, and they even claim it delivers a generational leap in speed, even surpassing the best processors on the market.
Intel asserts that the Core Ultra 200S series, designed to excel in gaming and productivity, achieves an 8% performance boost in single-threaded workloads compared to its predecessor, and a 4% improvement over the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X. While these gains may seem modest, the real difference lies in multi-threaded performance.
The Core Ultra 9 285K, Intel’s flagship model, boasts a remarkable 15% performance jump over the previous Core i9-14900K and a 13% lead over the Ryzen 9 9950X in multi-threaded scenarios. Despite having fewer threads (24) compared to AMD’s 32 threads, Intel claims to deliver superior performance in real-world applications.
Furthermore, Intel highlights that the Core Ultra 200S series achieves this performance leap while reducing power consumption by up to 58%. These advancements are enabled by Intel’s new Skymont and Lion Cove core designs, previously introduced in the Lunar Lake laptop CPUs.
The Core Ultra 9 285K, with its impressive clock speeds reaching 5.7GHz, promises to be a powerhouse for demanding tasks. Intel emphasizes the chip’s strong performance in video editing workflows, showcasing a 7.3x improvement thanks to support for Sony’s advanced 4K and 8K XAVC codecs, a feature that makes it the first desktop CPU to offer this capability.
This decision to abandon Hyper-Threading, a feature Intel itself pioneered, seems counterintuitive. However, based on Intel’s own metrics, it appears to be a strategic move for boosting productivity and video editing applications. The true testament to this bold decision will come on October 24th, when the processors finally hit the market.
