Intel’s next desktop "Arrow Lake Refresh" CPU upgrade is inching closer to reality. The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has been spotted in a new Geekbench run, adding to the evidence that the "Arrow Lake Refresh" will indeed offer a meaningful performance improvements over its predecessors. The test system used an ASUS ROG Strix Z890-E Gaming Wi-Fi board with 64 GB of DDR5-6800 memory. The processor achieved scores of 3,535 in the single-core test and 25,106 in the multicore test. Compared to the Core Ultra 9 285K’s typical scores of around 3,200 and 22,560, this represents improvements of approximately 10.5% and 11.3%, respectively. These results place the 290K Plus at the top of Intel’s consumer CPU rankings in Geekbench’s database. An earlier leak on different hardware showed slightly lower results, suggesting that this newer test run benefits from better optimization rather than just faster memory.

The 290K Plus SKU keeps the same 24-core layout as its predecessor with 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores, plus identical power limits of PL1 of 125 W and PL2 of 250 W. The gains come from higher clock speeds. According to rumors, the efficiency cores now boost to 4.8 GHz, up 200 MHz, while the performance cores get an extra 100 MHz on both turbo and thermal velocity boost. The benchmark registered the chip running at 5.7 GHz during testing. Intel has confirmed the ARLR is coming but has stayed quiet on specific models and dates. Leaks suggest a March or April release, and since these chips use the same LGA 1851 socket, they should work as drop-in upgrades for current Z890 motherboards. As with any pre-release numbers, may not reflect final CPU performance, so final performance data and gaming results that come from third-party reviews will show the real-world situation.