Intel Core Ultra 9 285T: Reddit's Verdict on the OEM-Only Arrow Lake

I'm puzzled why they decided to even release these?

Well done Intel! Achieving slower gaming performance than AMD's now two generation older CPU (5800x3D) while still using more than double power. It seems like the node wasn't the only issue that was holding intel back.

What a cluster fxxk game performance regression, matching 7700X? For an i9 price? geez

Well, yeah 4K Max Settings is stressing the hell out of your GPU not your CPU of course it's running cool lol. That's like bragging that driving my car really fast doesn't overheat my boat.

AMD fumbled the ball but Intel straight up stuck a nail in it.

It's amazing how much of a nothing burger Arrow Lake ended up being. Kinda embarrassing when you consider all the packaging tech they developed which is good in theory but can't possibly be cheap to produce vs AMD's simple CPU/interconnect chiplet approach.

You missed the point. Playing the same games with the same 4K settings, direct-die cooled 14KS core temps were 20c-30c higher than 285K. That's significant and has nothing to do with being GPU bound in 4K gaming.

I expect the 65W parts are actually going to be quite good. Power scales down on ARL better than it scales up right now. 35W is a little iffy as being MCM starts to matter more down there, but things like a 245T might be interesting.

The 14900k still disintegrates on a regular basis. Do you want to take that risk? I'd go with the 285K because of that. The 285k is also better for productivity, just slightly weaker in gaming.

The Ultra 7 265K is half the price right now and performs similarly to the 285. The Core 200 series is okay for a server performance wise compared to it's competition. But at the current low price for the 265K they are great value for money right now.

Looks like a strong CPU for productivity and business use case. For gaming we are better off with the Ryzen 3D CPUs. That being said, I am now starting to buy my Parts for the 9800x3d. Fortunately for me, the decision was made very easy.

Cooling difficulty is greatly reduced from prior generations, and if you're using a '7' level CPU or less a basic air cooler will be more than enough for maximum performance.

You know I always made fun of Apple for releasing the same stuff every year... But Intel managed to release something worse! Looking at the charts I would buy 13700k over this so 2 years of work to produce something worse! Intel really saw the Zen 5% and hit us in the knee with -5% arrow.

Lower power is also important for desktop especially if you're living in places where you're paying upwards of 40 cents per kwh. Arrow lake's performance doesn't really disappoint in anything besides gaming which it's still good enough at. And arrow lake has considerably lower idle power consumption than ryzen 9000. I do have a 9800x3d and it's a gaming champ but saying arrow lake's performance is disappointing is a statement I can't agree with.

14900k has better gaming performance and 285k better productivity performance, upgradbility and power efficiency. Tbh if u don't care about power usage and upgradbility then get the 14900k.

Remember those rumors....even I thought Intel must have this in the bag. I said 3 years ago that Intel has until 2025 to convince me that they turned the ship around. 12th Gen was a promising step but they have to execute multiple gens well to fix what's broken. Looks like Intels got a longterm storm to weather now.

The price is just a slap in the face. Talk about tone deaf.

Up to you, it's extremely overkill for the use-case you mentioned. Might be worth reallocating some of that money to disks.

285K? Ehhhhhhhhh. The 265K is so extremely close to it and so severely cheaper that it's hard to justify.

This year seems to be who's gonna disappoint more race. At first AMD lied on their slides and it's zen 5%. Now zen 5% looks much better thanks to Intel.

If you already have the Core 7 265K I wouldn't change it. It's a good CPU. The Core i9-14900K is 10% faster in games for much more power consumption. Core 9 285K is best case 15% faster in productivity workloads, often less.

I think Intel deserves the criticism they're getting here. The sheer lack of performance, the need to purchase a new motherboard when this socket may be a one and done, and Intel's handling of Raptor Lake. Remember all the people who were offered refunds of their Raptor Lake CPUs but were left holding the bag for the cost of their motherboards, waterblocks, etc.

The only way to sell this is to drop the price of all series by 30%.

They are almost exclusively sold to Dell HP and Lenovo for use in micro PC's

Its not older, one is locked and the other is unlocked for overclocking and has higher TDP - hence the K SKU and being faster overall. This is literally every intel CPU generation since X58 was the top dog 20 years ago, this is nothing new.

It is still worst than 13/14K series, and significantly worse than AM5 X3D chips for gaming. Also that socket is already dead so you'd have no upgrade path.

Don't think tech youtubers are harsh on Intel Core ultra series. They are saying it is still not ready. Intel tried to create a Jack of all, master of none processor with NPUs and all.

If your main priority for the PC is gaming, there's no reason to consider Intel over AMD.

honestly if you're going for the top and you're just gaming, you should just get the 9800X3D. the 285K is not better.

So the 285k is definitely a better productivity card than the 14900k, however the 14900k is a better gaming cpu over the 285k. $433 vs. $600 price difference. You'll have to make up your own mind for what matters more to you.

If you're not having issues with what you have, you probably don't need that extreme of an upgrade. Honestly for a server that's always on, my biggest concern would be power draw, and that ultra 9 can draw a lot.

Depends greatly on your workload. If you're just running it as a NAS for storage? Yeah... WAY overkill. Plex/Jellyfin with hardware transcoding? Still overkill; you can get a far lower end CPU that'll perform on-par with that part and be both more power efficient and cheaper to buy. Now, if you're spinning up VMs particularly gaming VMs or heavy productivity VMs on your server? Sure... go for it.

I recently had a new machine built. I was originally thinking of going with an Intel I9-14900KF, or perhaps a Ryzen 9950X3D. But after doing a lot of research I decided on the Intel 9 285K. I paired it with a RTX5070ti 16G, and 32 GB of 6400 MB/s ram. I have only had the machine for about a week, and I have not touched the bios or overclocked the chip yet. I was able to run Microsoft Flight Simulator on ultra setting and the chip hardly noticed driving a 32" 1080P monitor.

Just for gaming (and it has improved with the newer bios and optimizations). The Ultra 9 285, even the non K variant, surpasses the 9950X3D for most productivity tasks.

Raw CPU power improvements aren't really that important for these kinds of applications these days. I'm running a i5-12400 and it rarely ticks over 30% usage, even with a dozen+ docker containers active. What's important is architectural changes, things like NPUs, and iGPUs with built in decoders.

Go for the Ultra. 14900K have problems of stability, runs extremely hot during workload and consumes much more power. Yeah, the Ultra have a bit less of gaming perfomance but its barely noticable imo people complains way too much just because of an 3-5 FPS difference.

I just built a 285K to replace my 14900KS and couldn't agree more. On this one I don't care about gaming performance as it's an audio work machine, but it is a significant improvement in my actual work projects so far even much larger than something like Cinebench multicore would suggest. And the E-cores overclock nicely and the P-cores undervolt nicely.

Love my 285k too, it renders 4k footage sooo fasssssssttttt.

I did not go with Arrow Lake because the socket is a dead end with the next gen requiring a new mobo, and the lack of HT cores. I would have jumped to AMD, but Quicksync for plex is just too good and I wanted to add a GPU that could be dedicated to AI and Gaming VMs, and not have transcoding duties on top of that.

200 tabs? With just Co-Pilot and ChatGPT running, you would already be at like 10 gigs. For 200 tabs + 20 apps, spend on RAM capacity + fast SSD first. The Ultra 9 285 is basically an Ultra 7 265 with +4 E-cores, a bit more cache, and slightly higher boost. That helps background junk, but not $350 worth for your use. Get the Ultra 7 265, 64–96 GB (or 128 GB if you're feral with tabs), and a fast NVMe.

It got much better with all microcode revisions, so it's not slower than 14th gen anymore. It's very much on par with Zen5 non X3D in gaming, but much faster everywhere else. I got a 265K instead of a 285K, cause it's really close in gaming performance. And I saw the uplifts with each BIOS update.

Im even happy with my 285k for gaming, playing all triple A titles Well, I am playing at 4k ultra tho so lots of preasure being taken by my 4080 super.

Agora que eu vi, esses processadores com final T funcionam em 35w. Eles devem ser vendidos em mini computadores já montados.