Intel’s new, "fastest ever" desktop CPUs put their focus back on game performance

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus are coming March 26th

Intel person announced a fistful of caller gaming CPUs, the Core Ultra 200S Plus series, to merchandise adjacent month. After 2024’s archetypal Core Ultra 200S household went for ratio gains astatine the outgo of frame-punching crippled power, these 200S Plus chips are erstwhile again tuned much for consecutive performance, which sounds bully to me. I similar little energy bills and vigor procreation arsenic overmuch arsenic the adjacent hardware editor, and was reasonably optimistic astir that archetypal batch of Core Ultras astatine first, but they ended up truthful dilatory and dull it fundamentally enactment maine disconnected penning astir CPUs for a twelvemonth and a half.

Say hello, then, to the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 250K Plus, which’ll beryllium retired connected March 26th 2026 astatine $299 and $199 respectively. There’ll besides beryllium somewhat cheaper KF variants, without integrated graphics, for each. Intel VP Robert Hallock says these volition beryllium the "fastest desktop gaming processors Intel has ever built," which they’ll request to beryllium – portion the bluish squad person been fiddling with efficiency, AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech has ran distant with the gaming advantage, particularly connected the outstandingly speedy Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Image credit: Intel

At a glance, however, the 200S Plus bid doesn’t look to person gone for gaming speeds done the accustomed mean of higher timepiece speeds and single-core muscle. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, for instance, lone has the aforesaid 5.5GHz max boost timepiece velocity arsenic the Core Ultra 7 265K it replaces, portion the caller Core Ultra 5 250K Plus lone hardly ups its ain boost clock, from 5.2GHz connected the Ultra 5 245K to 5.3GHz here. Instead, some summation 4 further Efficiency cores (the weaker but much power-sipping counterparts to the brawnier Performance cores). That should assistance their multitasking prowess, but won’t intelligibly assistance games.

What should compression much frames retired of your graphics paper is an up-to-900MHz summation successful D2D, oregon die-to-die, frequency. Translated from nerdspeak, this means the CPU’s composite parts – which see important bits similar the representation and compute controllers – tin pass with each different faster, reducing latency and helping to support games show high. The archetypal Core Ultra 200S bid introduced this separated-tile design, Intel chips having antecedently clutched its controllers adjacent together, and paid the price; hopefully this refresh fixes what it broke.

Intel’s in-house benchmarks suggest varied but affirmative results, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus averaging betwixt 4% and 39% faster than its predecessor, and the Core Ultra 250K Plus bumping up betwixt 8% and 24%.

Image credit: Intel

It’s inactive hard to spot adjacent the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus beating the 9800X3D successful a consecutive FPS footrace; these CPUs are yet conscionable a refresh, with the adjacent afloat procreation not expected until Intel launches their long-rumoured Nova Lake chips overmuch aboriginal this year. On that note, they besides usage the aforesaid LGA 1851 socket, enactment with the aforesaid 800 bid motherboard chipset, and acceptable the aforesaid coolers arsenic the 200S series.

A spot of people correction, caput you, wouldn’t beryllium the worst happening successful the world, particularly erstwhile those $299/$199 prices are importantly little than what their 2024 equivalents outgo erstwhile they were new. What the hell, PC hardware industry? Isn’t everything you marque expected to beryllium retired of banal and costing 3 times what it should?