Performance and Testing: Games
Far Cry 6
In our first gaming test, Far Cry 6 things start poorly for Core Ultra 200S. The new CPUs are beaten by 14th Gen Raptor Lake and regular AMD Zen 5 CPUs and absolutely crushed by Ryzen 7 3D.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Thankfully in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora we see signs of improvement for Intel as Core Ultra 200S is in a straight fight with 14th Gen Raptor Lake. We see a small win for Core Ultra 200S in the 1% lows which is likely thanks to the fast DDR5 memory. Nonetheless, AMD takes the top spot with Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
Assassin's Creed: MIrage
There is a change in fortunes for Core Ultra 200S in Assassin's Creed: MIrage as the new CPUs slump behind Raptor Lake such that Core Ultra 9 285K only narrowly beats Core i5-14600K. Up at the top of the chart we see the AMD Zen 5 and Zen 4 Ryzen 7 3D chips.
Cyberpunk 2077
Our chart for Cyberpunk 2077 shows the most grunty AMD CPUs leading the way, however Core Ultra 200S does a decent job with Core Ultra 9 285K effectively in a dead heat with Ryzen 9 9950X. It is interesting to see 14th Gen Raptor Lake falling a distance behind in this game.
Total War Pharaoh
Total War Pharaoh sums up the problems faced by Intel. The king of this particular heap is AMD and then we see 14th Gen Raptor Lake beating Core Ultra 200S. The gap between Ultra 9/Core i9, Ultra 7/Core i7, and Ultra 5/Core i5 is around 10fps which is not huge but also is not what we expect. In any sane and normal world the new CPUs should be better than the older CPUs.