Intel Arrow Lake Sales Off To A Slow Start At Germany's Largest Retailer

In what might comes as a surprise to some and not to others, early demand for Intel's fresh-out-of-the-oven Core Ultra 200S processors appears virtually non-existent at Mindfactory, the largest online PC parts retailer in Germany. Preliminary sales data indicates that Mindfactory has not yet sold even just a single Arrow Lake processor, which if true, it raises the question of why the initial reception is so ice cold.

We'll get to that, but first let's look at the data. In a post shared to X/Twitter by user TechEpiphany (@TechEpiphanyYT), we see AMD's Ryzen processors (mostly past and some present) dominating the sales chart. Here's a look...

This is purportedly the first set of sales numbers since Arrow Lake launched to retail a week ago. If the numbers are accurate, then Arrow Lake didn't move the needle at this particular retailer. The data also shows that AMD is vastly outselling Intel, both in the number of units sold (730 versus 40) and in how much revenue is being generated, with a 92.64% to 7.36% split in AMD's favor.

One thing to keep in mind is that even though Mindfactory is a major retailer in Germany, it's a single retail snapshot of a much larger global market. That's to say, we have to be careful not to extrapolate too much from these numbers, especially since Arrow Lake chips have only been available to purchase for a matter of days.

In the grand scheme of things, Arrow Lake will be just fine. Intel's latest processors are already being offered in systems by the company's bulk OEM partners like Dell and HP, as well as boutique system builders like Maingear and others.

How Arrow Lake is ultimately received in the DIY segment remains to be seen. You can check out our Core Ultra 9 285K and Ultra 5 245K review for lots of benchmarks and analysis, but the Cliff Notes version is that Arrow Lake in its current form is not going to blow gamers away. It's better suited for creator workloads where, more often than not in our evaluation, Arrow Lake came out ahead of Ryzen.

The other thing that's interesting is Intel's decision to not yet counter AMD's 3D V-Cache strategy. There's a lot of excitement in anticipation of AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 9700X3D, and if we look at the list of best-selling CPUs on Amazon, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D ranks number one (currently priced at $476.99), followed by the Ryzen 7 5700X3D (priced at $199) in second place.

We'll see if, in time, Intel decides to similarly pile on the cache for a gaming boost, or if it remains content focus its efforts elsewhere.