- Intels Arrow Lake Refresh was jerked for the second half of 2025
- These stationary CPUs allegedly come with a much more powerful NPU
- This allows them to use Copilot+ features for the first time on the desktop – but players will be less than impressed, no doubt
Intel’s Arrow Lake update processors, which are joined to be the next desktop -CPUs from Team Blue, arriving later in 2025, can come up with a surprise twist -a focus on pepper AI.
The Verge picked up an article from Zdnet Korea (translated) that claims that the most important driving force for Arrow Lake Refresh will be a new NPU and that GPU and processor kernels will remain the same as existing Arrow Lake Chips.
The NPU, which is transferred to the next Gen-Desktop CPUs, is said to be the one included in Lunar Lake Laptop CPUs. The only other change will be ‘slightly’ higher watch speeds for Arrow Lake Refresh, we are told.
Currently, Arrow Lake Desktop chips has an NPU, but it’s too weak to speed up Copilot+ features (such as AI-powered Windows search as well as the divisive snapshot-based recall and a few other tricks in addition).
With Lunar Lake NPU on board – these notebook processors are currently used for copilot+ laptops – desktop computers with Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs would be able to fully access the same AI forces.
Analysis: A new target for Arrow Lake?
A switch like this to focus on AI would be a rather radical feature that brings Copilot+-exclusive features to a world of desktop PCs for the first time.
What we need to remember, however, is that this (potentially) happens on the basis of Arrow Lake very disappointing players. As the ZDNET article points out, the previous generation of desktop-silicium (Raptor Lake Refresh) actually has outsourcing Arrow Lake of three to one in Korea.
Given this fact – combined with the failed attempts to hone Arrow Lake to be meaningfully better for games via BIOS -Patches, as the chips were launched – if Intel is set to insert an update of these CPUs in 2025 (which is not confirmed, I should notice), the company may feel that gaming is at this time a lost case (effectively).
So in that light, a radical change, such as a focus on SuperCharge NPU-Leaving Measurable Benefits for Desktop PCs with regard to these Windows 11 features, locked behind an ‘AI wall’, like it was, like an avenue worth exploring.
I am not convinced of this, mind, and I wait for other sources of grapes to back up this before I start to feel more persuaded that this is the direction Intel is on its way. After all, the existence of Arrow Lake -Refresh itself has been a somewhat controversial topic in the past: First, it was underway when Intel was rumored to cancel chips, and recently we were told this Brees, in the past, in the past, still happening. The skepticism is required in short.
If this panes, it is worth noting that players get nothing – faster watch speeds will help ECE out of a few more frames per day. Second, definitely. Although the way it has slept as only ‘slightly’ faster watches do not sound too promising in terms of a decent boost – and it is doubtful that there is still a lot of room for it.
The release time frame for Arrow Lake Refresh is reportedly the second half of the year, but given this rumor – which is a weighty piece of speculation – only emerges now, this indicates a case of later, rather than before, in H2 2025, I guess.
