Kunal Khullar Social Links Navigation News Contributor Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC.
ezst036 These are probably at a decent price point for any non-gaming workloads. Intel's latest often (rightly) receive criticism due to lackluster gen-over-gen performance which seems somewhat to be stalled out in the last 2? generations, but (I'm pretty sure) one of our newer laptops has an Arrow Lake in it and its way faster than the Intel-based Macbook Air that it replaced. Maybe some people do upgrade each gen. That is, some people have had every single one. 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, etc etc etc. But I bet most people skip generations by 3 or 5 or more. If you're upgrading from a Ice Lake, a Haswell, or even a Sandy Bridge the performance boosts should be noticeable and probably unquestionable. Reply
Eximo It is not bad for gaming, just not quite as good in some titles as X3D chips. Just slightly behind the 14900k/14700k, but at half the power. So it has some benefit if you are building small form factor with Intel. No real savings though, unless you already have DDR5. That discount just basically covers the increased memory prices. Reply
cyrusfox Still not cheap enough, with the refreshed ultra 7 270k plus having the same number of cores, supporting higher memory speed with nearly same clock, 285k price will need to come down further. I would expect the 270k plus to be another $80-100 cheaper. Still more than many will pay. Reply
thestryker cyrusfox said: supporting higher memory speed with nearly same clock This isn't the advantage it may seem as Intel already supports, under warranty, up to DDR5-8000 so long as it isn't above 1.4v. If the 270K Plus P-core boost works like the 265K (which seems likely) then there will be a pretty constant 200MHz speed difference in operation between it and the 285K. It also seems likely that the 270K Plus will take the 265K MSRP at best which is $400 so this 285K deal is still good. Reply
logainofhades Still a terrible deal. Sad that my 12700k is not that far behind this new "flagship", when it comes to gaming. Reply
thestryker logainofhades said: Still a terrible deal. Sad that my 12700k is not that far behind this new "flagship", when it comes to gaming. This is an extremely reductive view. By that logic nothing other than an X3D CPU is a worthwhile upgrade. There's also more to life than just gaming which happens to be a weak point for these processors (though if you're using them with proper memory and 200S Boost they're about the same as RPL on average in gaming). If someone is just gaming buying a top end multithreaded CPU is just dumb. Buying a 9950X instead of a 9800X3D would be a stupid choice too. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/intel-cuts-down-price-of-core-ultra-9-285k-for-black-friday-by-nearly-a-third-arrow-lake-flagship-available-at-lowest-ever-price-of-usd429-on-amazon#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
- Tom's Hardware Premium is up to 50% off for Black Friday — get a wealth of in-depth industry content from as little as $5.99 a month
- NVIDIA Accelerates AI for Over 80 New Science Systems Worldwide
- Delivering AI-Ready Enterprise Data With GPU-Accelerated AI Storage
- Accelerated Computing, Networking Drive Supercomputing in Age of AI
- Intel CEO rejects reports the company is obtaining TSMC secrets from former executive — Taiwan's investigation into Intel's controversial recent hire continues
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.