1. It's review time for Intel Core Ultra 200S2. Performance and Testing: CPU Tests3. Performance and Testing: Games4. Closing Thoughts5. View All Pages

Intel's false start with Core Ultra 200S Arrow Lake has given AMD time to launch the Ryzen 7 9800X3D which has proven to be utterly dominant in the gaming market. The snag here is that while Intel has fixed a number of problems, mainly with Windows 11 24H2, the news about their relative weakness compared to AMD does not yet seem to have sunk in with the financial people. The result is that prices have remained high in the face of tragic sales and that hurts the prospects of the three CPUs that we have on review.

You can make the argument that Core Ultra 9 285K is a decent all-round CPU but once you factor in the cost of a Z890 motherboard and the latest CU-DIMMs the appeal pretty much evaporates.

Thankfully the Core Ultra 7 265K delivers most of the benefits of Core Ultra 9 at two thirds the price, and that means we can just about recommend this CPU. We know full well that some people will only ever buy Intel and won't touch AMD and to that select group we say ‘Core Ultra 7 265K is for you.'

Finally we have the Core Ultra 5 245K which is a junior processor that fails to deliver the budget performance we have come to expect from Core i5 in recent years. Gaming, in particular, was a real disappointment on the Core Ultra 5.

Core Ultra 9 285K

Pros:

• Multi-core performance matches Ryzen 9 9950X
• Single core performance is decent
• Power draw is slightly improved from 14th Gen

Cons:

• The price is far too steep
• Gaming performance is hit and miss
• Memory performance exhibits high latency

 

Core Ultra 7 265K

Pros:

• Decent all-round performance that sticks closely to Ultra 9 285K
• Very pleasant gaming experience
• The price of the CPU is reasonable

Cons:

• The future of LGA1851 is vague and may have no upgrade path
• Gaming performance struggles to match Core i7-14700K

 

Core Ultra 5 245K

Pros:

• General performance matches Ryzen 7 9700X
• Power consumption is low compared to other Intel CPUs
• Memory bandwidth is impressive with the latest DDR5 CU-DIMMs

Cons:

• Gaming performance is on a par with Ryzen 5 9600X
• Total cost of the platform is too high for mediocre performance

KitGuru Says:  Intel has rolled out a stack of updates for Core Ultra 200S that have fixed a number of problems. The single largest remaining issue is that prices remain too high.

Become a Patron!