>I really do hope that the power consumption of these is much improved
It helps to understand the circumstances. Intel was stuck with using its 10nm ESF process node for ADL/RPL, because that's what its fabs could only produce, whereas Ryzen 7000 can avail of TSMC's 5nm (Ryzen 5000 uses TSMC 7nm). The only way to offset the node disadvantage is to use more power.
In fact, it was shocking how superior ADL was to Ryz 5000 despite its inferior node, thanks to its hybrid P/E arch. This was above and beyond the higher power level.
Arrow Lake will be on Intel 20A (2nm). By that alone, ARL will be more efficient.
>And in case some people emerge to blather about Raptor Lake, yes, I know that efficiency can be drastically improved by tweaking clock/voltage settings and yada yada, etc, but my interest in faffing about with such settings has evaporated in recent years
Just go into settings and use the Intel Default Settings if it's not already the default. You can use either the Baseline (for efficiency) or Performance. For the top SKU, there's also the Extreme profile. All motherboards should have these by now.
But even before that, it's no harder to change PL1/PL2 to Intel's default, than it is to enable XMP mode. There's no need to get into the weeds. One of the defining characteristics of DIY is the ability to configure your system's CMOS settings.
>I don't want to see yet more outrageous power consumption bars in the reviews.
Yes, that's one of several goofy benchmark practices I don't agree with, using the unlimited power profile that most motherboards have as default, for "benchmarking wins." The rationale was that HW sites want to reflect real-world use, as most people would just use whatever default power profile. But that "real-world" rationale doesn't hold water when sites then use 4090 to mitigate GPU bottlenecks.
The RPL instability problem would be a blessing in disguise, if it can make this idiotic practice of "unlimited power profile" benchmarking to go away.
>Integrated GPU means what? Graphics? NPU? Both? Neither? What?
ARL will be getting Alchemist (Xe) cores. Desktop SKUs get 64 Xe (4 cores), half of what mobile parts get. The lowest SKU (225) gets 32 Xe or 2 cores. As with Ryzen 9K, no NPU for ARL for this generation.