Intel Core Ultra 7 265K: Often more efficient than Ryzen 7 9700X

Intel Arrow Lake desktop CPUs have undergone a significant change on many levels. Aside from the new performance (P) and efficient (E) core architectures, they are now chiplet-based and have stopped using Hyper Threading, for example. At the same time, the power consumption is lower and the Core Ultra 7 265K CPU is often more power efficient compared to the competition. This even in games, which we haven’t seen before.

Conclusion

The fundamental change is in the higher efficiency. The high power consumption, which has become a target of criticism of past generations of Intel processors, is reduced with Arrow Lake. That’s the case virtually across all load levels. For example, average efficiency in games is 33% higher in our tests with the Ultra 265K compared to the Core i7-14700K. Yet in neither case does the processor run up against its power limits.

However, the “gaming performance” is comparable and rather lower with the new processor, these are negligible differences in practice. You’ll feel the lower consumption more. This also comes in the form of lower temperatures, although these can still be categorised as high. Under high load, even with a relatively high-performance cooler (Noctua NH-U14S at maximum fan speed) we measured nearly 90°C.

In terms of compute performance, the Core Ultra 7 265K doesn’t bring improvements between generations that would be worthy of replacing the Core i7-14700K. Unless, that is, if such consideration is mainly due to modernization per se, where you are replacing the discontinued LGA 1700 platform with LGA 1851 and are interested in, for example, NPUs or new, better equipped iGPUs.

Purely in terms of CPU clock speed, we can more or less talk about stagnation, albeit with the higher efficiency of the new processors. What’s relatively higher is the increase in single-threaded performance, where the Core Ultra 7 265K has the highest percentage advantage(versus Ci7-14700K). Even though that’s at comparable power consumption, speed-wise it’s +6 to 7% in Arrow Lake’s favor. In doing so, the CU7 265K also responds to the trend of increasing ST performance, and if it doesn’t beat the Ryzen 9 9900X in this regard, this CPU at least catches up to AMD.

The biggest advantage of the Core Ultra 7 265K over competing solutions at a similar price point is its multi-threaded performance. That’s where the Core Ultra 7 265K is on a whole other level compared to the Ryzen 7 9700X, and it’s more than 70% faster. And the Intel processor outperforms even the Ryzen 9 9900X by 5–15%. But that’s at lower efficiency (and significantly higher power consumption), as it’s already pushing the upper edge of possibilities. Anyway, even with Hyper Threading technology completely removed, Intel (CU7 265K) has the upper hand in multi-threaded performance over AMD processors.Sure, it’s due to the significantly larger number of cores – 20 (CU7 265K) instead of 8 (R7 9700X), but that’s the point, that’s the competitive advantage.

The price/multi-threaded performance ratio is clearly better for the Core Ultra 7 265K processor. These reasons might also make it the “happy medium” for users looking for higher MT performance, but the buying price of the build is also an important consideration. Rather, unless the computer is downright expensive, this is only welcome. The Core Ultra 7 265K fits into this mosaic really well.

The performance differences in gaming are already blurring when it comes to comparing the CU7 265K to the R7 9700X, and you probably won’t notice any noticeable differences. Ironically, the biggest but still small difference (around 4% in favour of the Core Ultra 7) in average gaming performance was in UHD/2160p resolution, where the result is limited by the capabilities of the graphics card.At the other end of the spectrum – 720p – the difference is only around 1%.

In summary, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K can be rated as a versatile processor suitable for all types of application scenarios, for compute tasks, for gaming, and even for single-threaded applications. Within its price range, it’s an attractive mix that is also more power-efficient on the new LGA 1851 platform than it used to be (on LGA 1700).
Smart buy!

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

Wordpress Table Plugin

We would like to thank the Datacomp e-shop for their cooperation in providing the tested hardware

Special thanks also to Blackmagic Design (for DaVinci Resolve Studio license), Topaz Labs (for licenses to DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Zoner (for Photo Studio X license)