Intel Core Ultra 7 265F: Reddit's Productivity Pick or Gaming Skip?

Just go for AMD. Why risk it? I was an intel fan since Pentium. For the first time I switched to AMD after my 13900k got the nasty bug. I'm not gambling on Intel anymore

you have to own an intel processor /s

I had high hopes, I even preordered a CPU/board. I canceled it as soon as the benchmarks came out. Ended up with saving $300 and going with a z790/14900k open box.

Yeah the new chips are good however the performance is pretty sucky for gaming. For productivity though the 265k/kf is insane value tho

AMD is the way right now. Intel are good for corporate desktops but are not competitive for gaming.

Arrow Lake with DDR5-5200 ain't great

This is a solid chip. Also Intel is doing a Gamer Days bundle with Battlefield 6, not sure if purchasing from Amazon includes that bundle or not

You made the right purchase. A 265F is a useless SKU of CPU. Not unlocked, and no quicksync. So you get none of the productivity benefits which is the only thing Core Series 2 CPUs are even decent at.

Arrow Lake isn't nearly as bad as folks think or say (unless all you do is gaming, in which case x3D chips are the way to go). It's a very compelling platform for productivity workloads and ironically great value, even with a Z890 motherboard.

The 265F is not a bad chip at all. A 7800X3D is 15% better in 1080P, 10% better in 1440P and like 4% better in 4K. Productivity wise this crushes the X3D. I have this CPU paired with a 5070TI legion prebuilt and it runs very well.

Intel processors are a great value right now if you don't need a chart topper

They say they fixed it. This is also the third time they said that. The first two times ended up being lies, one of which was a cover-up to try to not sink investor relations and has soured me on buying anything Intel-related for at least a couple generations until they've shown they can behave.

For that price, AMD has NOTHING that can compare.

Yeah I went 265k for my editing machine because I wanted iGPU but didn't want to deal with 13/14th instability. It's been fantastic

I bought the 265K, pretty happy with it. Came from a 5800X3D. For that price, it's an amazing deal.

Depends on what you want. The K has integrated GPU and can be overclocked. F has no integrated GPU and can't be overclocked. gotta love intel :)

They fixed most of it but still waiting on updated bios from vendors to finalize the fixes. I'm building myself a system with 285k but I'm not a gamer. Still arrow lake is not that bad as they say.

The 265k is fine for gaming. It's just not as good as the AMD chips.

Idk if it's good to invest in a chip that has a single generation of motherboards, as its being phased out completely. There won't be 1-3 gens on a socket this time around.

The only catch I immediately see is the F series processor (no igpu which means no efficient media transcoding and impaired AI if you ever repurpose this system as a security camera or Plex server)

My Core Ultra i7 265KF performs just fine in gaming. It's paired with a 4080 Super and 48GB of 8000mt ram. Everything on Ultra from RDR2, to MS Flight Sim 2024. There isn't anything I can't max out and play at 3440x1440p Ultra Wide.

Intel's falloff is crazy. This is the same company that made the 7700k.

It performs the same as zen 4 in gaming (7000 series) (obv the non x3d ones). It mainly just dominates productivity, beats out a 9900x with ease

The Ryzen is gonna last for way longer than the RTX 50 series, so having the better CPU now you'll be able to upgrade the GPU once the 5070 Ti doesn't deliver enough performance. Also, Core Ultra 2 socket is done and AM5 not.

It's not as good as 9800X3D, it's 20% slower on average, in gaming. However, it is as fast or faster in gaming compared to Zen4 or Zen5 non X3D. And faster than a 9900X in workloads.

Its a mediocre chip on a more or less dead platform. Thumbs down for me.

Definitely worth it at that price. It's approximately a 9700x. Unless you're planning on playing at 1080p 240+ hz it'll serve you admirably.

Beats 9900x in productivity, and does great in games, obviously not as good as say a 7800/9800x3d, but still good.

I'm in the same boat as you and am going to go for Ultra 7. I don't game much and have always been more of an Intel guy. The reason I wouldn't go 14700KF right now is that the socket is End Of Life. The new 15th gen motherboards will be good for many years and swapping out the CPU is no big deal if I need to upgrade in say 4 years.

They're OK. Arrow Lake was brutally overpriced at launch and was worse at some things than the previous generation, so initial reviews were very negative. Gaming performance is generally adequate but not class leading. Ryzen usually beats it there, as does 14th Gen. Multi core performance is great, especially for the price.

I'm enjoying mine I bought earlier this week. It's been running great. Now time to find new monitors.

265f will be considerably stronger in multithreaded applications, a bit weaker in games, but lacks any meaningful upgrade path (maybe an ARL refresh with slightly higher stock uncore clocks... not meaningful). 7700 will be a smidge stronger in games, can upgrade to at minimum a 10800x3d.

I wouldn't pick any non-k ultra 200 cpus unless it's on the very low level (ultra 5 225). Basically, on core ultra, either 265k/265kf or none at all.

Both packages had great GPUs, one package had a great CPU and one had a garbage CPU. You chose wisely.

No, the 9800X3D will be a great gaming chip for many more years while the 265K is a chip with mixed performance on an already dead platform. No idea why they pair that with a 5080, but I guess they have stock to sell through.

The core ultra 7 265f is end of life for cpu so when you goto upgrade eventually you'll need a new motherboard at least, that's what I was told

Intel has admitted they dropped the ball. Hopefully they redeem themselves. Competition is good.

If you're using it for productivity, it's great. Bumps heads with the 9900X and 14700K. For gaming? Sometimes it's better value than a 9600X, sometimes it's not.

I have tried one, it was ok... there were some gaming performance strangeness I could never quite figure out. Like in Oblivion remastered, it would often perform a lot worse than my 5800XT with the same GPU. Now when things worked well, it was great.

The Ultra CPUs are way better than you will hear from most posters on Reddit. I have a Ultra 9 285K.

If you game primarily its ryzen all day long. If you do production tasks the core ultra beats it, but if you think you might upgrade cpu in like 4 years amd is the best option as there will be great in socket upgrade choices and arrow lake refresh if its even coming will be a modest step up and that will be it for lga 1851.

Its ok no issues so far after bios updates of course but to be fair it's no faster than my old cpu so not really worth the upgrade it's nice to have ddr5 and 4 m.2 slots but those are the only things that are better, the cpu itself is not that impressive.

Not the best processor, but if it was a good deal who cares. Also in the grand scheme of things it's still pretty high up there.

The gaming is equal when you consider it depends on the game and if you prioritize higher averages or 1% lows. 7700 will have more games averaging higher, 265K will have a handful of games where the 1% lows make a good jump but more games being closer. Productivity, the 265K is more comparable to a 9900x for CPU alone.

The price is really good. I just have a couple issues. First they lied a lot about 14th Gen and I am not sure anyone should trust them. Second they will be the only CPU in that socket. While Nova lake does look very exciting I am not sure this chip is nearly as exciting.