Arrow Lake might have some fuel left in the tank, as Intel's latest IPO (Intel Performance Optimizations) tech is reportedly hitting pre-builts in China, per UNIKO's Hardware at X.
Intel recently unveiled the IPO program in China. It is supposedly a suite of tuned settings or profiles that balance overclocking and stock settings. It is important to note that Intel has not detailed or announced an IPO for the global market. In addition, for the time being, it appears these profiles are aimed at system integrators and OEMs, not individual customers.
Enthusiast and gamers can use many techniques to get the most out of their CPU. This includes manual CPU overclocking when you exceed your CPU's rated specifications, followed by XMP/EXPO for RAM. AMD offers a PBO that auto-tunes your CPU to extract maximum performance with minimal manual intervention. The catch is that all these utilities can technically void your warranty if things go south.
IPO is designed to serve as a middle ground between stock profiles and overclocking, with proper warranty coverage. These profiles promise a stable experience, eliminating the need for constant adjustments and the fear of crashing as seen with manual overclocking. IPO targets the CPU (P-cores, E-cores, Ring-bus, NGU, D2D interconnects, PL1 and PL2) and the RAM (Transfer speeds and timings).
intel ipo (intel performance optimization) pc is now available on the china market with specific sellers like 攀升.ipo means overclocking cpu+dram, from frequencies and timings to power limits.ipo warranty is said to be provided by the seller, stability is covered.btw, even… pic.twitter.com/DXSXlFPszQApril 10, 2025
In an example profile shared by UNIKO's Hardware, a pre-built from Maxsun with IPO lands a sweet 200 MHz uplift in core clock speeds while pushing RAM speeds to DDR5-8400 from DDR5-8000, resulting in a purported 10% FPS increase (on the pre-built's marketing material).
That's not all. Another leaker claims that Intel will offer "opt-in" BIOS presets to its Arrow Lake chips in the future, a premise similar to IPO. Maybe IPO serves as a pilot program for this feature. The exact specifics have not been detailed. This might make Arrow Lake a compelling choice against Ryzen offerings, particularly for system integrators.
Despite the substantial buildup to Arrow Lake, performance on launch day was subpar, with these chips failing to beat even their last-generation counterparts in some scenarios. Arrow Lake's MCM (Multi Chip Module) design eats away a chunk of the performance, with the memory controller designated to a separate tile, incurring unwanted latency penalties. Another aspect was the slower ring-bus clock speeds, almost 20% slower than Raptor Lake.
Additional firmware/software-related issues pushed Intel to release several fixes by December. The final update, microcode version 0x114 and CSME firmware kit 19.0.0.1854v2.2, launched in January, but our testing proved contrary to Intel's claimed performance improvements. IPO is Intel's latest attempt to wring every last bit of performance from Arrow Lake, but we are still light on details regarding availability.
