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Intel is reportedly preparing to announce three new desktop CPUs at CES 2026, which is just around the corner, taking place next week from January 6-9. Alongside these desktop processors, Intel is also set to introduce its next laptop chip line, known as Core Ultra Series 3, based on the Panther Lake architecture – the mobile line-up was leaked back in October.
The three upcoming desktop processors are not expected to be major upgrades. Instead, they focus on small performance improvements over Intel’s current Core Ultra 200S lineup and represent a refresh of the current models. The main changes reportedly come from adding more E-cores, pushing slightly higher clock speeds, and improving supported DDR5 memory speeds. These updates aim to squeeze out extra performance without changing the core design.
New Intel Core Ultra CPUs on the way
According to industry sources, Intel’s top refreshed model will likely be called Core Ultra 9 290K, essentially replacing the existing Core Ultra 9 285K. It keeps the same core layout as before, with 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, but boosts its maximum clock speed by 100MHz, reaching 5.8GHz. This is one of the models that leaked last month (listed as the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus), alongside an Ultra 7 270K Plus.
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The Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 5 245K are also expected to receive upgrades. Both chips reportedly add four extra E-cores compared to their previous versions to make new ‘270K’ and ‘250K’ models, though the exact naming is yet to be confirmed. This should improve multitasking and background workloads, even if gaming performance remains similar.
Intel might be using this approach to buy time until its next big architecture, Nova Lake, is ready. Nova Lake is still under development and is expected to launch in the second half of the year, targeting both desktops and laptops. Until then, Intel seems focused on refining existing hardware rather than introducing something entirely new.
This move comes at a difficult time for Intel. The Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake) desktop processors launched globally in October 2024. While they offered improvements over the previous lineup, their gaming performance failed to impress, with AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series showing much better results, especially with the benefit of X3D variants on its side.
Since then, Intel has tried multiple improvements. They introduced motherboard firmware updates, Windows 11 scheduler optimizations, and expanded memory overclocking support. However, none of these efforts has significantly shifted how the market views Arrow Lake, as AMD continues to dominate the DIY PC market, especially among gamers. We’ve seen this regularly in recent CPU sales, and AMD is closing the gap in Steam’s hardware survey.
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