This week Intel announced “200S Boost” for Core Ultra “Arrow Lake” K-Series desktop processors as effectively a new overclocking profile rolling out to existing Z890 motherboards via a BIOS update. Enabling the 200S Boost profile is said to help with low-latency workloads like gaming by allowing higher fabric / die-to-die / memory frequencies. While some Windows benchmarks have begun emerging for the Intel 200S Boost mode and some limited gains, I was curious about the performance under Linux so here are some 200S Boost benchmarks with the Core Ultra 9 285K on Ubuntu 25.04.
The Intel 200S Boost mode is basically an overclocking profile that doesn’t void the CPU warranty for the Arrow Lake processors. The 200S Boost profile has begun rolling out to Intel Z890 based motherboards. Besides needing a new BIOS on Z890 motherboards, the overclocking profile also requires XMP-compatible DDR5 DIMMs. The 200S Boost mode is also limited to only the K-Series Arrow Lake processors.
The Intel 200S Boost settings allow for higher fabric (tile/NGU), die-to-die (D2D), and memory frequencies than the stock BIOS settings otherwise. Again, engaging the Intel 200S Boost mode will not void your Intel CPU warranty. Intel has promoted the 200S Boost feature as delivering around 7% higher gaming performance.
I ran benchmarks of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K with the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO using the new 1801 BIOS release. Benchmarks were done with the BIOS at its defaults besides having XMP 1 memory profile enabled. The same Linux tests were repeated after then enabling the 200S Boost overclocking profile from the ASUS BIOS. No other changes were made during the testing process.
From there various gaming benchmarks and other workloads tested to see the impact of enabling the Intel 200S Boost mode for Linux use. The CPU power consumption was also monitored for reference purposes.
