Intel's Arrow Lake Update Fails to Meet Gaming Performance Expectations

Intel’s recent update to the Arrow Lake series has not improved overall gaming performance, nor has it lived up to the company’s lofty marketing claims. The Core Ultra 200S continues to trail behind AMD and its own previous-generation chips.

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These are the same old dies repackaged into your next $3000-$5000 ‘top tier’ gaming laptops.

Charlie said:
These are the same old dies repackaged into your next $3000-$5000 ‘top tier’ gaming laptops.

This is why I am skipping this generation. Nothing but trash from Intel and Nvidia. Extremely disappointing.

@Val
Just a note, I didn’t think the Legion 5 was ever available with the 7945HX, only the 7745HX?

Charlie said:
@Val
Just a note, I didn’t think the Legion 5 was ever available with the 7945HX, only the 7745HX?

It was indeed available. Here’s the proof with specifications: [Lenovo Specs Link]

@Marsden
Interesting, that’s quite overkill for a 4070 though. Did you manage to get a good deal on it?

Charlie said:
@Marsden
Interesting, that’s quite overkill for a 4070 though. Did you manage to get a good deal on it?

You mean like how they offered the 14900hx with 4060s? :sob:

Charlie said:
@Val
Just a note, I didn’t think the Legion 5 was ever available with the 7945HX, only the 7745HX?

There’s currently a sale on the Legion Slim 5, which is similar to the Legion 5. It’s available with either an 8845hs and RTX 4060 or 4070.

@Avery
That makes more sense for the Slim 5.

@Val
Honestly, nothing innovative this series due to the lack of a node shrink. Performance per watt has basically plateaued.

Sparrow said:
@Val
Honestly, nothing innovative this series due to the lack of a node shrink. Performance per watt has basically plateaued.

Still, there will be performance/watt gains from architectural improvements. Remember how Maxwell significantly improved efficiency on the same 28nm process?

@Charlie
Maxwell was the exception, not the rule. Plus, the main changes this time are mostly AI acceleration, nothing groundbreaking for most users.

Sparrow said:
@Charlie
Maxwell was the exception, not the rule. Plus, the main changes this time are mostly AI acceleration, nothing groundbreaking for most users.

The gains might not be groundbreaking, but they’re there. The introduction of the 5070Ti could be a great value proposition, given the previous lack of mid-range options with more than 8GB of VRAM without a huge price jump.

The Ryzen 9955HX3D looks promising, but it might be hard to get your hands on one this year, at least in the first half.

Marsden said:
The Ryzen 9955HX3D looks promising, but it might be hard to get your hands on one this year, at least in the first half.

It’s disappointing that such a large company can’t manage its supply chain better. With AMD capturing a significant portion of the market, they’re no longer a minor player.

Unless they offer a compelling AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU combo, I’m skipping this generation.

This generation has been a letdown. We really need AMD to step up and offer competitive gaming laptops to break the monopoly held by Intel and Nvidia.

Fife said:
This generation has been a letdown. We really need AMD to step up and offer competitive gaming laptops to break the monopoly held by Intel and Nvidia.

AMD seems to have abandoned the mobile GPU market. There hasn’t been any news on mobile RDNA4, and they haven’t mentioned their ‘advantage’ strategy in years. Even the best predictions only put their new offerings on par with a 4070.

@Charlie
It looks like AMD’s focus will shift to UDNA-based GPUs in 2026, with the low-end models being APUs.

Fife said:
@Charlie
It looks like AMD’s focus will shift to UDNA-based GPUs in 2026, with the low-end models being APUs.

And yet, these APUs won’t come with low-end pricing, unfortunately.