Overall and Final Verdict
With all of our testing done (other than iGPU testing which is still coming) we can step back and get a better look at the overall picture with both of Intel’s new Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs. Sadly I don’t have the Ryzen 9900X and 9950X to see how the Ultra 8 285K compares there. But looking at how the 285K compares with last generation’s Core i9-14900K tells us a lot. In a lot of our tests, it shows a significant improvement over the last generation, especially in some of our real-world tests. Intel said their goal was to improve thermals and power efficiency while getting similar gaming performance as the last generation. They did accomplish most of that. Both the 285K and the 245K pulled less power and with that ran cooler than their 14th Gen Core counterparts. But the other half of the story is just how hit-and-miss performance is, especially when it comes to gaming. In some games, I saw 10%-25% performance improvements, but in other games, both CPUs performed worse than their last-gen counterpart. It is very clear that we are seeing performance issues and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see significant improvements over the life of these CPUs as we get driver/windows/BIOS updates. It rarely feels like Intel has pushed out CPUs before they were ready, but that seems to be the case this time around. We could speculate that might be in response to the issues with their 13th and 14th gen CPUs even though they have released BIOS updates to help prevent those issues.
How did the Ultra 9 285K come out on pricing? Well, it has the same launch MSRP as the i9-14900K did with a suggested price of $589. The Ultra 5 245K on the other hand comes in $10 cheaper than the 14600K with a suggested price of $309. I’m happy to see the price come down slightly there. Especially with the Ryzen 9700X being about $20 more, when it comes to non-gaming performance the Ultra 5 245K outperformed the 9700X in a majority of our tests making it a good option for those situations. Of course for gaming, the inconsistency is an issue and I hope we see that improve as the platform matures.
Live Pricing: HERE
Live Pricing: HERE
