Leaked Intel Slide Suggests That Core Ultra 9 285K Can Be Slower In Gaming In Certain Cases

It looks like the launch of Intel’s upcoming Core Ultra desktop processors is very close at this point, as leaked slides has emerged on the internet courtesy of leaker @wxnod (via Videocardz). The gaming benchmarks suggests that Intel is not advertising increases in gaming performance, and instead, the chipmaker is highlighting the significant power savings compared to its predecessor.

Is Core Ultra 9 285K Slower? Not Always

We’re running into a bit of a theme here – first it was AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 series that barely shows improvements in games, and now Intel’s upcoming challenger will seemingly exhibit the same problem as Team Red. The chart presented in this slide shows that the new Core Ultra 9 285K processor will trade blows with an unspecified “Raptor Lake-R” processor, which likely is the Core i9-14900K based on subsequent leaked slides.

More interestingly however, Intel is not advertising the performance on the title of first slide shown above – in fact, the title reads “A Significant Leap In Performance-Per-Watt In Gaming Scenarios”, followed by “Up To ~165W Reduction In System Power Draw Under The Same Framerate As Raptor Lake-R”. The chipmaker has specifically avoided mentioning the CPU power draw in the slides leaked thus far, so it’s unclear what are the exact savings made on the processor level.

When comparing to AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X, it’s another back-and-forth between the two, with the biggest win being +28% in Total War: Warhammer III, though Cyberpunk 2077 sits on the other end of the chart with a -13% deficit to Team Red’s top chip. Note that all benchmark data assumes Intel APO is active, which is an application-specific optimization feature available currently in 14th Gen processors.

In any case, these are first-party benchmark data assuming they are legitimate, we’ll have to wait until third-party reviews to know how will the new Team Blue chip perform out in the wild. Expect announcements in the very near future, and we should know more by then.

Pokdepinion: If this is true, I guess it’s a bit of a downer from both sides this year, isn’t it?