(Image credit: Shutterstock / monticello)

This year saw some pretty big changes for Intel, some of them being positive, and others, well, not so much. Overall, though, it was clearly a better year for Team Blue than the rocky 2024 Intel experienced, which culminated in the resignation of chief executive Pat Gelsinger – and the eventual appointment of a new CEO this year, Lip-Bu Tan, who took the top job in March 2025.

Tan's time at the helm has already been marked by some distinct turnarounds and progress, albeit there has been pain elsewhere, particularly on the job loss front. Let's dig into the ups and downs for Intel in 2025.

Another Arc Battlemage desktop GPU turned up – and XeSS 3, too

As the year kicked off, in the world of discrete GPUs, Intel followed the successful Arc B580 – which arrived late in 2024 – with a second Battlemage offering, the B570. It pitched up in January 2025, and we liked this graphics card, but not as much as its beefier sibling. As we observed at the time, the savings to be made on the B570 just aren't worth the drop in performance compared to the B580, and that remains true based on their relative pricing as this year comes to a close.

Still, both are good GPUs – particularly the B580, priced at under $250 in the US – and they were bolstered by the announcement of XeSS 3 in October. This represented a new take on frame rate boosting from Intel, complete with Multi-Frame Generation (similar to Nvidia's tech) that notably supports older Arc GPUs. While XeSS 3 still hasn't debuted yet, it's imminent, and the other good news is that it'll be compatible with all current XeSS 2 games.

Not a lot else happened with Arc on the desktop, though, and sadly that theoretical Arc B770 discrete GPU – the higher-end offering which was much-rumored throughout the year – never showed up. However, even as this year rolled to a close, there were still hints dropped that the B770 remains inbound, but add plenty of seasoning to that assertion.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Intel's laptop chips went from strength to strength

Following a limited launch late in 2024, Intel's Lunar Lake laptops truly arrived in numbers as we headed into the second quarter of 2025, and these excellent (and supremely efficient) chips proved to be a big win for Team Blue.

On top of that, we witnessed Arrow Lake mobile processors being revealed at CES 2025 to offer a higher-tier of more powerful laptop CPUs for enthusiasts.

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Intel built up more excitement later in the year with the revelation of Panther Lake, the mobile range to take the baton from Lunar Lake – and it's set to do an even better job, by all accounts. We were very impressed by our early glimpse of these processors in October, and a particular strong suit for Panther Lake is its Xe3 (next-gen Celestial) integrated graphics, offering what Intel claims to be a 50% performance boost on the already impressive Battlemage (Xe2).

Panther Lake is now imminent (with an official launch at CES 2026) and looking extremely strong in terms of providing gaming chops to thin-and-light laptops, particularly when combined with the aforementioned XeSS 3 frame generation as a further speed boost (for supported games).

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's desktop CPUs continued to come under fire – but there were signs of a turnaround

Last year was a disastrous one on the desktop CPU front for Intel, as some buyers of 13th-gen (Raptor Lake) and 14th-gen (Raptor Lake Refresh) chips suffered serious stability problems with them. On top of that, the successor to Raptor Lake Refresh, Arrow Lake, also stumbled on launch with disappointing performance levels (particularly with gaming).

While Arrow Lake didn't recover its reputation with gamers in 2025 – and performance question marks remain on that front – these processors did gain favor in terms of their performance in professional and creative workloads (with some meaningful honing reported), and indeed for everyday use.

Not everyone is a gamer, of course, and late in the year, we witnessed Arrow Lake processors become a compelling purchase towards the budget end of the desktop CPU spectrum. Products like Intel's Core Ultra 5 245K looked very good value compared to rival AMD Ryzen processors as 2025 rolled to a close, and Team Blue is now delivering peppy levels of multi-core performance for not a lot of money (not much more than $200 in the US).

This represents a distinct turnaround – and perhaps even the start of a bigger turning point next year for Intel. Especially as people buying or building PCs may be looking to save money on other components like the CPU, as RAM and storage prices continue to be hiked in a ridiculous fashion.

Intel also announced an Arrow Lake Refresh (for 2026) late in the year, but there wasn't much to shout about here, as the next-gen range is looking like a minor performance bump. Nova Lake CPUs will be the true next generation for desktop chips (as Panther Lake is for laptops only, like Lunar Lake).

(Image credit: mashdigi)

Big job cuts and big deals

As mentioned at the outset, there was a change of leadership for Intel as Lip-Bu Tan took the reins in March 2025.

Part of Tan's business strategy involved serious cost-cutting by enacting a series of major job losses, which included some 22,000 job cuts in April and 5,000 more in July. The stated goal was a 15% overall reduction in Intel staff, and "streamlining the number of management layers by about 50%" as part of a drive to "eliminate bureaucracy".

On top of that painful bedrock of streamlining came a bunch of deals that Tan cut. That included multi-billion dollar funding from the US government (in exchange for Intel stock), a deal with Softbank to the tune of $2 billion, as well as putting out feelers in terms of AI acquisitions to make some effort to catch up on that front. Intel has even reportedly been (and perhaps still is) talking to AMD about a plan to manufacture Ryzen chips for its big CPU rival (believe it or not – albeit not higher-end silicon).

However, Intel's most eye-opening deal for 2025 was with another major rival, Nvidia, whereby the latter pushed a huge $5 billion investment in Team Blue's direction. The partnership means that Intel will be manufacturing custom x86 CPUs for Nvidia's data center (AI) efforts, alongside consumer chips, too. The latter will be Intel SoCs with integrated Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets – although that does throw some question marks over how this will pan out in terms of Intel's own Arc integrated GPU efforts, of course.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Intel: in conclusion

There was a definite feeling of Intel regrouping this year, albeit at quite a cost in terms of major job losses. Clearly the new CEO has a vision, though, and those huge deals that were cut with Nvidia and the US government (and others besides) were critical to Intel's viability going forward.

Lunar Lake laptops proved popular this year, and rightly so, with Intel's revelation of Panther Lake promising even more along the same lines: powerful mobile processors that are seriously power-efficient, too.

The Celestial integrated graphics that Panther Lake packs are a particularly exciting development, given the potential of ushering in more wallet-friendly thin-and-light laptops that are capable of doing PC games justice. That said, there's something of a muddying of the GPU waters with that massive chip deal struck with Nvidia, where RTX chiplets provide the integrated graphics, not Intel's Arc range. (And the lack of any further Battlemage discrete releases since the Arc B570 casts doubt on Team Blue's desktop GPU ambitions, as well.)

However, with something of a resurgence in desktop processors, too – as Intel started to carve out territory for Arrow Lake in the more budget-friendly CPU space – it's clear that on balance, 2025 was a much better year for Intel compared to 2024. That said, there's plenty of work still to be done in terms of a fuller recovery here.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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