As launch reviews were published in various media outlets (us included), the new Intel Core Ultra 200S series (codenamed Arrow Lake) shows varying degrees of performance regressions, and most of which – according to the chipmaker – was not in line with its expectations. Weeks of investigation later, Intel has identified the issues and has now published the first part of the report detailing what exactly went wrong.
Arrow Lake Issues Identified & Fixed
According to Intel, there are five major issues that overall caused performance issues and sometimes system instability on the desktop Arrow Lake processors, and these include: missing PPM (performance & power management) package, inactive Intel APO functionality, BSOD caused by Easy Anti-Cheat, misconfigured BIOS on reviewer’s and early BIOS releases, and some extra BIOS optimizations made during the investigation process.
So what’s the current situation? With four of the five issues now fixed, all the performance losses since the initial launch are now fully recovered – the new BIOS performance enhancements should be a net gain (of single digit percentage) for all Core Ultra processors moving forward, and users can expect the update to be released sometime in January 2025. To fully apply these fixes, you need these three items in these version numbers (or newer):
| Software / Firmware | Target Version |
|---|---|
| Intel Microcode (BIOS) | 0x114 |
| Intel CSME Firmware Kit | 19.0.0.1854v2.2 |
| Windows 11 | 26100.2314 |
Editor’s note: Once the fixes are all published, we will once again verify the performance in a separate re-review, so stay tuned for that.
Pokdepinion: Hopefully this fixes things once and for all.
