Earlier this month Intel officially announced their next generation of desktop processors. They were formally known as Arrow Lake and now have their new CPU naming as their Core Ultra 200 Series of CPUs. These are the successors to the 14th-generation Core CPUs and the new naming is going to be a little confusing to some as it is not only the addition of Ultra in the naming but the CPU numbers themselves which have followed the same format for 14 generations are changing as well. This includes dropping the number of numbers in the CPU name down to three from 5. The two CPUs that they sent over for testing at launch are the Core Ultra 9 285K and the Core Ultra 5 245K. This generation's focus according to Intel is to reset their performance per watt trajectory. They have a new memory controller, new P and E core microarchitectures, larger P-core L2 cache, and more. So let’s dive in and see how the new CPUs perform!
Product Name: Intel Core Ultra 200S
Review Samples Provided by: Intel
Written by: Wes Compton
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Intel Core Ultra 200S
All of the information on the new CPUs came out back on the 10th, so a majority of you already know all about the new Core Ultra 200 Series of CPUs. But for those of you who don’t, I did want to touch on a few things and also talk about the Core Ultra 9 285K and Core Ultra 5 245K that I will be testing today. With the Arrow Lake architecture, intel’s program goals were to improve their performance per watt and to also improve the overall user experience which as they have listed in their slide below part of that is dropping package temperatures when gaming so both of those tie in together.
Arrow Lake consists of Intel’s Skymont e-cores and Lion Core P-Cores. In their breakdown, they touch on the new e-cores having twice the L2 cache bandwidth and having a 32% IPC uplift over the last generation. The new P-Cores don’t have as significant of an uplift but still see 9%.
While I am only testing two, Intel is launching five CPUs in total. There is the Ultra 9 285K at the top with 24 cores (8 performance and 16 e-cores) and a max clock speed of 5.7GHz, it has a suggested retail price of $589. The next step down is the Ultra 7 265K with 20 cores (8 performance and 12 e-cores) and a max clock speed of 5.5 GHz for $394. Below that they have the same CPU but in the KF model meaning it doesn’t have onboard video for $379. Then we have the Ultra 5 245K with 14 cores (6 p-core and 8e-cores) with a max clock speed of 5.2 GHz for $309. Then last up is a second 245 but the KF model again without the iGPU for $294. It’s interesting to see how the 265K and 285K both have the same number of p-cores but just have the slight clock speed change and the four additional e-cores. Another big note that some might not notice is that hyper-threading is no longer there. The total thread count on all of these matches the core count. Beyond core count and clock speed, they did ramp up the L2 and Smart cache depending on the number of cores. The max turbo wattage changes depending on the CPU as well with the 285K and 265K having 250 watts and the 245K lower at 159 watts. For the models with Xe Cores for the iGPU, they all have the same 4 cores available but the 245K does have a barely lower clock speed at 1.9 GHz vs 2 GHz on the other two.
Of course, I also wanted to show off Intel’s press kit as they have clearly put a lot of time into it. The two CPUs came in a large box decked out with Intel branding. Along with the two CPUs they also included an acrylic brick with an information card showing off details on the new CPUs.
With a new socket, the new CPUs have a new pinout and different notches to prevent it from being put in the wrong motherboard but they are the same dimensions. Below I have a comparison between the two.
For testing, Corsair sent over one of their new 6400MT/s Pro Series kits. I love how simple and clean the heat spreaders on these look. They are blacked out other than the Crucial logo on one side and on the back side they say Crucial DDR5 Pro and have a small sticker with the required certification logos, model information, and serial numbers on them.
