Intel’s introduction of the Core Ultra 9 285K stood out to me last year. Under the banner of the ‘Arrow Lake’ chipset family, the new CPU touts a ton of intriguing features and power support. Leveraging 24 cores in brand-new architecture, Intel is prioritizing the support of improved power consumption as well as improved workloads.
Intel is currently in a competitive space currently, Fighting in the ring of AMD, the company continues to iterate on its processors, transitioning away from its monolithic die approach toward a tiled architecture. The Core Ultra 9 285K marks a new generation for Intel. However, as AMD and its Ryzen chips gun for dominance in the gaming space, Intel shows it still has a bit of work to do to edge out the competition. The Core Ultra 9 285K is an undisputed workhorse when it comes to multitasking and video editing. It also makes for an exceptional piece of kit when it comes to content creation as a whole. Over the past few months, I’ve been able to play a radically diverse amount of games on a rig powered by the chip. For $820, this chip is remarkably impressive and has helped power one of my favourite rigs I’ve used to play games and podcast on.
Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K is built on the Arrow Lake architecture, featuring 8 Performance Cores and 16 Efficiency Cores, a total count of 24 CPU cores. The company has also built a 13 TOPS NPU into the chipset. If this sounds familiar, this is because it’s the same NPU Intel has been leveraging on its Meteor Lake mobile processors. The Core Ultra 9 285K also features a 32-thread count.
In addition, the Core Ultra 9 285K offers a base frequency of 3.9Ghz for its Performance Cores (P-Cores) and 2.5Ghz for the Efficiency Cores (E-Cores). These effectively handle the demanding workloads that the Core Ultra 9 285K can offer as well as background tasks, respectively. Other notable specs include the support of a 35MB L3 cache. Maximum power consumption is clocked at around 250W when using max turbo mode. This is slightly improved from the 253W of the Core i9-14900K. However, I was delighted to discover that the chip now operates much cooler, at 81 degrees Celsius.
For reference, the PC desktop build I have been using to test the Core Ultra 9 285K also featured a punchy NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, making it a bonafide dynamo for handling performance-intensive games. It also supports 32GB of DDR5 SDRAM. The inclusion of Intel’s CPU also gives way to the arc-based Xe-LPG graphics GPU with 8 Xe cores.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is blazingly fast when it comes to completing day-to-day operations. My desktop is my workhorse for writing articles, editing photos and videos as well as producing weekly podcasts. Depending on the power required, certain operations can bog down performance more than others. Rendering videos is obviously one of the tasks that can require the most amount of power when it comes to productivity. Producing podcasts is another as it requires a lot from the rig. When completing these demanding tasks, the Core Ultra 9 285K never seemed to struggle or chug during operations. Rendering shorter-form videos took mere seconds and exporting photos in Lightroom was a breeze.
The Intel CPU is capable of performing well when juggling a number of background tasks. Operating apps like Discord, OBS, Chrome tabs, and Spotify running in tandem barely placed any tension on performance. Intel’s chip is able to offload low-priority tasks to the E-cores and keep the P-cores focused on the heavy lifting. With this, my most demanding apps and tasks were able to continue running efficiently. During podcast production as well, I experienced no hiccups in my workflow, something I struggle with considerably when using my Ryzen 7-powered main desktop rig.
With the integrated NPU, the Core Ultra 9 285K is able to support background AI tasks. Of course, having the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, those AI workloads are better off managed by the dedicated power. Nvidia, of course, excels in the use of AI. In a practical sense, using AI tools in Microsoft PHoto,s I was able to upscale images and remove unwanted elements in the background with little issue. AI-enhanced tools in Photoshop also ran with no hiccups.
Intel’s struggled to consistently win over the hearts of players year-over-year. However, the Core Ultra 9 285K does a considerable job of serving the PC gaming ecosystem. I managed to put some games through its paces while leveraging the Arrow Lake chipset. Cyberpunk 2077, for instance, was able to run at 120fps with ray tracing enabled and settings running on Ultra. That being said, the unit did begin to run fairly warm. I was able to bump the performance of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to Ultra as well and saw frames rise to upwards of 165fps with no discernable issues in ongoing performance.
Other games I spent some time with include Horizon Forbidden West, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, and Call of Duty: Warzone. In many cases, the performance of the Core Ultra 9 285K was impressive. However, one thing I noticed was that some benchmarks were slower than previously clocked results on its predecessor, the Core i9-14900K. That being said, however, the downscale in performance isn’t across the board. It’s unfortunate as when the highs are really high, the Core Ultra 9 285K is stellar in supporting some of the more demanding games available.
If you’re looking for an entry-level gaming rig or a modest amount of power, the Core Ultra 9 285K is most likely overkill. However, if you are in need of high-performance results while gaming, this chipset is able to support your 4K gaming desires, even as you stream as well.
Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K offers perks and benefits to a lot of different users. For $820, this chipset supports reliable power for content creation and daily workflows. If you need a sturdy crutch to use for multitasking throughout your day, the Arrow Lake CPU provides impressive benchmarks in spades. If you’re in need of a reliable chip to use for gaming, results may vary depending on expectations. From modestly demanding games to those high-performance titles, you’ll be able to run them efficiently. However, where Intel trails from the competition is when running marquee titles at Ultra High and maxed-out settings. Temperature and power consumption still hold Intel back from obtaining dominance within the field.
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The biggest, an arguably most important concession, is price. There are no bad products, only bad pricing. There is nothing this CPU does that isn't outdone by its competitor at the price point. Raw compute? 9950x or 7950x. Gaming? 9800x3d. Both? 9950x3d. Platform longevity? AM5.
Ive had my fair share of Intel CPUs, so I'm no AMD homer. This is just the raw facts (and probably not what influencers want you to hear). Intel is in a bad way right now. But I actually view the 200 series as a step in the right direction. They are just outclassed at everything (except network cards) right now.