Intel’s long-awaited entry-level Arrow Lake-S chip, the Core Ultra 3 205, has just made a surprise appearance on French retailer PC21’s website, hinting that an official launch could be just around the corner. Priced at €129 before VAT (around $149 USD) and €155 with VAT, this new model targets budget desktop builders-but not without some controversy.
Featuring a 4+4 core configuration (four Performance cores and four Efficient cores) and a 3.8 GHz base clock on the Performance cores, the Ultra 3 205 drops hyperthreading entirely-part of Intel’s broader Arrow Lake strategy. 
It also offers 15 MB of L3 cache, slotting it between the Core Ultra 5 225 and the last-gen Core i3-14100 in terms of cache size.
On paper, this CPU is positioned as Intel’s most affordable Arrow Lake desktop chip, aimed at entry-level mainstream PCs. However, the price might raise eyebrows. At $149 USD (pre-tax), it’s slightly higher than its predecessor, and AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series still delivers 6-core/12-thread chips for less. While the Ultra 3 205 may edge out older Ryzen CPUs in certain workloads, the performance gap is unlikely to be dramatic.
The bigger question is whether the combination of new motherboards, higher chipset costs, and modest specs will make sense for budget buyers. If Intel wants this chip to make an impact, it will need to balance performance, price, and platform costs carefully-especially in a fiercely competitive low-end CPU market.