Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

[Ayhamb99]

My expectations were low for gaming but sheesh that regression is worse than what i expected, who knows if this is due to broken thread scheduling or whatever but honestly just yikes........ All I have to say is that the next year or so is going to be pretty rough for Intel. They better hope they get Bartlett lake correct if they actually go through with that, and that they actually finally consider to release a sku with stacked cache like AMD's X3D chips.

As for applications though, even though the gains over last gen and the competing AMD parts are not that high, I was still quite impressed with the Multi-threaded performance because of the lack of Hyperthreading for this gen, these E-cores look pretty darn strong if the Arrow lake parts are still able to keep up or be faster for MT performance despite having less threads.. While for gaming Arrow lake is a total flop, if someone is going to buy a new system for strictly applications then honestly Arrow Lake looks like an ok choice, if your stuff doesn't need AVX512...

I completely agree with @W1zzard in terms of this gen feeling very similar to AMD's Zen 1, radically new architecture and new tile based CPU design. While this generation so far looks painful for gaming, it lays a foundation for their future CPUs and perhaps in the future stuff will look much better than now. I guess they need another generation to optimise their new design like what AMD needed for Zen 2, Zen 3 had a massive uplift due to them optimising their chiplet design.

 

[csendesmark]

Because it doesn't have anything to do with AMD.

It should since, those conclusions are coming after a review comparing it with AMD processors too.

 

[RandallFlagg]

You are the one who brought up rendering and efficiency. Zen 2 was way ahead in both. 285K is only marginally ahead in rendering. Neither are good gaming chips.

10900K launched Spring 2020. Zen 2 about 9 months earlier. First impressions matter. Zen 2 was significantly discounted throughout most of its lifespan. Zen 2 was still more efficient than the 10900K.

Crying "bwaaah why aren't people consistent" doesn't make sense. ARL is 5% faster than the competition in MT at launch. The 3950X was at 90% faster than the competition in MT at launch. And in gaming neither were impressive.

You're too new to know that Zen 2 was repeatedly touted as being a great gaming chip back in 2019/2020.

In the face of objective facts - in gaming Zen 2 was demonstrably worse than Gen 9 Intel in 2019, and quickly fell even farther behind Gen 10 in 2020 - people simply said 'Some people do more than game' or 'Muh cinebench score'. Encoding and rendering were constantly brought up - areas where Zen 2 excelled due to 'Moar cores'.

That is what I was referring to when I said "Where'd all the people from the Zen 2 days who only cared about rendering/encoding speed and power efficiency go??"

You apparently were not around, so you have no idea what I was talking about.

 

[Wasteland]

I just found my new CPU.

Browsing ebay in another tab while reading this review?

j/k. Arrow Lake doesn't look that bad. Intel didn't exactly hype this thing; press releases prior to launch were downright humble. Still, the platform has notable teething issues--performance regressions and even crashing in 24H2, power management anomalies, APO disabled even after Intel assured reviewers it would be universally enabled by default. And to put it charitably, pricing looks mildly farcical given the alternatives available.

The architecture looks promising going forward, though. Intel seems to have killed off hyperthreading with scarcely a whimper.

If I were starting from scratch, I'd definitely choose Arrow Lake over Raptor--after the requisite six-month post-launch polishing phase, that is. Arrow's a harder sell relative to Zen 5--AMD wins on power efficiency, gaming and AVX-512, but Intel appears to win on motherboards (and idle power, FWIW). Either way, hardware enthusiasts don't have much reason to get excited. Bring on next-gen.

 

[mkppo]

The thing is, as usual, the X3D chips are only good for gaming. They're slower than the non X3D chips as well as the Intel competition in anything that isn't gaming, which happens to be what the vast majority of people in the world use CPUs for (not gaming). They're also more expensive.

X3D's lost all of 2-3% performance in productivity, at least that's what I saw with 7950X3D vs 7950x. But with the vanilla 9950x beng slightly faster than 285K in gaming and about equal in productivity, It's safe to assume that 9950X3D will be very slightly slower in MT and destroy the 285K in gaming.

I keep reading this line "X3D's are only good for gaming" which frankly isn't true. They can literally do it all, and i've seen and tested it first hand.

Edit: I just realised these tests were with 23H2. So erm..gaming looks even worse now for 285K

 

[MikeSnow]

Average FPS averages the FPS, so higher numbers have more weight. Relative performance normalizes each result to "100" for the tested product and then averages. Neither is "wrong". Can't normalize FPS or you lose the absolute value, not a fan of geomean for this chart because it doesn't solve the ordering problem and just makes things complicated for people to understand who barely know what "percent" means

Thanks for the answer, but to me something still doesn't feel right. I played a bit in Excel trying to replicate this comparing two CPUs, with some fake data. Doing the normalization before and after averaging produced the same results, regardless if I used the arithmetic mean or the geometric mean. The only way to produce inconsistent results was to mix the arithmetic mean with geometric mean in the calculations.

Spoiler

Later edit: After playing a bit more in Excel I understood what the problem is, it's not the normalization itself, but having a different reference value for each game.

Using the geometric mean for both charts should make the numbers consistent, but yeah, I'm not sure if it would be better.

 

[JohH]

You're too new to know that Zen 2 was repeatedly touted as being a great gaming chip back in 2019/2020.

In the face of objective facts - in gaming Zen 2 was demonstrably worse than Gen 9 Intel in 2019, and quickly fell even farther behind Gen 10 in 2020 - people simply said 'Some people do more than game' or 'Muh cinebench score'. Encoding and rendering were constantly brought up - areas where Zen 2 excelled due to 'Moar cores'.

That is what I was referring to when I said "Where'd all the people from the Zen 2 days who only cared about rendering/encoding speed and power efficiency go??"

You apparently were not around, so you have no idea what I was talking about.

The 3600 was a value gaming chip. At low power. With an included cooler. For most of its recommendation it was <=$150 and could work in cheap AM4 boards like B350. The same reason people recommend the 12100F/12400F today.

It is fun to complain about Zen 2 but look at this chart from today's review if you still don't understand why it was a recommended part:

https://tpucdn.com/review/intel-core-ultra-5-245k/images/cost-per-frame-1280x720.png

Arrow Lake isn't compelling in MT, ST, gaming or value. At least Zen 2 had value and MT.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Not the best for gaming, but for those that actually do other stuff, it's pretty good. Power use is not too bad either. Will be interesting to see these tweaked. So imo not the dead loss that some seem to think, that is reserved for AMD 9xxx

 

[JohH]

AMD's Zen 1, radically new architecture and new tile based CPU design

Zen 1 Summit Ridge, for desktop, was monolithic but with a mainly new core that had little in common with its predecessors.

Arrow Lake is not monolithic but Lion Cove is a very clear descendant of Golden Cove. This isn't the 'reset'. This is the teething pain of getting off Intel Foundry. The next core better be an actual reset. Cove family has too much baggage.

 

[RandallFlagg]

The 3600 was a value gaming chip. At low power. With an included cooler. For most of its recommendation it was <=$150 and could work in cheap AM4 boards like B350. The same reason people recommend the 12100F/12400F today.

It is fun to complain about Zen 2 but look at this chart from today's review if you still don't understand why it was a recommended part:

https://tpucdn.com/review/intel-core-ultra-5-245k/images/cost-per-frame-1280x720.png

Arrow Lake isn't compelling in MT, ST, gaming or value. At least Zen 2 had value and MT.

What year is that chart from? It shows the 12100 being the best deal.

Or do you not know that prices change? You could get a 10400 for the same as a 3600X back then. Why don't you go look that up from 2020?

Like I said, Zen 2 as a "gaming chip" is an interesting study in the power of propaganda and how people will fight against the cognitive dissonance they experience. You are yet another example.

 

[JohH]

What year is that chart from? It shows the 12100 being the best deal.

Or do you not know that prices change? You could get a 10400 for the same as a 3600X back then. Why don't you go look that up from 2020?

Like I said, Zen 2 as a "gaming chip" is an interesting study in the power of propaganda and how people will fight against the cognitive dissonance they experience. You are yet another example.

That chart is from today. It is still a "top 3" value gaming chip 5 years later. There is no propaganda unless you want to complain to Wiz.

I wonder why you complain about dissonance while not realizing a 90% increase in MT for 10% decrease in gaming performance is a trade some people will make while not realizing people won't trade a similar 10% gaming decrease in gaming performance for a 5% increase in MT. It's a totally different scenario. If ARL was putting up 70K in Cinebench 23 maybe you'd have a point, it would be the modern 3950X. But it's not even close.

 

[theouto]

To quote Max Verstappen after he took sprint pole in Miami 2024: "Lol"

 

[Ruru]

If power consumption is the key point, I think its still way too high given Intel is using a more advanced node, removed SMT, and made some big claims about efficiency.
When the previous gen was cranked past the limit, the efficiency on this gen doesn't seem very impressive. Gamers Nexus also reported of the 285K having instability, and some bad frametiming. Somehow Intel managed to screw up this launch and my point is Intel isn't getting the same treatment that AMD did for a buggy launch.
Theres also other problems that really makes the whole platform seem disappointing, like the socket bending still isn't fixed unless you go for a more expensive motherboard, Z890 might not get a Arrow Lake refresh either, and Intel claimed their cpu's were "on par" with the previous gen and Ryzen but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

To be honest, I don't mind that if Intel has some troublesome time for once. Though I hope that AMD doesn't abuse this with too high pricing, instead they should lower their prices a little to gain more users.

 

[Steevo]

Soooo.... the new P4 Nutburst. I wonder how much Intel is going to pay companies and shills to promote this.

I hope it's short lived and they get back on their feet before little AMD takes all their marketshare

 

[damric]

Is Raja working in the CPU design now?

 

[JohH]

Soooo.... the new P4 Nutburst. I wonder how much Intel is going to pay companies and shills to promote this.

It has no analogy to previous cores. Willamette was usually faster, if not by much, but power went out of control.
Conroe was much faster and got power under control again.
Arrow Lake is sometimes faster but putting power under control.

 

[dgianstefani]

X3D's lost all of 2-3% performance in productivity, at least that's what I saw with 7950X3D vs 7950x. But with the vanilla 9950x beng slightly faster than 285K in gaming and about equal in productivity, It's safe to assume that 9950X3D will be very slightly slower in MT and destroy the 285K in gaming.

I keep reading this line "X3D's are only good for gaming" which frankly isn't true. They can literally do it all, and i've seen and tested it first hand.

Edit: I just realised these tests were with 23H2. So erm..gaming looks even worse now for 285K

Let me put it this way with some examples. But first, a disclaimer, most gamers run entry level or mid range hardware. Even $400 just on CPU is a lot, reality is the majority of people run i5/r5 class because they're cheap CPUs that are good enough, and they're not pairing with a $1600 GPU, where the faster CPUs can stretch their legs. So for most of these people who are looking to build a new PC, dropping ~$500 on X3D isn't an option. The AM4 upgrade to 5700X3D is a great option though, but this is assuming you already have the AM4 platform. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing a new build on that dated platform, too many compromises besides the one perk, gaming performance.

Example #1, you have $300 to spend on CPU

You can, A) buy a 245K for $310, and get 80% applications performance and 94% gaming performance (relative to 285K).

Or B) buy a 5700X3D if it sells in your country, for $200, pair it with a last generation platform with all of those downsides, and get 52% applications performance and 90% gaming performance.
If you can't find a 5700X3D, you'll have to go with 5800X3D at around $250, this is 56% applications performance and 94% gaming. These percentages relative to 285K.

Example #2
You have $400 to spend on CPU.

You can, A) buy a 265K for $395, or stretch the budget for some reason to a 9900X @$430 and get 94% and 93% in productivity respectively.
In gaming with those options you'd get 97% and 100% performance. These percentages relative to 285K, tested with a 4090.

Or B) buy a 7800X3D, which costs $470, so good luck with that $400 budget, for 70% in productivity and 112% in gaming.

For 20% more money you're getting 25% lower productivity performance, and 12% faster gaming performance, assuming you own a 4090.

Example #3 Now lets do 7950X3D, here it's a little less obvious, but again, this CPU price range is approx 4% of the market going by steam HW survey, 50% are 6/8 core CPUs, and even quad cores are still 4x the marketshare of 16 core CPUs.

A) 285K for $585 - 100% relative applications performance/gaming performance
B) 7950X3D for $600 - 96% applications performance, 106% gaming performance - slightly slower in applications, slightly faster in gaming (assuming you have no scheduling issues and are willing to tolerate Xbox game bar and a 3DVCache scheduling driver), for more money, on an older platform, with worse IO, and no chance of running super fast memory without switching gears, unlike ARL.
C) 9950X for $650 - 103% applications, 102% gaming.

So yeah, the X3D chips only make sense for gaming. If you don't game, there's pretty much no point paying the premium for them, because they're slower than alternatives. Every other CPU from both Intel and AMD are reasonably balanced, they can game, they can do some productivity work, and they aren't too expensive.

 

[Ayhamb99]

Zen 1 Summit Ridge, for desktop, was monolithic but with a mainly new core that had little in common with its predecessors.

Arrow Lake is not monolithic but Lion Cove is a very clear descendant of Golden Cove. This isn't the 'reset'. This is the teething pain of getting off Intel Foundry. The next core better be an actual reset. Cove family has too much baggage.

Yea I know, Zen 2 was AMD's first attempt at a tile based chiplet design. I just didn't think it would make sense to refer Arrow Lake as both Intel's version of Zen 1 and Zen 2 at the same time lol.

 

[JohH]

Yea I know, Zen 2 was AMD's first attempt at a tile based chiplet design. I just didn't think it would make sense to refer Arrow Lake as both Intel's version of Zen 1 and Zen 2 at the same time lol.

How is it like Zen 1 though?

 

[FreezingPC]

You could get a 10400 for the same as a 3600X back then.

Match of the 2020, the ryzen 5 that everyone ignores for obvious reasons VS the 2666MHz limited i5...
Tks for the B560 INTEL.

 

[RaceT3ch]

I'm glad Intel worked on power efficiency.
Considering the crazy amount of power they needed to use before, this is a step in the right direction.

 

[GhostRyder]

Overall this clearly is going to need some time to age and get updates to make it better. It may also not stretch its legs till the next generation. That being said, it seems alot of the reason these chips are not near as good is because of the clocks being dropped back so much to make the power consumption down. I mean lets face it, 13th and 14th generation ran way to hot and required ridiculous cooling if you wanted them to perform to their limit.

The part of this I am interested in on these is the updated overclocking that allows much more fine tuning per core including power across different cores. I would not mind messing with one to see how far we can push the best cores boost up to (Best of the P cores I mean)!

 

[EatingDirt]

Most people do not care about gaming. Gaming is not the point of computing. This is like saying axel grease isn't as good for jerking off as lube. It's technically correct, but one is an important activity and the other is just jacking off.

Most people need the most basic of CPU's, which are none of the CPU's reviewed today. These Arrow Lake CPU's are good for very specific tasks, as shown by the overall productivity score being lower than the 9950X.

Oh dear, it's not a gaming chip is it.

At least 24 cores at ~235W is faster in raw encode/render/synthetic tests than 16 cores of the 9950X at ~220W, though that really shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone.

Maybe now AMD will stop limiting consumer CPUs to 16 cores, since they're finally losing the core count race again!

Maybe they will, but most people in the consumer space don't need all the cores. We MIGHT see a Zen6 with some 6c cores, but I don't think we'll see more than 16 cores until AM6.

Unimpressive, but I agree with W1zz on this one - this is Zen 1 all over again. A fully new architecture has a first iteration that’s not really fully great yet. I say let Intel cook now and see where they are 2 gens after at this point. I understand that having a double whammy of Zen 5 and now ArL being “disappointing” might be rather annoying to people who want to upgrade often, but it is what it is and, on the positive side, platform costs will go down in time. It’s whatever.

Zen 2 wasn't all that impressive from Zen 1. Zen 3 & 4 were the large leaps, and if intel follows typical cadence, the current platform that these CPU's are on will be gone after next gen(2 CPU gens per socket). There will be no 5800X3D-like to make investment in the platform worth it, because that will come in an entirely new platform.

So here we have the second beta CPU launch of 2024. I wonder if all the scheduling changes that Intel got into Windows 11 have come to bite them, now that they don't have HT anymore. But they have at least mostly solved the energy inefficiency problem, which really was their Achilles heel; seems that Skylake has finally, mercifully been laid to rest.

As for platform connectivity they have AMD beat hands down; dual Thunderbolt 4 40Gbps links without having to sacrifice any PCIe lanes is fantastic, although lack of built-in WiFi 7 is disappointing. Sure, Zen 4/5 has 4 more PCIe 5.0 lanes but I think we can all agree that nobody gives a fuck about PCIe 5.0 (and with AMD's 800-series chipsets you lose those extra lanes to USB4 anyway). Will be interesting to see how Z890 boards will be kitted out - hopefully some dual x16 slot models will make an appearance.

I see PCIe 5.0 vs Thunderbolt as patatoes/potaytoes. PCIe 5.0 can be useful in some workloads, Thunderbolt can be useful some workloads. I personally don't really care about either, but they both have their place.

 

[harm9963]

5950X rocks on at 4K , with 4090 , thanks for showing this , some outlets only 1080p .

 

[JohH]

2 CPU gens per socket

We might only get Arrow Lake Refresh for LGA1851. Because Intel was planning for Meteor Lake S (which was cancelled) to be the first chip generation for this socket and Arrow Lake was to be the second.