Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Sets World Performance Record

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, part of the upcoming Arrow Lake-S family, has set a new world record for single-thread performance with an impressive 5,268 points in PassMark, surpassing the previous record-holder, the Core i9-14900K, by 11%. This makes the Core Ultra 9 285K the fastest CPU in the world in single-thread performance.

What makes this even more remarkable is that the result was achieved using an engineering sample of the processor. This suggests the final retail version may perform even better once officially released. The Core Ultra 9 285K also outperformed the Core i9-14900KS, a special edition from Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh family, by 8.2% despite the 14900KS boasting a higher clock speed of 6.2 GHz.

The Core Ultra 9 285K operates at a maximum clock of 5.7 GHz. Still, its superior performance can be attributed to the architectural improvements made with the Lion Cove and Skymont cores, which provide significantly enhanced Instructions Per Cycle (IPC).

These performance leaps highlight the strength of Intel’s new architecture, which focuses on IPC gains and efficiency over raw clock speed, delivering industry-leading results even at lower clock frequencies. Once officially launched, this sets the stage for Intel’s Arrow Lake-S processors to become top contenders in the high-performance CPU market.

Core Ultra 9 285K multi-threaded performance

Despite its record-breaking single-thread performance, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K falls significantly behind in multi-threaded benchmarks. It scored 46,827 points in multi-thread tests, which is 33% lower than the Core i9-14900K’s 60,305 points and a massive 43% below the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, which reached 66,702 points.

This performance gap can be attributed to several key factors:

• Energy Efficiency Focus: The Core Ultra 9 285K prioritizes energy efficiency with a more contained power profile. While it’s designed to perform extremely well in single-thread tasks, it doesn’t pull as much power to ramp up all cores simultaneously for multi-threaded tasks. As a result, its overall multi-thread performance is limited by lower power draw and constrained thermal ceilings.
• Lack of Hyper-Threading: Unlike previous generations, the Core Ultra 9 285K’s performance cores do not support Hyper-Threading. In previous models, Intel’s performance cores could handle two threads per core, doubling the core count in multi-threaded scenarios. Without Hyper-Threading, the Core Ultra 9 285K can only manage a maximum of 24 threads (12 performance and 12 efficiency cores). The Core i9-14900K has 32 threads (16 performance cores with Hyper-Threading and 8 efficiency cores), giving it a significant advantage in multi-core tasks.

These factors underline the architectural trade-offs favoring efficiency over sheer multi-thread performance. While the Core Ultra 9 285K excels in tasks requiring high single-thread performance, it’s less suited to highly parallel, multi-thread workloads compared to its competitors like the Core i9-14900K and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, which have more cores and threads available for such operations.

When will the Intel Core Ultra 200 be launched?

Intel is expected to officially announce the new Core Ultra 200 series desktop processors, also known as Arrow Lake-S, this week, specifically on Thursday, October 10th. During the presentation, Intel will likely introduce at least five processors in this initial lineup, with the Core Ultra 9 285K leading the group as the most powerful and high-performing model.

The Core Ultra 9 285K is expected to showcase Intel’s latest advancements in architecture, focusing on high single-thread performance while maintaining energy efficiency, a signature feature of the Arrow Lake-S family. Following the announcement, the launch is anticipated to occur on October 24th, just two weeks later.

Currently, there is no official word on the pricing for these processors. Still, given their high-end specifications, the prices will likely target the premium segment, competing directly with AMD’s top-tier Ryzen CPUs. The upcoming event will probably reveal more details about performance, availability, and pricing.

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