Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K CPU is one step forward, one step back for PC gaming

There’s one word to describe both Intel’s and AMD’s latest CPUs: disappointing. AMD’s Zen 5 desktop CPUs arrived in August and failed to impress in both productivity and gaming workloads. The Ryzen 9 9950X was supposed to be a “monster,” but in reality, it was very underwhelming for PC gaming. Now, it’s Intel’s turn to disappoint.

I’ve been testing Intel’s $589 next-generation flagship Core Ultra 9 285K processor over the past week. It runs cooler and a little faster than Intel’s Core i9-14900K in non-gaming tasks, but it falls flat in PC gaming: in many titles, it provides worse performance than the 14th Gen chips it was designed to replace.

Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K is the first enthusiast desktop CPU with a built-in NPU, or a neural processing unit, for accelerating AI tasks. It’s also the first CPU that’s built for Intel’s new LGA 1851 socket, meaning you’ll need a new motherboard to be able to use it. Intel is using its latest 3D packaging technology and Arrow Lake architecture to increase the power efficiency of the Ultra 9 285K, a big departure from the hot and power-hungry 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs.

I’ve been impressed by the power draw improvements, particularly during gaming with the Ultra 9 285K. During a Cinebench 2024 benchmark, the Ultra 9 285K drew 254 watts of CPU package power, while Intel’s Core i9-14900K drew 267 watts for the same task. That’s a small difference, but the Ultra 9 285K managed to provide 15 percent better performance in the multithreaded test and nearly 7 percent better performance in the single-thread test.

It’s the same story for Geekbench 6, where the Ultra 9 285K delivers 8 percent better performance over the 14900K in the multithreaded test and 2 percent more for the single-thread test while drawing less power. Both the PugetBench tests for Adobe Premiere Pro and Photoshop are within margins of error, so performance seems to be similar for both of those workloads between the Ultra 9 285K and 14900K.

The gaming side largely went in the opposite direction during 1080p testing coupled with an RTX 4090. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, an older game that always scales well with CPU generations, I saw the Ultra 9 285K deliver frame rates that were 8 percent lower than the 14900K. In Cyberpunk 2077, the Ultra 9 285K fell nearly 9 percent behind the 14900K, and in 2023’s Forza Motorsport, it was nearly 20 percent behind. These are the types of figures I’d expect to see as gains over previous-generation CPUs, not regressions.

To its credit, the Ultra 9 285K puts out a lot less heat than the 14900K, which is never a bad thing in a gaming rig. Even during CPU benchmarks, the CPU package never exceeded 85 degrees Celsius, while the 14900K reached 99C during the same tests. I also noticed that idle power draw is lower, power usage during most games is lower, and even the coolant temperature on the all-in-one cooler I was using was a few degrees lower on the Ultra 9 285K than the 14900K. But most high-end rigs have high-end coolers, and performance nearly always trumps all.

I asked Intel why its gaming performance was all over the place, and the company essentially admitted its focus for these chips has been on performance per watt and that it has been upfront about what to expect for gaming.

“The nature of the process technology and the design of the SoC made it so that our focus for this generation was to catch up and get into a leadership position in performance per watt,” says Intel spokesperson Mark Anthony Ramirez. “While the difference in gaming performance compared to the previous two generations depends on the game, performance uplifts compared to 12th Gen and older platforms are significant.”

Intel did show benchmarks for Cyberpunk 2077 and Far Cry 6, both underperforming the 7950X3D by big margins during its Core Ultra 200S-series announcement earlier this month. The chipmaker also admitted that it would be around 5 percent behind AMD’s $449 7800X3D gaming CPU. I just wasn’t expecting it to be quite so far behind its 14th Gen chips, too.

I suspect some of the performance issues on the gaming side come down to Windows 11’s virtualization-based security (VBS) features. These are enabled by default in a fresh install of Windows 11, so I’ve been testing with them enabled on the Ultra 9 285K and 14900K. If I disable the Memory Integrity feature on both the Ultra 9 285K and 14900K, the performance gaps shrink significantly in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk 2077, to the point where Cyberpunk 2077 even runs 2 percent better on the Ultra 9 285K. Metro Exodus also runs nearly 4 percent better compared to just a single percent with Memory Integrity enabled.

The performance gaps of virtualization-based security are largely the same for creative and productivity tasks, and Intel says that when tested across enough workloads, VBS should have a lower performance impact on Core Ultra 200S series than previous generations.

With a new CPU generation comes a new motherboard chipset, and this time, there’s also a new socket. The new Z890 boards are built on Intel’s 800-series chipset, which supports up to 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up to 8x SATA 3.0, and up to 32 USB 3.2 ports. Most existing coolers that support Intel’s LGA 1700 socket will support the new LGA 1851 socket, so while you’ll need a new motherboard, at least there are plenty of coolers to choose from.

With the motherboard and CPU combined, there are a total of 48 PCIe lanes, with up to 20 of those being Gen 5 from the CPU. There’s also integrated Wi-Fi 6E and 1GbE ethernet, Bluetooth 5.3, and 2x Thunderbolt 4 on the CPU, with motherboard makers able to add discrete options for Wi-Fi 7, up to four more Thunderbolt 5 ports, 2.5GbE, and Bluetooth 5.4.

While I used DDR5-6600 memory for the Ultra 9 285K and 14900K benchmarking, Intel says DDR5-8000 is the sweet spot for the Z890 motherboards. And with announcements of DDR5-9600 and beyond, we could see a lot more performance squeezed out of the Ultra 9 285K in the future.

With rumors of an Arrow Lake-S refresh being canceled in favor of a leap to Nova Lake, it’s possible the LGA 1851 socket won’t be around for long, though. That means that if you upgrade to the Ultra 9 285K right now, you might have to swap out your motherboard again if you want to upgrade your CPU. Intel refuses to commit to LGA 1851 future support, and its recent track record isn’t reassuring: it launched its LGA 1200 socket in 2020 and then replaced it with LGA 1700 a year later.

AMD’s 7800X3D CPU comfortably beats the Ultra 9 285K in gaming, and the company will launch its highly anticipated 9000-series X3D desktop CPUs on November 7th. If you’re thinking about building a gaming PC right now, the obvious choice is AMD, particularly because the chipmaker has committed to supporting its AM5 platform and motherboards until 2027 or beyond.

While it’s a step in the right direction for Intel’s latest CPUs to be more efficient, enthusiasts are more concerned about getting the best performance no matter the energy costs. Intel has done well to make its Ultra 9 285K run a lot cooler, but with a step back in gaming performance, I’m still left wondering exactly who this chip is for.