Intel has a new strategy for shoring up its eroding market share: Offering PC buyers more cores per dollar than arch-rival AMD in a refresh of its Arrow Lake range.

Chipzilla, on Wednesday, revealed a tool it thinks can make that happen, the Core Ultra 200S Plus lineup, which now offers up to 24 cores for a hair under $300 or 18 cores for just shy of $200. This is at a time when AMD's eight-core Ryzen 7 9700X and six-core Ryzen 5 9600X will run you $299 and $199, respectively.

It's almost like we've seen this strategy [1]before , only back then it was AMD who was making the most-cores-per-dollar pitch to discerning PC buyers, even if those cores were weaker individually than Chipzilla's best. My, my how the times have changed.

[2]

Not all of Intel’s new cores are created equal. The new chips blend six to eight of its high-clocking performance cores, while the rest are power-sipping efficiency cores.

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AMD's Ryzen 9000 processors are also due for a refresh, and we wouldn't be surprised to see the company fire back with a couple of value-priced variants. Perhaps we'll see a 9700X3D or 9600X3D Micro Center special to twist the knife on how big a lead in gaming its 3D V-Cache [5]chip-stacking tech has bought it over the past few years.

In the meantime, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Client Computing Group lead Jim Johnson are no doubt keen to win back some love from customers as [6]skyrocketing memory prices have made PCs a tough sell.

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Intel’s new processors come in three variants: the pricier Core Ultra 7 270K, the Core Ultra 5 250K, and the 250KF, which lacks an integrated GPU. Intel’s flagship Core Ultra 9 won’t be getting the same treatment ... except it sort of is.

Both SKUs gain four additional efficiency cores over their pre-refresh models. At 24 cores (8-P and 16-E cores), the 270K looks suspiciously like a slimmed down 285K with marginally lower clock speeds. If this turns out to be the case, the 270K should present an overwhelmingly better value over the current Intel flagship, which launched at an MSRP of $589 in late 2024 and currently retails for $549 online.

Meanwhile, the 18-core (6-P and 12-E cores) 250K should slot in somewhere between the prior-gen 245K and 265K in terms of performance.

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Both chips also benefit from a 900 MHz bump in die-to-die clock speed, which should help reduce latency incurred due to the switch from the monolithic process used by Intel's 12th through 14th-gen Core-series processors to a [9]chiplet architecture . The CPUs also benefit from an improved memory controller with support for DDR5 7,200 MT/s memory out of the box. Intel will allow speeds up to 8,000 MT/s.

Back to the subject of memory, it's also worth highlighting support for CUDIMM memory modules, which integrate the clock timer for greater stability at higher speeds. For the 200S Plus lineup, this now extends to 4-rank memory modules with support for up to 128 GB each. It's a good thing the CPUs are so affordable, since that much memory will set you back several times the cost of the processors.

[10]Intel numbers boss swears big Foundry wins are coming soon

[11]AMD challenges Intel with an 84-core Epyc processor aimed at telcos, edge

[12]As memory shortage persists, vendor price quotes are not long remembered

[13]GPU who? Meta to deploy Nvidia CPUs at large scale

If Intel is to be believed – grab the salt – its latest desktop processors deliver an 83-103 percent multi-threaded performance advantage over AMD's entry-level 9600X and mid-tier 9700X processors in your choice of rendering or synthetic benchmarks.

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For the money, Intel claims its latest chips offer superior multi-threaded performance over AMD's Ryzen 9000-series

Vendors always use benchmark results selectively and Intel went out of its way to avoid other comparisons to AMD, instead claiming a 13-15 percent performance uplift over the pre-refresh Core Ultra 5 and 7. Given the lackluster, and in some cases, [15]regressive performance of the original Arrow Lake release, those figures are still a positive step for Chipzilla.

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Curious how the AMD comparisons disappear when gaming comes up

Some of that performance uplift appears to be coming from a new Intel Binary Optimization Tool that the company launched alongside the new chips.

We understand it leverages Intel's compiler and profiler IP to reduce execution overheads and boost instructions per clock cycle for x86 binaries at runtime, regardless of the platform developers compiled code for.

Both the Core Ultra 7 270K and Core Ultra 5 250K are slated to hit store shelves March 26. ®

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[1] https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2017-3-2-amd-ryzen-tm-7-desktop-processors-featuring-recor.html

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2abGfteBacxEB6H7RLVPsUwAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44abGfteBacxEB6H7RLVPsUwAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33abGfteBacxEB6H7RLVPsUwAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/02/amds_cache_packed_7000x3d_chips/

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/20/memory_prices_dram/

[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44abGfteBacxEB6H7RLVPsUwAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33abGfteBacxEB6H7RLVPsUwAAAM4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/10/intel_arrow_lake_deep_dive/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/intel_advanced_packaging_wins/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/25/amd_edge_sorano/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/memory_shortage_persists_vendor_change_terms/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/17/meta_nvidia_cpu/

[14] https://regmedia.co.uk/2026/03/11/intel_amd_multi_core.jpg

[15] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intels-arrow-lake-fix-doesnt-fix-overall-gaming-performance-or-correct-the-companys-bad-marketing-claims-core-ultra-200s-still-trails-amd-and-previous-gen-chips

[16] https://regmedia.co.uk/2026/03/11/intel_core_ultra_plus.jpg

[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/