I tested the Core Ultra 9 285K against the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and it’s ugly

Intel’s new Core Ultra 9 285K is finally here, promising a boost in performance with a significant reduction in power requirements, at least according to Intel. How can you read in my Core Ultra 9 285K ReviewIntel’s performance claims are not as rosy as reality, especially when compared to what is unequivocally the best processor for games you can buy: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

I put both processors on the test bench to compare them head-to-head, looking at performance in gaming and productivity applications, as well as temperature and efficiency. These CPUs are aimed at different users, but there are still many interesting comparisons we can see between them.

Specs

The Core Ultra 9 285K and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D are radically different CPUs, and that becomes clear when comparing their specifications directly. Although it’s generally not a good idea to compare specs between two CPUs of the same class, the gap in specs here is so big that we can make some interesting observations. The main difference between the two CPUs is the number of cores.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a fairly simple chip in that sense. It comes with eight Zen 4 cores and a total of 16 threads, and can boost up to 5 GHz. That’s not the interesting thing about the CPU. It’s the 104 MB of cache packed on top of the CPU, split between 8 MB of L2 cache and 96 MB of L3 cache thanks to AMD V-Cache 3D packaging technology.

The Core Ultra 9 285K doesn’t have any fancy 3D V-Cache, but it still has a few tricks of its own. It’s a 24-core CPU, but unlike the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, it doesn’t come with simultaneous multi-threading (SMT). Each core only has one thread. Additionally, Intel uses its hybrid architecture, mixing the Lion Cove P-core design with the Skymont E-core design. According to Intel, the E-cores are the main performance drivers here, unlike the Core i9-14900Kwhere the E-cores were relatively weak.

With more cores and higher clock speeds, it should come as no surprise that the Core Ultra 9 285K has much higher power requirements. I’ll address efficiency directly a little further down in this comparison, but I can now tell you that, under full load, the Core Ultra 9 285K consumes twice (or more) the power of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, albeit generally with much better performance.

Prices

The Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 7 7800X3D force you to think about price because, depending on what you use your PC for, you can save quite a bit of money. The Core Ultra 9 285K is newer and is the flagship chip in Intel’s latest range, so you’ll spend $589 if you want to get it now. The price will drop over time (the Core i9-14900K costs around $450 a year after its release), but until we see Intel’s next generation, you can expect to spend upwards of $500.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is much cheaper at $450, although I’ve seen some strange changes in CPU prices in recent months. Just a few weeks before publishing this comparison, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D sold out everywhereand before that, you could usually find it for around $320. Now, at the time of publication, you’ll find it between $450 and $500, but I expect the price to drop very soon.

AMD has confirmed that its next-generation 3D V-Cache CPU will arrive on November 7, so depending on when you read this, be sure to check out the price of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. If the new CPU is already available by then, I expect we’ll see the price drop to around $350 to $400.

Even with its higher price, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is significantly cheaper than the Core Ultra 9 285K: $139 cheaper, at least, and about $239 cheaper if the Ryzen 7 7800X3D drops in price.

Productivity performance

Here’s quick proof that the Core Ultra 9 285K and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D are in completely different weight classes. As you can see in Cinebench R24 above, the Core Ultra 9 285K is much faster than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D; It’s not even close. Intel says this CPU is particularly strong on a Cinebench ray-traced rendering pipeline, but even if it shaved 10% or 15% off the Core Ultra 9 285K’s performance, it would still be miles ahead of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

For more mixed-use benchmarks, take a look at Geekbench 6. The Core Ultra 9 285K still excels with multi-core performance, but the single-core delta is much smaller. And despite the clear advantage in multi-core performance, that gap is also smaller. Throughout my testing, one thing became clear: the Core Ultra 9 285K is really fast in certain applications, but that performance doesn’t apply everywhere.

A great example of that is Photoshop. You might assume that the Core Ultra 9 285K’s raw multi-core advantage would mean that it obviously wins against the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but that’s not the case. In fact, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is faster in Photoshop according to my tests. That’s not good considering the difference in price and specifications between these two CPUs. Expect the Core Ultra 9 285K to wipe the floor with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in all productivity applications.

In Premiere Pro, the Core Ultra 9 285K regains a dominant spot, but it really shouldn’t be that close. Not only is the Core Ultra 9 285K a much more capable CPU, but it also has access to QuickSync in Premiere Pro, which significantly speeds up performance. The fact that these two CPUs are even competitive in Premiere shows how the Core Ultra 9 285K’s performance can be disappointing in certain applications.

Gaming performance

Gaming performance is where we see the most consistent divergence. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D crushes. In the 10 games I tested, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D didn’t lose any. Sometimes it only shows a minor improvement in performance, but in games like F1 22 and Cyberpunk 2077, The Ryzen 7 7800X3D provides a transformative improvement in gaming performance.

Not all games respond well to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D’s additional cache. As you can see from titles like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Black Myth: Wukong, There is some other factor that limits the performance of the processor; in most cases, your graphics card. However, other games can take advantage of the extra cache greatly, as shown Final Fantasy XIV, The Wonders of Tiny Tina, and even Red Dead Redemption 2.

For the Core Ultra 9 285K, you can only hope to match the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and in most games, it’s not even close to doing so. If you focus primarily on gaming, there’s really no competition here. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D absolutely crushes the Core Ultra 9 285K and is significantly cheaper.

Thermal and efficiency.

Another area where the Ryzen 7 7800X3D leads is efficiency. Not only does it have a much lower power rating, but it can also deliver higher gaming performance and consume less power. You can see it in action in the chart above. Considering only the maximum power consumption during these games, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D remained much more efficient under a heavy workload.

That’s not criticizing Intel. As you can see from the Core i9-14900K, Intel made huge efficiency improvements in this generation and can often deliver similar performance under 100 watts. But it still has more power than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which rarely exceeds 50 watts in games.

Temperature is a different story. On average, the Core Ultra 9 285K was slightly cooler than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D while gaming. It’s not a big difference, but I tested it with a 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler. In a small form factor PC, those temperature differences can really add up, and the Core Ultra 9 285K is set to better handle a more thermally constrained environment.

It is important to remember the design of 3D V-Cache CPUs. The cache is stacked directly on top of the cores, serving as an insulating layer between the cores and the integrated heat sink (IHS). This is why the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and other 3D V-Cache CPUs tend to run a bit longer and why they are not unlocked for overclocking.

The king of games reigns supreme

There’s really no competition here if you’re a gamer – the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the way to go. It’s much faster and cheaper, and although productivity performance drops, the CPU still puts up a surprisingly impressive fight in apps like Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

The natural counterpart to this is productivity performance. If that’s what you care about, the Core Ultra 9 285K is the way to go. However, it’s worth keeping in mind the inconsistent performance I saw with Intel’s latest CPU. If you want good productivity and gaming performance at the same time, I would recommend Intel Core i9-14900K or the latest from AMD Ryzen 9 9950X instead, the former is available for around $450.

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