More benchmarks have been revealed in recent days as we get closer to the official release date of Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. We have seen benchmarks of mid-range and high-end Core Ultra CPUs but the 285K flagship CPU is seen for the first time online.
Can the Core Ultra 9 285K replace the Core i9 14900K?
The Core Ultra 9 285K finally got benchmarked in Geekbency 6 for the first time. This highly anticipated CPU is supposedly the flagship chip from the Intel Arrow Lake lineup and will go against the Core i9 14900K from the Raptor Lake Refresh family. Looks like the processor has made its way to a few users as the CPU has been benchmarked on Geekbench 6.
Remember that Geekbench 6 results vary from setup to setup and one or two benchmark results may not provide accurate information on a particular CPU’s capabilities. Still, it gives us a rough idea of where the processor stands against others in the same race. As can be seen from two different benchmarks, the Core Ultra 9 285K was able to score 3449 and 3450 points in single-core tests. In multi-core tests, the Ultra 9 285K was able to produce 23024 and 22997 points respectively.
These numbers are quite close to each other and it’s likely that the results belong to a single user as both results were achieved on the same ASUS ROG STRIX Z890-A Gaming WiFi motherboard. The tests also revealed the specs of the chip, suggesting that the Core Ultra 9 285K features 24 cores through a combination of 8 performance and 16 efficient cores. The 285K won’t feature any hyperthreading just like any other Arrow Lake CPU. This is contrary to what has been with the 12th, 13th, and 14th gen processors. However, the Arrow Lake CPUs use the latest Golden Cove Performance and Skymont Efficient cores.
Coming back to the results, the single-core performance of the Core Ultra 9 285K has outperformed almost all the results for the Core i9 14900K. For reference, in a recent test, the Core i9 14900K scored 3117 points in single-core and 20723 points in multi-core tests on Geekbench 6 when tested on a Gigabyte Z790M AORUS Elite AX motherboard. There are cases where the 14900K has achieved even higher points in multi-core tests than the 285K. So, it’s still not clear whether the Core Ultra 9 285K will be faster than the 14900K or not but the majority of tests point to the fact that the 285K is faster.
Nonetheless, the 285K is around 10% faster in single-core than the 14900K, which does look like a good uplift. What we have seen from the benchmarks of other Arrow Lake chips is that due to the absence of hyperthreading, they lack enough horsepower to outperform their predecessors. The Core Ultra 9 285K is Intel’s best bet for enthusiasts since not only does it have the highest number of cores, but it also features high clock speeds.
From the results page, we can see that the CPU has a 3.7GHz base clock and a 5.5GHz boost clock. Compared to the already available information, the processor was 200MHz slower in the boost clock, which means the scores can be improved if the processor can boost up to 5.7GHz through Thermal Velocity Boost.
Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are officially going to be revealed on 10th September 2024. However, the pricing and availability on the shelves is still unknown.
