Recently, Intel announced the 2026 Core, the Arrow Lake Refresh. These are Core Ultra 200 Plus, and this little Plus brings some technical optimizations. They have four more E (low consumption) cores than their predecessors but also a somewhat particular software modification, the BOT (Binary Optimization Tool). It’s a technology that makes it possible to improve the performance of applications in an original way: the Intel program (optional) literally rewrites the executables of the apps. Instead of optimizing on the developer side, it optimizes on the client side. And it’s a huge problem in benchmarks.
Intel limits its tool to the new Core 200 Plus processors and a few Core 300 CPUs for laptops (Panther Lake), which is already a problem in absolute terms: the old models, technically identical, are not compatible and therefore lose any potential gains. But the main flaw comes from the list of supported software: we find Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy XIV or… Geekbench. Apart from the fact that some of the games are precisely those used for comparisons (what a coincidence), seeing a benchmark is unexpected.
Geekbench developers reacted…
