Intel is cooking up a budget eight-core gaming CPU, according to leak

Intel is reportedly working on a new budget gaming CPU with eight cores, which is likely to form part of the company’s new Arrow Lake lineup. According to this latest leak, the new CPU will come under the new Intel Core Ultra 3 umbrella and will be “much stronger” than Intel’s existing 14th-gen Core i3 CPUs.

There aren’t any Core i3 CPUs listed on our current guide to the best gaming CPU, with our recommendations starting at the six-core Intel Core i5 12400F, but that could all change if Intel can make a budget eight-core chip that can deliver the goods.

This latest rumor comes from regular tech leaker OneRaichu, who has good form for leaking Intel CPU specs, nailing many of the clock speeds and core configurations of Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake HX CPU lineup back in 2022, for example. This time, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), OneRaichu has stated that “we will welcome an 8-core Ultra 3,” adding that this CPU looks set to be “much stronger than i3 14xxx.” The latter term refers to Intel’s current 14th-gen Core i3 CPUs.

When questioned about it, OneRaichu also suggested that the chip will contain four P-Cores and four E-Cores, but also added that this was “just my guess.” That seems likely to us, though. If it exists, this chip is certainly unlikely to contain eight P-Cores. Given that Intel’s Core i3 CPUs have no more than four cores, we’d guess that this new chip will contain four P-Cores and four E-Cores, but it could be a great budget gaming CPU if it has six P-Cores and two E-Cores.

Some later follow-up posts confirmed that the chip in question was a desktop Arrow Lake CPU, rather than a mobile chip, and that it’s likely to be “called the U3 205 or 215,” meaning Core Ultra 3 205 or Core Ultra 3 215.

Meanwhile, earlier rumors that there wouldn’t be a Core Ultra 3 CPU based on the Arrow Lake architecture have apparently been quashed. In a post on X another regular Intel tech leaker Jaykihn corrected an earlier claim that “there is no ARL-S Intel Core Ultra 3 sku lineup this generation,” saying that this post was now “retracted based on new information.”

The new Intel Arrow Lake lineup is expected to launch by the end of 2024, and while it remains to be seen whether it will be able to compete with the newly launched AMD Zen 5 range, it would be great to have a genuine budget desktop gaming CPU again – it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to properly recommend a Ryzen 3 or Core i3 CPU.