Is Intel Bringing Back One of Its Most Annoying CPUs?

It’s no exaggeration to say that Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs are a big deal. They use a completely new architecture, and they come with a brand new socket standard. This should essentially give them a competitive edge to compete for a spot among the best commercial PC processors on the market. However, it seems that some upcoming Core 200-series CPUs (the non-Ultra versions) won’t use any of the Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake architecture at all—they could be “disguised” CPUs that use older CPU technology but have new names.

This assumption comes from a Crossmark benchmark result posted to Bapco, and first pointed out by tech blogger Everest. The result shows that the Core 5 210H CPU comes with eight cores and 12 threads. That's the problem. Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake don't come with Hyper-Threading, so each core only comes with a single thread.

This isn't new for Intel. The company rebranded its Raptor Lake (13th Gen) processors under the Meteor Lake brand with the Core-U (Series 1) line, and it looks like we'll see the same thing happen here. As Tom's Hardware points out, the Core 5-210H actually performs a bit worse than the Core i5-12450H in this benchmark, so Intel is definitely using Alder Lake and Raptor Lake-branded chips for its non-Ultra Core 200 series.

It’s important to note that this only applies to laptops, at least for now. While the desktop Arrow Lake chips and the mobile Lunar Lake chips use the same architecture, Intel is segmenting them differently. The Core Ultra 200S processors are Arrow Lake for desktops, while the Core Ultra 200V is Lunar Lake for mobile. Intel also said it plans to release higher-end Arrow Lake chips for laptops using the H or HX suffix.

What users should pay attention to are the non-Ultra chips like the Core 5 210H. Based on the above benchmark results, it looks like these CPUs are using an older architecture, simply rebranded. Intel will likely launch these CPUs quietly and target the low-cost laptop segment in the coming months.

The Arrow Lake CPU lineup is expected to officially launch on October 24 for the desktop segment — the mobile lineup will follow shortly thereafter, likely targeting high-end gaming laptops where Lunar Lake might not make sense. Overall, if Intel does plan to reuse both the Alder Lake and Raptor Lake designs for the non-Ultra Core 200 series, you'll have to dig deeper into each CPU to see what you're actually getting.