Since their launch, Intel has worked on solutions to strengthen and improve the performance of its Arrow Lake processors aka the Core Ultra 200S. Following its CES 2025 press event, Intel clarified that the full capacity of these processors can be exploited by following three steps.
If you’re in love with Intel’s new Arrow Lake-S platforms, you need to follow three steps to get the most out of its performance. You need to update your motherboard BIOS, install Application Optimization Tool (APO) and Windows Update. These adjustments enable the necessary fixes to achieve the promised performance.
Core Ultra 200S and performance
Intel’s work on performance concerns with its new Core Ultra 200S processors has highlighted a power management problem. Windows 11’s default power plan, “Balanced,” was not optimized for Arrow Lake, which limited their performance. With the addition of Intel’s PPM (Performance and Power Management) package, performance is now improved with the “Balanced” energy profile (it is no longer necessary to choose the “High Performance” profile). Intel is optimistic, announcing gains of up to 37% in some scenarios, although improvements vary by application. For example, increases of 9% were recorded in Far Cry 6 and 15% in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Motherboard BIOS updates are also essential. Intel identified flaws in settings that limited communication performance between processor cores. In the case of AutoGV for example this resulted in situations where the processor cores could communicate with each other at much lower speeds than expected to save power. It has been reported that a die-to-die frequency is not 3.8 GHz, but 800 MHz in the worst situations. While these optimizations may make sense for mobile processors, they don’t make sense for performance-focused desktops. The new BIOS optimizations correct the situation, allowing optimal use of the processors.
Finally, Intel’s Application Optimization Tool (APO), downloadable via the Microsoft Store, adds another layer of improvement, with performance gains of up to 14% for compatible applications and games.
All this shows that Intel has worked to rectify the flaws highlighted during the launch of Arrow Lake. Improvements in memory latency and in-game gains highlight progress. On the other hand, are these changes enough to strengthen the performance of the Core Ultra 200S platform compared to AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 series?
