The start of a larger-scale movement to win back the public?
For over a year now, we've been talking about Intel's financial situation, its industrial difficulties and the solutions that the company's top executives are trying to find... executives who changed at the very end of last year with the dismissal of CEO Pat Gelsinger and his replacement, in early February, by Lip-Bu Tan. The release of the Arrow Lake generation of desktop processors in autumn 2024 doesn't seem to be THE solution Intel is looking for to get out of the mess it's in, owing to manufacturing being overly focused on the factories of Taiwanese competitor TSMC.
The Arrow Lake range © Intel
In fact, an Arrow Lake processor is made up of four "tiles" (compute tile, GPU tile, SoC tile and I/O tile) all manufactured in TSMC factories. Only then does Intel recover the cores and assemble them in its own facilities, culminating in the 15th-generation Core Ultra chips we'll be seeing in our resellers. In fact, Intel can't manage the production, inventory and, above all, pricing of these chips with the same degree of precision. This is one of the reasons why Arrow Lake is seen only as a "transitional" generation before the release of Nova Lake 2026.
Transitional, yes, but important nonetheless, and the lacklustre sales recorded since the launch have given Intel pause for thought. The American group has therefore decided to strike hard, lowering the recommended retail price of the mid-range products in this 15th generation, the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 7 265KF. The former, formerly billed at $399, is now priced at $299, while the latter drops from $384 to $284. Yes, we're talking about a $100 reduction on each of the two, i.e. more or less 25% off in one fell swoop! There's no doubt that at this price, and despite fierce competition from AMD and its Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the Core Ultra 7 265K/265KF will find their audience, and who knows, maybe Intel will extend this reduction to the Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 9?
