Intel Performance Optimizations Seen Giving Up to an Additional 10 FPS over Stock Settings, Sometimes More, on Core Ultra 7 265K Processor

Intel is continuing to offer performance improvements for its Arrow Lake Core Ultra 200S processors with another overclocking profile. Intel launched its Arrow Lake processors six months ago in October 2024, and while technically not bad, they very much were passed by PC gamers who, even if strapped for cash, swarmed to get AMD’s 9800X3D gaming CPU. At the time, the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K did okay or better in select tests (we have a review of it here) but it still somewhat paled in comparison to AMDs offering which then it made nearly inconceivable that PC enthusiasts would have reason to invest in any of the other processors in the product stack but thanks to numerous firmware and XMP memory updates, and now recent overclocking profiles these processors are coming truly into their own.

Intel recently released its Power Boost 200S overclocking profile that added significant performance gains to the Arrow Lake series, but now there is another that takes things just a bit further. A user has tested the Intel Performance Optimizations (IPO) with a Core Ultra 7 265K that has been paired with an RTX GeForce 5090D and DDR5-8000 memory. The Core Ultra 7 265K is a 20-core processor configured with 8 Performance Cores and 12 Efficient Cores, a max turbo clock of 5.5 GHz and a max “Turbo Power” of 250 Watts. IPO fine tunes settings to support DDR5-8000, pushing it to 8400 MHz, with the P-Cores hitting 5.4 Ghz and the E-Cores clocking to 4.9 Ghz. Stock speeds for these are 3.2 GHz and 2.1 GHz, respectively.

On average, IPO showed roughly just a few percentage point gains over Power Boost 200S, but this is enough that many games were now running ~10 FPS faster than stock settings, and in some cases, much, much, more (take a look at the Counter Strike 2 results). The test results (via Tom’s Hardware) come from a BiliBili user (via Uniko’s Hardware). All in all, it’s very refreshing to see Intel’s Core Ultra 200 series aging well with all its updates, much like what has occurred with its Arc GPUs and their performance gains from the same. Sadly, though, IPO is currently only available to OEMs in China, but hopefully this fine-wine styled profile will make its global debut soon.

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