Will Arrow Lake be the CPU that turns things around for Intel?" The truth will be revealed when Intel's latest desktop processor is unveiled later this year. In the meantime, the latest rumors suggest that Intel will not develop a GPU-less version of Core Ultra 9, the highest specification of the new chip.

The rumor comes from X's Arrow Lake prophet @jaykihn0 (via PCGamesN), who claims that all Core Ultra 9 SKUs will "ship with integrated graphics." If accurate, this would be a change from Intel's policy in recent years, which has disabled integrated graphics from the entire CPU series, resulting in so-called "F" variant processors.

In return, Intel is cutting about $30 from the price. This approach makes the most sense for high-performance chips for gaming. The idea is that if you buy a fairly expensive CPU with gaming in mind, you will almost certainly use a dedicated graphics card. In other words, integrated graphics are not necessary.

At the same time, integrated graphics allows the iGPU to be used with chips that are flawed and otherwise useless. There are benefits for everyone.

As for why Intel is not taking this approach, perhaps it is due to chiplet technology, at least in the Core Ultra 9 models, if not in other Arrow Lake SKUs. if Arrow Lake is Intel's laptop CPU " If it is built like Meteor Lake, the iGPU is essentially a chiplet. [These chiplets either work or they don't. There is no such thing as a broken iGPU die built into a chiplet CPU. Likewise, if the iGPU does work, there is little point in going to the trouble and expense of putting it in a multi-die CPU and turning it off.

Of course, this idea would apply to other members of the Arrow Lake family as well. A slightly confusing factor is that the lower SKUs in the Arrow Lake lineup could be based on earlier monolithic architectures such as Raptor Lake.

However, our understanding is that the Core Ultra 9 285K, Core Ultra 7 265K, and Core Ultra 5 245K models that have been the subject of various leaks in recent months all use the actual Arrow Lake architecture.

Less clear is the actual substructure of Arrow Lake. For example, Meteor Lake is, for lack of a better term, very chintzy. There are four active tiles: compute tiles, graphic styles, IO tiles, and SOC tiles.

However, Intel's upcoming Lunar Lake chip backs it up a bit. There are only two active tiles, the main compute tile with the CPU core, iGPU, NPU, and others, and a much smaller platform controller tile. That's it.

Intel's marketing materials for Arrow Lake seem to suggest a four-tile configuration like Meteor Lake, rather than a two-tile configuration like Lunar Lake. However, we do not know for sure.

In any case, we'd like to see some "F" chips in the Arrow Lake range; F chips don't offer massive savings; they're not as good as the "F" chips in the Arrow Lake range. But removing something that is not useful to the game and lowering the price a bit will work for us, so we are hopeful.