Intel Arrow Lake Refresh: The Budget CPU That Finally Gives AMD a Run for Its Money

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) recently took the wraps off two new PC CPUs as part of its Arrow Lake Refresh. The original line of Arrow Lake CPUs was a mixed bag, priced too high at launch and lackluster in gaming performance. AMD's chips were generally a better value, particularly for those who wouldn't benefit from Arrow Lake's exceptional non-gaming performance.

While Intel's next-generation Nova Lake chips won't arrive until late this year or early next year, the company has strengthened its position in the desktop CPU market with the 250K Plus and 270K Plus CPUs. Intel tacked on more CPU cores, boosted clock speeds, and increased cache. The company also became far more aggressive on price, making an upgrade more feasible as memory prices soar. At the high-volume $200 price point, Intel appears to now be the undisputed king.

Image source: Intel.

A clear win for Intel

With Arrow Lake Refresh, Intel increased its focus on gaming performance while knocking down prices. Tom's Hardware called the 250K Plus "the new best $200 CPU." This is a price point that AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) has dominated, largely because Intel hasn't made much of a play at it. The original Arrow Lake 245K launched at over $300, making it a tough sell against AMD's 9600X.

The 250K Plus "doesn't just move the needle; it shatters the gauge," according to Tom's Hardware. In non-gaming productivity workloads, it routinely beats out AMD's 9900X, which is nearly double the price. Arrow Lake has always been great for productivity workloads, and the 250K Plus builds on that success.

In gaming, Intel has made some serious progress. Across 17 games tested by Tom's Hardware, the 250K Plus edges out AMD's 9600X and is only slightly behind the 9900X. AMD's 3D V-Cache chips still win by a wide margin, but those chips are more expensive and come with some performance trade-offs in non-gaming workloads.

Multiple headwinds this year

While Arrow Lake Refresh makes Intel more competitive in the desktop CPU market, it may not translate into growth for the company's PC business. The PC market is almost certain to contract this year as memory chip prices soar, the result of booming demand from AI data centers. IDC predicts that global PC unit volumes will tumble by 11.3% this year, compared to an 8.3% increase in 2025.

The other issue, which is related to memory chip prices, is that Arrow Lake Refresh will be the last family of CPUs to use Intel's LGA 1851 socket. What that means is that there is no upgrade path for those opting for these chips, since Intel's upcoming Nova Lake chips will switch to a new platform. In normal times, this isn't a huge issue for most people. But with memory chip prices out of control, having a viable upgrade path that doesn't require purchasing a new motherboard and potentially new RAM is becoming more important.

While Intel's PC CPU business may not get much of a boost from Arrow Lake Refresh, the server CPU business is booming. The proliferation of CPU-heavy agentic AI workloads has created a supply demand imbalance in the server CPU market. Neither Intel nor AMD has enough capacity to meet demand, though Intel is actively shifting its in-house capacity from PC to server CPUs. Notably, Intel's Arrow Lake chips use TSMC for the compute tile rather than an in-house process. Nova Lake is expected to use the Intel 18A process.

With Arrow Lake Refresh, Intel is catching back up to AMD in the desktop CPU market. It may not matter that much this year, given the headwinds facing the PC market, but the company is now better positioned to reclaim market share once memory prices normalize.

Timothy Green has positions in Intel. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.