There was curiously no mention of Core Ultra 200 Plus processors in Intel’s CES 2026 keynote, but the chips’ launch apparently isn’t too far away. According to new rumours, the long-rumoured refresh of Arrow Lake desktop CPUs could be just a few months away.
Taking to Weibo, regular hardware leaker Golden Pig Upgrade shared that the “200 Plus family will have to be in March and April.” The post includes a screenshot of a recent Geekbench 6 benchmark, pertaining to an as-yet-unannounced Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus chip.
These months likely indicate a staggered launch for Core Ultra 200 Plus, with Intel releasing desktop processors in one month and mobile processors in the other. It’s unclear which chips the company will push out the door first, if this rumoured timeframe is accurate, but I doubt the gap between them will be long at all.
Motherboard manufacturers have been preparing for this refresh since 2025, publishing BIOS updates with changelogs that explicitly mention “upcoming Core Ultra 2-series processors.” An Intel representative also stated that “we’ll have a refresh of Arrow Lake next year” during the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference in 2025. Suffice to say, the new chips are an open secret, and it’s a case of when rather than if Intel plans to launch new Arrow Lake CPUs.
However, no one should be expecting anything quite as exciting as Panther Lake out of these new Core Ultra 200 processors. Alleged Core Ultra Plus specs leaks suggest these chips won’t push the performance needle far beyond what the Core Ultra 9 285K already provides. Mid-range SKUs should be a bit quicker, with more E-cores rumoured to be at their disposal, but that looks like it’s about it.
With these paltry gains in mind, combined with the ongoing DRAM crisis, it’s difficult to feel excited about a Core Ultra 200 refresh. I certainly don’t see these chips meaningfully turning the tide for Intel in the wake of its drastic market share loss over the past five years. If anything, DDR4-compatible models like the Core i9-14900K will continue to prove more popular.
Then there’s the competition to consider, with AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D release date rumours pointing to a launch at the end of January. That’s not forgetting the potential Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, of course. There just doesn’t seem to be any room for this Arrow Lake refresh to succeed.
As much as the cards are stacked against Intel, the proof will be in the processors. There’s a chance the company could surprise us all with appreciable performance improvements, and we shouldn’t have to wait long to see them if there are any.
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