You might think the Ryzen 79850X3D is the best gaming CPU on the market,
but as of today, that all does not
change. But, what if I told you that you could get 95% of its performance for 60%
of the price? That is what Intel has bequeathed upon the land with their
Ultra 7 270K Plus.
God, who is naming these things? Anyways, take a look at this. In Cities:
Skylines II, Intel's Ultra 7 270K Plus
outpaces both of their previous flagships and is nipping at the heels of
the 9800X3D. And what's even crazier is
that the second chip that they announced, the Ultra 5 250K Plus, is
also a flagship killer. It beats AMD's 9950X. That's a $650
CPU. Oh, right, and I haven't even mentioned price. The 270K and the 250K
are dropping at a mere $300 and $200
respectively. Prices that are actually lower than the launch prices of the CPUs
they are meant to replace. It's crazy. And moving into Cyberpunk, the winning
streak continues. Intel's 270K Plus is on the podium, while the 250K Plus
outperforms the 14900K and the Ryzen 9950X. It just sits
slightly underneath the 265K in 1% lows, but it actually has an edge in average
FPS. But, AMD's chips also have an edge in average frame rates, which is why I
am again emphasizing the importance of 1% lows. Those are what indicates a
smoother gaming experience. So, what's the catch with these chips? Are they
power hungry or unstable? Is the price just too good to be true? It just might
be. But, what is good and also true is this
in-depth review of Intel's newest CPUs and [music] the segue to our sponsor.
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Continuing with our 1080p gaming results in F1 24, we see AMD's whole lineup
faring pretty well with the 9700X going above and beyond and overtaking
the 270K plus and the i9 14900K. The new
250K plus trails the 9600X, although
[music] not by much. But Intel's dominance is seriously challenged in
Counter-Strike 2, where their new high-end hotness only barely catches
AMD's mid-range 9600X. At least Intel's new CPUs are outperforming their own
team, except for the 14900K.
When we take all of our gaming tests into consideration, it would seem that Intel has fulfilled their marketing
claim. The Ultra 7 270K plus is the fastest gaming CPU Intel's ever built,
even if it's not the fastest gaming CPU anyone's ever built, landing [music]
just 5% shy of AMD's 9800X3D in 1% lows
and 10% behind in average frame rate. But think of the price, the the price.
And the 250K is also an excellent value.
It beats the 9600X by 5 to 10% or more,
depending on the game, whilst demanding a very small price premium. But before
you scream shill, let's address the elephant in the room and talk about why we didn't compare these new Intel chips
to AMD's 9850X3D, their more recent fastest gaming CPU.
Unfortunately, we can't test every CPU on the market, so we opted to represent
the 9800X3D instead of the 9850X3D
because more of you guys are currently running it. And it's also very close in
performance to the 9850X3D. [music] And if we're being entirely honest, we did
not expect Intel to compete at the very top of these performance charts.
You got me, Intel. But if you are looking for even more data, keep an eye
on lttlabs.com, where we are always adding new tests to compare. So, what
changes under the hood did Intel make to refresh their Arrow Lake CPUs and get
these impressive results? Well, first off, they bumped up the clocks all core
boost on the P and E cores with the new
processors. Sorry,
they also tweaked uncore frequencies. Uncore meaning everything that's not the
cores, and they've improved the die-to-die performance and IO frequency,
meaning faster communication to the parts within the CPU and to the other
components in your system, which allowed them to support higher speed memory. Oh,
right. And there's just plain more CPU. Both of these new chips bring an extra
four E-cores and some bonus shared cash along for the ride, which makes the
naming of these CPUs really confusing. Why does the Ultra 7 270K Plus have the
same number of cores as the Ultra 9 285K? And why [music] is it performing
better? Shouldn't the higher number CPU be better? I mean, at least like the
250K Plus actually has fewer cores than the 265K, so something makes sense
there. But even there, in terms of performance, the 250K Plus is looking
more like a replacement for the 265K rather than the 245K. So, like, what are
they thinking with these names? It's tough to say, but
>> [gasps] >> the main thing Intel wants you to focus on is the plus. Apparently, this new
convention is going to indicate that it's for enthusiasts. Intel, whatever
you're paying your marketing division, it is too much. And whatever you're
paying your engineers, it ain't enough. On to productivity. Intel made some big
claims in their announcement about multi-core performance, saying that the 250K Plus has a 103%
lead over the 9600X. Yeah, let's see if that's true. Jesus
Christ. In Blender, the 250K Plus just
pummels AMD's price competitors. And at the high end, the 270K Plus is neck and
neck with the 9950X. In Cinebench, well,
bow to your new multi-core king as the 270K Plus tops the charts with his
brother Duke 250K Plus outperforming his counterparts. On the other hand, in
single-core performance, the higher boost on the 285K and 265K keep them
positioned above their plus named heirs. If you're looking to decompress, you can
relax knowing that these new chips also perform well in 7-Zip, even if they are
a step below royalty. But, in pretty much every workload, the plus CPUs are
either fighting for the top spot or absolutely dominating in price [music]
to performance. Except in Photoshop, where there is a clear platform
preference for AMD, but outside of that, Intel has stolen back the productivity
[music] crown, especially considering price to performance. So, don't ignore
them if you're doing any sort of productivity work in addition to your gaming. Let's say this in a way Twitch
streamers can understand. Intel is value maxing and absolutely price mogging AMD.
Well, that's crazy. After several generations of power-hungry CPUs, Intel slayed the
power efficiency dragon with Arrow Lake, but CPU refreshes often result in power
consumption increases. So, was that dragon really a hydra? Well, in gaming,
power usage on the 250K plus and 270K plus has increased by 10% or more
compared to their non-plus brethren, but on the whole, have a lower average and
max power consumption than AMD's chips in 124. And, Intel's doing this while
being pretty competitive in performance, too. In Cinebench, we can see that Intel
is still happy to let their chips let loose with power to really maximize
performance, even if it comes at the cost of efficiency, but still, Intel
might make up the difference by having quite good idle power draw, especially
compared to AMD. >> [music] >> And, this well-managed power curve on
the new chips translates to a well-managed thermals on our Arctic
Liquid Freezer 3 360 mm clad test benches. And, even when drawing full
power, they perform well under their rated max temp. >> [music] >> Remember, the TJ max for these CPUs is
105° compared to AMD's 95. And, the
crazy thing is that if you really want to push your chip, or if you're just like heinously thermally constrained,
Intel will let you set your temperature budget to 115° C and still honor the
warranty. That's awesome.
Also kind of scary. It sounds great so far, yeah, but there's still more to
talk about. Intel has a few tricks up their sleeves, and it's in the form of
software enhancements. Yeah, we love that. The Intel Binary
Optimization Tool or I Bot is part of their Application Optimizer software and
Intel considers this to be a core part of their long-term performance strategy.
Basically, what it does is analyze the functions being called by an application
and redirects the call to a function that's better optimized for Intel
hardware. Intel wants to make it very clear that they're not changing the work
that's being done or skipping any steps, but it's kind of like switching from using a kit of different screwdrivers to
a convenient multi-bit screwdriver from lttstore.com. [music]
It does all the same work, just more efficiently and sexier.
Intel claims improvements as high as 20% depending on the game when you're using
I Bot, >> [music] >> but we didn't see anything like that in our testing. There's a clear uplift when
compared against the baseline condition and Intel's current version of
application optimization, but it's nothing to write home about. For safety,
we checked to see if I Bot was increasing power consumption, but it
doesn't seem to outside of maybe the added power consumption of running your
games that little bit faster. Performance is enhanced, but it's not by
a lot [music] and I Bot can be a nuisance to enable in their utility and
also like you know, it all depends if those programs that you use are being
optimized, so who knows? It could be a really big deal or just another unused
setting in your driver software. Oh, and uh bad news for all 349 of you who
bought this generation of Intel CPUs, Intel is making no promises on bringing
these optimizations to their non-plus CPUs. Bummer. [music]
This is some pretty new stuff, so let us know in the comments if you'd like to see a more in-depth look at I Bot in an
upcoming video. Just like Intel though, no promises.
Alrighty, let's talk [music] about pricing. It's incredible, assuming that this pricing will exist in the real
world and that Intel isn't just taking a page from AMD's 970 XT playbook. 599, XT
599, fake
My gut says that this pricing is too good to be true, but if it isn't, AMD
will need to respond. Whether that's by raising the performance bar with a
generational refresh that actually does something, looking at you the 9850X3D,
or by slashing retail pricing of their current lineup, or both. I just hope
that these great prices and products from Intel are not just here to score headlines in a time where no one can
afford to build a computer anyways. It's just so performative. [music]
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Thanks for watching this video. Check out our review of the 9850X3D to see
more about the bestest CPUs in [music] the game.