Intel finds its Zen undercutting AMD with Arrow Lake refresh

"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."

"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."

"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."

Intel introduced the Core Ultra 200S Plus lineup as a strategy to compete with AMD by offering superior core counts at competitive prices. The new processors provide up to 24 cores for just under $300 and 18 cores for approximately $200, undercutting AMD's Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X which cost $299 and $199 respectively. Intel's chips combine high-performance cores with power-efficient cores, reversing a strategy AMD previously used. The Core Ultra 7 270K and Core Ultra 5 250K models each gain four additional efficiency cores compared to previous generations. This pricing approach aims to address market challenges as rising memory costs have made PC purchases less attractive to consumers.

Read at Theregister