Intel’s 15th Gen Arrow Lake-S desktop processors might fall short of expectations as a leaked slide from the AnandTech forums indicates a paltry 5% single-threaded gain with the new “Lion Cove” P-cores. Note that this is the single-threaded performance gain and not the IPC. The IPC is calculated at the same core clocks, while single-threaded performance gains can include improvements from higher clocks. Ergo, a ST uplift of 5% indicates an IPC upgrade of 3-5%, which is too conservative.
An IPC uplift of 5-7% (over Raptor Cove) is the least we expect from the “Lion Cove” P-cores driving high-performance workloads. That would translate into a 10-15% single-threaded gain, improving gaming performance by similar figures. Regarding the multi-threaded performance, the slide claims a gain of 15% over the 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S Refresh.
Considering that the 15th Gen Arrow Lake-S processors will leverage the Intel 20A process, it’s likely that the core clocks will be lower than Raptor Lake or its subsequent Refresh. The IPC may be slightly higher than the single-threaded performance gains in this case. The E-cores should be considerably faster as it is a leap from Gracemont to Skymont, skipping Crestmont altogether.
Arrow Lake will debut in the last quarter of 2024 alongside the LGA1851 socket. Being a desktop-centric lineup, it’ll feature the same core count as Raptor Lake, with 8P and 16E cores. The Lion Cove “P-cores” will get a larger 3MB L2 cache, up from 2MB on Raptor Cove. Additionally, these CPUs are expected to feature an L4 “Adamantine” cache which may be shared between the CPU cores, PCH, and iGPU. As is the norm with new platform releases, the memory speeds, PCIe Gen 5 lane counts, and other I/O capabilities should also get a healthy boost.
