Intel admitted that its new desktop Core Ultra Plus CPUs are almost no faster than Ryzen in games

Intel compares the gaming capabilities of new Arrow Lake Refresh processors

Intel conducted internal tests in which the new Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus models from the Arrow Lake Refresh line are compared with competitors. The results show the following:

What does this mean for gamers?

- The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus has more than twice as many physical cores, but thanks to the P‑ and E‑core architecture it achieves the same gaming performance as a 6‑core Ryzen 5 9600X. In 37 game tests both chips show identical results.

- The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus adds four additional E‑cores compared with the 265K model, yet this has almost no impact on gaming FPS: compared to the Ryzen 7 9700X it is only about 4 % faster. Both processors cost $299.

How Intel positions the new chips?

A slide in the presentation compares performance in Blender – here Intel claims an advantage of its processors by roughly 85 %. This underscores that the company continues to emphasize mixed workloads and content creation, not just gaming.

Comparison with previous models

- The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus outperforms the Core Ultra 7 265K by about 15 % on average in gaming workloads.
- The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus shows a performance increase of around 13 % compared to the Core Ultra 5 245K.

Thus, the new Arrow Lake Refresh processors offer modest improvements to the gaming experience while maintaining competitive pricing, but their strongest advantage remains in multimedia and content‑creation tasks.