TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
For a 'mere' refresh, Intel has worked wonders with its Arrow Lake tiles, clocks, and configurations to make the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. The performance and price tag are both very appealing, and it's easily Intel's best desktop processor. It also happens to be one of the best all-round chips you can buy.
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There's nothing new about a processor architecture being 'refreshed', as AMD and Intel have been doing this for years, but where you'd normally expect a particular SKU line to get nothing more than some minor clock speed bumps and a sparkly new badge, Intel has done things a little differently for its Core Ultra 200S Plus chips, i.e. Arrow Lake Refresh.
For a start, you're only getting two new processors, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus under review here, and the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. In the case of the former, the family name (Ultra 7) would suggest that it's merely a Core Ultra 7 265K with a bump to its clock speeds, but that's not the case.
The 270K Plus sports eight P-cores and 16 E-cores (i.e. a full Arrow Lake compute tile), exactly the same as the Ultra 9 285K, and has higher maximum clock speeds for the P and E cores: 5.5 and 4.7 GHz, respectively. The 265K's figures are 5.2 and 4.6 GHz, so you're getting no more than 6% faster P-cores and just 2% speedier E-cores.
However, Intel has also given Arrow Lake's other clocks a healthy bump, too. The maximum D2D (die-to-die) clock speed has been increased by an enormous 900 MHz (2.1 to 3.0 GHz), with the NGU (Next Generation Uncore) clock raised by a smaller, but still decently sized, 400 MHz (2.6 to 3.0 GHz).
Cores (P+E): 8+16Threads: 24Base clock: 3.7 GHz (P-core)Boost clock: 5.7 GHz (P-core)L3 Cache: 36 MBL2 Cache: 40 MB (Total)Unlocked: YesMax usable PCIe lanes: 24Graphics: Intel Graphics (4 Xe cores)Memory support (up to): DDR5-7200Processor Base Power (W): 125Maximum Package Power (W): 250Recommended customer price: $299/£299.99
The latter controls the speed of the fabric inside the SoC tile, whereas the former is for the bridges between each tile in Arrow Lake. Oh, and the clock for the cache ring bus inside the compute tile is also a touch higher: where the 285K and 265K peak at 3.9 and 3.8 GHz, respectively, the 270K Plus and 250K Plus are 4.0 and 3.9 GHz.
Additionally, Intel has given the integrated memory controller (IMC) a 400 MHz boost to its maximum clocks, hence why the 270K Plus supports DDR5-7200 without overclocking. It's worth noting that the 200S Plus chips also support Intel's 200S Boost mode, enabled via the motherboard's BIOS, which raises the D2D and NGU clocks to 3.2 GHz and the IMC to support DDR5-8000.
To achieve all of this, Intel says it tweaked a variety of things inside the architecture and was keen to stress that the new Ultra 200S Plus chips aren't simply ones that have been picked out of a particular manufacturing bin. The compute tile is a fresh wafer design, albeit one that isn't substantially different from before.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Alongside the launch of the 200S Plus pair, Intel released a new piece of software, called Binary Optimization Tool (BOT), which basically plays a game of Tetris with thread instructions, helping the processor run them more efficiently. Some of the architectural tweaks involve hardware hooks to give Intel's software engineers a better insight as to what code reshuffling will work best for a given game.
For the sake of consistency, and to get a sense of the 'raw' hardware performance, I've not employed BOT or Intel's APO tool for the benchmarks below, but I will be examining the system in detail in a separate article.
MSI MEG Z890 Ace | 32 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 CL32 | Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE | Zotac G...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
There's nothing new about a processor architecture being 'refreshed', as AMD and Intel have been doing this for years, but where you'd normally expect a particular SKU line to get nothing more than some minor clock speed bumps and a sparkly new badge, Intel has done things a little differently for its Core Ultra 200S Plus chips, i.e. Arrow Lake Refresh.
For a start, you're only getting two new processors, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus under review here, and the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. In the case of the former, the family name (Ultra 7) would suggest that it's merely a Core Ultra 7 265K with a bump to its clock speeds, but that's not the case.
The 270K Plus sports eight P-cores and 16 E-cores (i.e. a full Arrow Lake compute tile), exactly the same as the Ultra 9 285K, and has higher maximum clock speeds for the P and E cores: 5.5 and 4.7 GHz, respectively. The 265K's figures are 5.2 and 4.6 GHz, so you're getting no more than 6% faster P-cores and just 2% speedier E-cores.
However, Intel has also given Arrow Lake's other clocks a healthy bump, too. The maximum D2D (die-to-die) clock speed has been increased by an enormous 900 MHz (2.1 to 3.0 GHz), with the NGU (Next Generation Uncore) clock raised by a smaller, but still decently sized, 400 MHz (2.6 to 3.0 GHz).
Cores (P+E): 8+16Threads: 24Base clock: 3.7 GHz (P-core)Boost clock: 5.7 GHz (P-core)L3 Cache: 36 MBL2 Cache: 40 MB (Total)Unlocked: YesMax usable PCIe lanes: 24Graphics: Intel Graphics (4 Xe cores)Memory support (up to): DDR5-7200Processor Base Power (W): 125Maximum Package Power (W): 250Recommended customer price: $299/£299.99
The latter controls the speed of the fabric inside the SoC tile, whereas the former is for the bridges between each tile in Arrow Lake. Oh, and the clock for the cache ring bus inside the compute tile is also a touch higher: where the 285K and 265K peak at 3.9 and 3.8 GHz, respectively, the 270K Plus and 250K Plus are 4.0 and 3.9 GHz.
Additionally, Intel has given the integrated memory controller (IMC) a 400 MHz boost to its maximum clocks, hence why the 270K Plus supports DDR5-7200 without overclocking. It's worth noting that the 200S Plus chips also support Intel's 200S Boost mode, enabled via the motherboard's BIOS, which raises the D2D and NGU clocks to 3.2 GHz and the IMC to support DDR5-8000.
To achieve all of this, Intel says it tweaked a variety of things inside the architecture and was keen to stress that the new Ultra 200S Plus chips aren't simply ones that have been picked out of a particular manufacturing bin. The compute tile is a fresh wafer design, albeit one that isn't substantially different from before.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Alongside the launch of the 200S Plus pair, Intel released a new piece of software, called Binary Optimization Tool (BOT), which basically plays a game of Tetris with thread instructions, helping the processor run them more efficiently. Some of the architectural tweaks involve hardware hooks to give Intel's software engineers a better insight as to what code reshuffling will work best for a given game.
For the sake of consistency, and to get a sense of the 'raw' hardware performance, I've not employed BOT or Intel's APO tool for the benchmarks below, but I will be examining the system in detail in a separate article.
MSI MEG Z890 Ace | 32 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 CL32 | Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE | Zotac G...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?