Gaming Performance
Now we come to the interesting testing we are sure you all can’t wait for, we were also anxious to get to this part and see how it all ends up for gaming performance. We are testing only at 1080p, to isolate CPU performance. We are using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition video card with driver version 565.90. All games are being run in their “Ultra” game settings, at native 1080p resolution, and with no ray tracing. In some games, we have set the desktop also to 1080p for Windowed/Borderless Window games.
Importantly, we are using ALL manual run-throughs for every game here, not a single built-in benchmark was used, these are all manual run-throughs actually in the game, playing the game. We have also included testing on the 285K and 245K in the Windows 11 Power Mode profiles of “Balanced” and “Best Performance” as well, for gaming, since we found that it makes a difference in performance. Every other CPU comparison on the graph was tested in the “Balanced” Power Mode profile. In the graphs “Win11: PM” stands for Windows 11 Power Mode.
Alan Wake 2
Oof, is about all we can say. As you look through these graphs, this is a pattern you are going to see more often than not. One thing is very clear, there is a specific performance difference between the “Balanced” Windows 11 Power Mode profile and “Best Performance” profile. The “Balanced” power profile degrades performance quite a bit on the Intel Core Ultra 200S series CPUs, across the board in games as you will see. Keep in mind that all the other CPUs for comparison on this graph are in the “Balanced” power profile, and did not experience this phenomenon. The fact that earlier in this review we saw “Balanced” mode degrading single-core/single-thread performance aligns with the fact that gaming performance would be slower in that profile as well.
In Alan Wake 2, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is 8% slower in the “Balanced” power profile mode, compared to “Best Performance.” The 245K is 5% slower. Therefore, if we compare in a like-for-like “Balanced” profile, then the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is a whopping 18% slower than the previous generation Intel Core i9-14900K at its default BIOS profile setting. The 285K would then be 14% slower than the Ryzen 9 9950X. The 245K is 14% slower than the 14600K and 9-10% slower than the 9700X and 9600X.
If we bump the 285K up to the “Best Performance” power profile mode, it’s faster but still sits in the bottom bracket of performance compared to every CPU. The 285K in Best Performance is 11% slower than the 14900K and 6% slower than the 9950X. The 245K is 9% slower than the 14600K and 4% slower than the 9700X and 9600X.
Clearly leading the pack is the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is 21% faster than the fastest performance of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K.
Black Myth Wukong
Black Myth Wukong is not the best CPU-bottlenecked game, to be quite honest. However, this is a brand new game, that has been very popular and well-received, and so we wanted to include it. Since it is a modern game, it uses a modern game engine, and effects, and therefore is relevant for testing in that regard. To try and make it more CPU bottlenecked, we did run the game at 1080p and also dropped the desktop to 1080p to force this Borderless Window game to run at 1080p, and we are using a long manual run-through, and Ultra game settings.
As we can see, this game, as expected does not show a large variance in performance with the CPUs. That said, there is a clear pattern here, regardless, that can be seen. Both the new Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and Intel Core Ultra 5 245K CPUs fall into the bottom of the chart, trailing performance behind every other CPU. Though the performance isn’t far apart, it’s a pattern that can at least be seen very well, and one that you will see repeated in our gaming testing today.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K trails the 14900K by 2.4%, and the 9950X by 2%. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245K trails the 14600K by 2% and trails the 9700X and 9600X as well. The leader, unsurprisingly, is the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Again, this is not Earth-shattering, but it’s the pattern we wanted you to notice, and so now let’s get to some other games that absolutely do show CPU bottlenecked performance differences well.
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Forbidden West is another recent new game to the PC, but with a very clear console background, and we thought it might be interesting to take a look at what is probably a more lightly threaded game? Well, to no one’s surprise, the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 9 7950X3D lead in performance by quite a bit over everything else, offering an 8% performance advantage compared to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K in the Best Performance power mode profile.
Down from that, we do find the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K performing quite well in this game, and we also see a slight performance difference between the Balanced and Best Performance power mode profiles. The 285K is 3% slower in the Balanced power profile mode, compared to Best Performance. If we compare like-for-like power profile modes, then the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K matches performance with the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X in gaming.
This places the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K about 2% faster than the Intel Core i9-14900K, which is very small. When we switch over to the Best Performance profile, the 285K is 3% faster than the 9950X and 5% faster than the 14900K, which is a bit more interesting. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245K is just 3% faster than the Intel Core i5-14600K but is slower than the 9700X by 1% but faster than the 9600X by a good margin of 6%.
The Last of Us Part I
In The Last of Us Part I, this is pretty much the only game where we didn’t see much difference between the “Balanced” and “Best Performance” power profiles. In this game, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is slower than the Intel Core i9-14900K by 2%. When compared to the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K looks more favorable, as it is 6% faster, which is a decent result compared to the competition.
The Intel Core Ultra 5 245K is 3% faster than the Intel Core i5-14600K, which isn’t big, but at least it’s a positive result, unlike the 285K. When we compare the 245K to the Ryzen 9700X we find that both seem to be on par, or parity, with each other. The Intel Core Ultra 5 245K does appear to be 7% faster than the Ryzen 5 9600X, which is also very decent.
The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D take the lead. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is 7% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is 12% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Those are some dissapointing results for gaming, kinda leaves me at an annoying point, 9800X3D is only an 8 core providing it launches when it's rumoured to (early november) rest is early next year and I don't realy want to go previous gen.
Also like I said in the other thread, the ultra 9 and 5 are already sold out at some outlets around here. intel still going strong (or no stock to speak off)
There are people who will buy Intel even when they have no logical reason to do so. I work with a guy like that. He won't buy anything else because of the reputation non-Intel CPU's had in the 1990's.
Gotta know supply to gauge demand...
My take: This is a transitional product that lays the ground work for future releases. This isn't remotely the first time Intel has done this. The Wilamette Socket 423 Pentium IV's were such a product. It introduced RAMBUS memory and they were often out performed by their Pentium III counterparts, especially Tualatin CPU's. The socket Northwood Socket 478 stuff was a lot better. The Prescott core CPU's were also kind of transitional as these were built with even deeper pipeline stages to ramp the clocks up even more. Their EM64T extensions were present on the core but weren't enabled (excluding one model) until the transition to LGA sockets.
Unfortunately, the only real benefit to these is that they shouldn't have any degradation and stability issues in games where as the 13th and 14th generation CPU's did prior to microcode updates and BIOS updates were created to mitigate them. Assuming your CPU wasn't degrading to start with.
Not competitive, high price, a short lived platform and Win 11 is a mess. Nothing ever works as intended at launch. What is wrong with these companies? Fumbling the ball at the 1-yd line seems to be the norm. Bush league overall...
@Brent_Justice - what I'm seeing about is that by decoupling the memory controller from the compute die, Intel has added latency to main memory access. Do we know if this is reflected in say AIDA64?
@Dan_D - looks like we're going to have to see if Intel can overcome the above latency issue the same way AMD did when they went to chiplets with Zen.
I think they can. How they would be able to mitigate this is unclear to me but this is the type of thing Intel is typically good at engineering their way through historically. Generally speaking, Intel's CPU's have not been effected by latency to the same degree as AMD's. AMD for one reason or another has always dealt with that to some degree. AMD's answer for the most part was simply to throw L3 cache at the problem which doesn't work in all scenarios.
Though throwing L3 cache at the problem is a simple fix, but its a costly one.
AMDs use of stacking for the L3 cache on a CCD, which in turn they can use for gaming SKUs as well as enterprise (which they originally created them for), is genius.
Imagine slow(er) Zen 3 and Zen 4 cores (both clockspeed and IPC vs. Alder/Raptor P-cores) not only outrunning them but also doing so at 1/2 the power draw for gaming.
Now imagine Intel P-cores backed up by enough L3 cache to make memory latency irrelevant.
I think Intel needs to copy AMD here (or emulate? imitate?) and find a way to get that cache in a die with broader market appeal (i.e. also usable in Xeons). Their chiplet setup should enable them to do so.
One thing that's been sticking in my mind with the Arrow Lake release is that this is the first time Intel has decoupled their memory controller from their compute dies since... Core 2? At least in the consumer space (so not talking about buffered DIMMs). AMD did with Zen 2 IIRC. Intel has been using IMCs since Lynnfield in the i7 870 from 2009, 15 years ago!
I'm not sure that this is even possible. I think there are probably scenarios where simply adding cache doesn't help.
Well, AMD had an integrated memory controller since the Athlon 64 days. However, Intel's Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad were the last CPU's to have an off-die memory controller. Though it was in the chipset at the time and not anywhere on the CPU itself.
I believe its two things:
1. Consumers buy products that suck on the promise that they will be fixed later
2. Development practices that involve the term: MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
Number 2 combined with number 1 just continuously lowers the bar for number 2.
Thanks, @Brent_Justice for the very detailed review of these CPUs and extra testing with both power modes. It's a shame that APO isn't supported for the games reviewed, especially since they are popular titles that users are likely to have in their libraries. I wonder if Intel will be able to provide updates later on which might improve those results. Really interesting how CB2077 has a prioritize P-core option that only further proved there are other potential gains to be had.
A lot to unpack with these and obviously Intel is experimenting with a number of strategies with them.
I will have more information in an upcoming review, but installing some DDR5 CUDIMMs 8400, but running at 8200 MT/s currently, AIDA64's Cache Mem latency result is 88ns this is at 8200MT/s CL40-50-50-128 CR2. I will have some memory comparison data in an upcoming article at 6400, 8200, 8400 and 8600 on this motherboard with this RAM kit, so stay tuned. But my first reaction is that this isn't bad latency, I think it was worse at the beginning of all this, but as new BIOS's have come out, latency has improved. MSI's fix notes state XMP and memory performance optimization with the new BIOS releases I'm using.
I really want an all P-Core option, an 8-Pcore only or 12-Pcore only CPU would be a great option for gaming.
I am NOT a fan of big.LITTLE / hybrid architecture on x86 desktops. Intel please give us P-core only options!
I would prefer only p-cores too, but due to the lack of HT would we not require like at least a 10 or12 core if you need 8 for games already.
I mean testing conditions is one thing, but a real everyday use system usually has more running in the background then just the bare minimum.