Intel Core Ultra 3 205 Reddit Verdict: Niche Gem or Overpriced Budget CPU?

Would be nice if they released H810 motherboards now, or at least lower tier B860's, the cheapest boards from where I am are still $190+

I do wonder why one would buy this at MSRP if an Ultra 5 225 is ~€190. If the price drops to like 110 - 120 it might be worth it though.

Honestly a decent deal if only they unlocked it. I don't get why intel has to lock half their cpus from overclocking

Intel CPU division never makes good decisions like that. Not since the G3258.

Beefier ARC iGPU. Look at the performance of Meteor Lake in comparison to the 14100 for your transcoding scenario.

Good for those that barely upgrade

If it were 80$ it would be perfect for a basic use PC and light gaming. I wouldn't settle for anything slower than a 245K tbh. 160$ gets you a 14600K, which probably smokes both.

Anyone know if this would be any different than something like a 14100 in transcode?

Well it isn't a real issue, lets say you buy a ultra 3 now and you want to upgrade in 4-5 years? By then every current socket would be a dead platform, even then you could put a used ultra 5-7 cheaply.

Way too expensive for that crap.

Depends on what you want to do, for a home server running proxmox and keeping it energy efficient I'd prefer the 4+4

Even the 225f isn't worth more than $130 at most. It under performs the AMD 7600. Ideal pricing: 225f = $125, 205 = $90

4+4 is like 5+0 for the same die area. That's a LOT better than just 5 big cores. What i3 or Ultra 3 need is core count. A lot of consumer apps are designed to scale well up to 8 cores-16threads now, so 8 threads from 4+4 is a huge welcome.

As someone who does actually upgrade his machine in socket, it's not a big deal. Very few people upgrade their machines in the period where you can keep the same board and upgrade.

They should release 205K, 225K and OC from B860 mobos, that's what most users want

Too bad the platform cost is fucking expensive to get into if you're on a budget. A not absolute garbage mobo starts at 130€, cheapest core ultra is the 225F for 180€ then cheapest 6400 ram is 100€. The 225 barely beats the 14400F while costing way more. The 205 can only survive if it goes for less than the 14100.

Imo the 205 will be very impressive with its 2 xe core igpu and low power usage. Also I think we can expect very good productivity performance.

I have a feeling that i3s will do well in gaming benchmarks and will sell like hot cakes.

Even completely isolated it's not very exciting since the 4 p-cores lose hyper-threading, wouldn't be surprised if it's noticeably worse at gaming (especially at 1% lows) than the 12100/13100/14100.

What's up with Intel putting E-cores on everything? I would rather have 6+0 and 8+0 than 4+4 and 6+8.

The E cores are going to basically just be faster hyperthreading threads for this thing in games.

Memory will be 90% of the system cost.

This CPU is really exciting in isolation, but we all know that the motherboard and RAM pricing will be prohibitively expensive. Still, if this can get close to the Ryzen 5 7600, it might be worthwhile.

4+4 i3 will probably actually be a really good budget CPU.

Skymont has better core-to-core latency than Lion Cove on Arrow Lake

I was really hoping to get a budget part like this. However, the way I interpret its omission from most listings, the lack of a 205F SKU and no price in its specs unlike its Core Ultra 5/7/9 brethren is that Intel will make the Core 3 205 OEM-only.

4+4 with no hyper threading is going to be pretty interesting to see. Most games don't work or work extremely poorly with only 4 threads, so they're going to have to go out to the ecores and take a latency hit. I think there's a chance this is worse at gaming than the i3 12100, maybe even the i3 11100 or i3 10100.

It'll have AV1 encoding for starters. Then the GPU is also much more powerful. It has the Arc media engine.

The 12100/13100/14100 are all 4 core CPUs, with only 4 P-cores. This CPU is rumored to have 4 P cores and 4 E-cores to boot. Plus, ARL really buffs the E-cores in terms of performance.

Love how everyone is saying this cpu will suck, I made my 225 into a 205 by disabling 2 p cores. Surprisingly it still works just fine.

My wife has an i3 laptop 11th gen, it's fine for YouTube and office stuff. The 3 series is good for light work, and long battery life.

What a joke. I've got a ultra 5 225f for cheaper than the ultra 3 205 itself. This CPU should be a 100 Dollar Price tag, not 173 Dollars

That's not a good price at all. Where I live the Core Ultra 5 225F can be had for 168€. Much better performance.

This chip will be fantastic for home servers—enough grunt to transcode and do beefier tasks while being super-efficient.

Pricing here makes no sense, being the cost differential for the 225 and 235 isn't enough to warrant buying one over the 245K, unless there's some specific need to not want the 245K, or to save only a tiny bit of money.

In view of building a new PC for support end of Win10, why should I buy the smallest Core Ultra Desktop CPU for 260€ when Intel Core i3-14100 just costs 130€ or AMD Ryzen 5 8600G for 180€. If Core Ultra 3 205 at max 160€ will not come out, looks not good for Core Ultra for budget-price oriented desktop builders.

It seems that all product pages have been wiped, maybe it has been cancelled, even as OEM? It's a shame, have been looking forward to this CPU as the heart for my new proxmox home server build.

For a student/casual worker, either will work. I believe Core series Intel laptops have much better battery life compared to AMD, so take that into consideration if you're frequently away from an outlet.

Really took intel 3 years to make the i3 people wanted. They could've done this with the i3-12300/i3-13100.

I want a new PC for my DAD and can't build a new platform because DDR5 prices are insane

Neither of them give a shit about the low end, but at least Intel is at least sorta trying I guess?

The only time I ever upgraded was from a C2D to C2Q. It would be better if there was a newer gen to upgrade to. Also, really budget builds may be more likely to upgrade sooner.