Intel Says Arrow Lake Will Be 5% Slower In Gaming Versus AMD’s Ryzen 7000 “3D V-Cache” CPUs

Intel’s newly announced Core Ultra 200S “Arrow Lake” Desktop CPUs will be slower than the AMD Ryzen 7000 “3D V-Cache” chips, as stated by the blue team itself.

Intel Isn’t Worried Too Much About Arrow Lake CPUs Being Slower In Gaming Than AMD’s Ryzen 7000 “3D V-Cache” CPUs

During the Arrow Lake Q&A session with the press, Intel’s Robert Hallock was asked about how the new desktop stack compared against AMD’s Ryzen 7000 “3D V-Cache” chips in games, especially the Ryzen 7 7800X3D which is a very popular chip for gamers at the moment.

Robert replied that while they showed some performance metrics in gaming and productivity workloads of the Core Ultra 9 285K against the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, the top 3D V-Cache chip, he expects the margin to be a few percentage points. It was stated that the Arrow Lake CPUs would end up having a 5% gaming performance deficit versus AMD’s existing 3D V-Cache parts though Robert stated that Intel feels good in this position since they don’t have to leverage an SRAM and offer the kind of performance that Arrow Lake offers in games using its embedded CPU cache.

We showed some data on the 7950X3D. Based on my understanding of the performance, that part is within a couple of percents so I think we will be about 5 percent back versus X3D which we feel really really good about considering that we have just the cache that’s built within the CPU and the great IPC of the product so you’ll see about a 5% deficit, I want to be clear about that.

Robert Hallock (Intel VP & General Manager Client AI and Technical Marketing)

It looks like both AMD & Intel, this generation, are going to be facing stiff competition in the gaming segment due to the 3D V-Cache parts. AMD also offered a similar messaging during its Zen 5 “Ryzen 9000” launch suggesting a small 3-5% performance deficit in games versus the existing Ryzen 7000 “3D V-Cache” offerings though reviews ended up showing differences in the double-digit range.

AMD even said that the Ryzen 7 9700X would end up being 2% ahead of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in a few titles though we weren’t able to find any instance where that was the case. That makes the 7800X3D still the best value for gamers on the AM5 platform.

Intel also says that they will have strong efficiency with their Arrow Lake CPUs in gaming and the chips will also run very cool. In gaming, a 125W PL1 mode configured Arrow Lake CPU would end up being as fast as the 250W PL1 mode which means gamers won’t have to run their chip at the max while gaming, leading to similar or better power characteristics as the 3D V-Cache lineup.

While Intel Arrow Lake CPU might be close to existing “Zen 4” based Ryzen 3D V-Cache CPUs, the next-generation “Zen 5” based parts are also on the horizon. Reports suggest that AMD is already planning the release of Ryzen 7 9800X3D this month with a hard launch in November, the only in the X3D “Zen 5” lineup for this year. This would further put stress on the Arrow Lake and standard Zen 5 SKUs.

However, one thing to consider is that Intel’s Arrow Lake CPU might still end up being a great PC option for gamers and builders. With prices lower or around the same range as the 7800X3D & the 9800X3D, the Arrow Lake CPUs would offer great multi-threaded and single-threaded capabilities while 8-core and 16-thread 3D V-Cache parts can only do so much. The 7900X3D didn’t push that much inventory due to its 6-core 3D V-Cache layout and having scheduler issues when moving tasks to the other non-3D V-Cache CCD hence making the 7800X3D a more viable gaming option.

The weeks following the release of the Arrow Lake CPUs are going to be interesting with the 3D V-Cache comparisons so stay tuned for more.