Earlier this month, Intel announced the Core Ultra 200S “Arrow Lake” processors and they go on sale today. In turn, the review embargo for these new desktop processors will also be lifted. First up today on Phoronix is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Linux performance review for this flagship 24-core desktop processor.
The Core Ultra 9 285K is Intel’s new flagship desktop processor, consisting of 24 cores via 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores. With Arrow Lake there are only 24 cores/threads without any hyperthreading. The P cores reach a top speed of 5.7 GHz (4.6 GHz maximum turbo for the E cores), while the Core Ultra 9 285K also features 4 GPU cores for the Xe Meteor Lake era graphics and a 13 TOPS NPU.
The Core Ultra 9 285K has an Intel Smart Cache of 36 MB, a base power of 125 watts and a maximum turbo power of 250 watts. The retail price of the Core Ultra 9 285K is expected to be $589~599 USD.
Tomorrow my Intel Core Ultra 5 245K Linux benchmarks will be on Phoronix. Unfortunately, because I only received an Intel Z890 motherboard last Saturday and subsequently ran into some DDR5 memory issues, I wasn’t able to complete the first benchmarks of the Core Ultra 9 285K until launch day, while the Ultra 5 245K- benchmarks were ready later today and should be ready for release on Friday.
A shipping delay with the release of an Intel Z890 motherboard meant I’ve only been able to test Arrow Lake on Linux for a week so far, but at least it turned out well. Unlike Lunar Lake and the misery I ended up having when the ASUS Zenbook S 14 was finally downgraded to ASUS AIPT functionality and some Xe2 graphics driver bits were still stuck, it wasn’t exactly an ideal launch experience. But here at Arrow Lake it is much more pleasant. Desktop support and performance are of good standing, support for Arrow Lake’s integrated graphics driver largely follows the mature Meteor Lake software paths, and there’s even Arrow Lake NPU support within the IVPU accelerator driver if that interests you. I’ve been discussing the Arrow Lake Linux activation and it’s pretty much been sorted out for months.
With a Linux distribution like Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or Ubuntu 24.10, Fedora 41, etc., you should be in good shape for the Intel Core Ultra 200S desktop processors. Of course, with new hardware I always recommend running on a new kernel as you are comfortable with, for any missing device IDs/features, various optimizations, etc., that may be present in newer Linux kernel (and Mesa) )code. But long story short, the Linux support has been nice on all my Core Ultra 9 285K and Cor Ultra 5 245K Linux tests so far.
Intel provided an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO for my Linux testing. The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO is a high-end Z890 motherboard that will retail for $699 USD. This LGA-1851 motherboard features one PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x1 slot, six M.2 slots including three PCIe 5.0 x4, and a variety of other high-end desktop motherboard features for Intel Arrow Lake.
The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO has performed well on Linux in my testing so far, but there have been some issues surrounding the DDR5 memory. When working with Corsair DDR5-8000 DIMMs, I occasionally encountered compiler segmentation errors. I also got stuck with a few benchmarks like Y-Cruncher. I also experienced similar behavior with some DDR5-6000 DIMMs. But when I switched to some DDR5-6400 DIMMs as the nominal memory speed for the Core Ultra 200S, everything behaved great. Two days before launch I received a new ASUS BIOS which should fix these DDR5 memory issues. So for those planning to purchase/assemble a Z890 Arrow Lake system soon, it is important to upgrade to the very latest BIOS. Aside from the DDR5 memory irritations that should now be resolved with the new BIOS, the rest of the experience with the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO was in excellent shape for Linux users.
