Intel 285K Review: Not Good Enough & Not Ready for Launch – Awful Value for Money Too

• Intel has finally released the much-awaited Core Ultra 9 285k. It's priced at $589.
• The initial reviews and test results are also here, but the verdict isn't all positive, with experts calling it one of the worst Intel launches in the past few years.
• While there are some areas the chip does a decent job at, it falls short of expectations in others, with the most important one being gaming.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285k processor (formerly called Arrow Lake) is finally here, and the reviews have started pouring in. Right off the bat, we've noticed that the feedback is quite interesting. While there are some things that have been appreciated, an awful lot more has been criticized.

Possibly the highest amount of criticism came from the gamer community, which felt that the new processor's performance was subpar and not worth the money.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves and start with the basic specs and design of the chip.

About Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

• Price: $589
• Total Cores: 24 (8 P-cores and 16 E-cores)
• P-Core Max Turbo Clock: 5.5GHz
• Max Turbo Power: 250W
• PCIe Lanes: 24
• Claimed NPU performance: 13 TOPS
• Memory Support: Dual-channel 6,400MT/s DDR5, up to 192 GB

One of the most interesting things about its design is the multi-chip construction. Traditionally, processors have been made of a single chip.

However, this new Intel processor consists of 6 individual chip layers, starting with the base tile, followed by the Compute tile, Filler tile, I/O tile, SOC tile, GPU tile, and ending with the IHS at the top. This tiered structure allows for more nuanced tuning.

It has also done away with hyperthreading. While some might think that the absence of hyperthreading might hamper performance, it can actually boost clock speed depending on how the chip is constructed.

Most importantly, one of the biggest USPs that the company just couldn't stop talking about during the initial specs release is the reduction in power consumption.

According to Intel, power consumption has been cut by almost half (compared to 4900k), and that too, without hampering the overall performance of the system.

So What's the Problem?

The problem is that this chip is quite disappointing in terms of its gaming performance. One of the first problems that we noticed was memory latency.

In the tests conducted by Level1Techs right out of the box, the memory latency varied from 100 nanoseconds to 130 nanoseconds. He was only able to bring it down to 79 nanoseconds after MSI dropped an update for its Z980 Ace (his motherboard).

However, other users on different motherboards might still be stuck with higher memory latency. If you compare it with rivals like AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D or even Intel's own Core i9 14900K, it can't match their performance.

Broken Promises

Apart from gaming, the new chip also falls short on a few other promises it made. For example, remember how it bragged about its amazing power efficiency? Well, it turns out the difference isn't as dramatic as it was made out to be.

Sure, the 285k does require less power, but when you compare it with the 14900K, there's only a 16-17% decrease. The difference is a little more with AMD's latest processors, though - almost a 25-28% drop. But again, contrary to the company's promise, it does hamper performance. Even on high-performance settings, it outperforms the previous versions by only 5%.

• The processor also comes with two sockets. The first is the usual ILM socket, and the second one is the Reduced ILM socket to help with CPU bending. So, if you have one of the existing LGA 1700 motherboards, it won't work. Time to get a new one.
• The same goes for coolers. Intel says that if you have coolers that are compatible with the 13th gen and 14th gen, you can keep using them for the 285K as well. However, to achieve optimal cooling, you'll have to consider getting a new one.

The bottom line, therefore, is that to get the most out of the processor, you'll need to make significant investments in hardware.

The most disappointing part is that there are no AI upgrades. So, if you were hoping to get desktop access to Windows 11's generative AI feature, well, that's just a pipe dream now. A processor needs at least 40 TOPs of computational performance to access those features, and the 285K does not meet the benchmark with its 13 TOPS.

Ironically, this was done to focus more on gaming performance because gamers are the primary buyer group. However, it failed to provide the gaming performance it boasted about.

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