Intel publicizes Core Ultra 270K Plus and 250K Plus, its ‘fastest gaming desktop processors ever’

Now, Intel claims it has lastly surpassed each predecessors with “Intel’s fastest gaming desktop processors ever”: the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and 250K Plus, delivery March twenty sixth.

While we don’t have each element immediately, the corporate claims the 24-core, 5.5GHz turbo Core Ultra 7 270K Plus can beat each the Raptor Lake i9-14900K and the Arrow Lake Ultra 9 285K in gaming efficiency — and with 24 cores, 24 threads and a $300 value, it may compete favorably in productiveness in opposition to AMD’s Ryzen 7 9700X as properly.

This is the place lovers will most likely observe that AMD’s 9700X is nowhere close to essentially the most potent gaming chip that AMD makes, and can be a yr and a half previous… however for $300 and practically double the claimed multithreaded efficiency, the Intel chip could flip some heads in the case of multithreaded workloads on a funds.

The 250K Plus could also be an identical story at $200, with a claimed 103 p.c higher multicore efficiency on common than the equally priced AMD 9600X.

Intel’s slidedeck doesn’t truly present how a lot sooner gaming efficiency could be in comparison with its earlier flagship chips, not to mention AMD’s chips — as an alternative, Intel compares the 270K Plus and 250K Plus on to their instant predecessors, the 265K and 245K, respectively.

There, features may be fairly modest at “up to 4 percent” in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but in addition as a lot as 39 p.c in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with a brand new Intel Binary Optimization Tool enabled, a “a first-of-its-kind binary translation layer optimization capability that can improve native performance in select games.”

Other than the Binary Optimization Tool, Intel writes that the particular developments right here in Arrow Lake Refresh are 4 extra effectivity cores, a 200MHz sooner base clock on the P-cores and a 100MHz sooner base-clock on the E-cores, a 900MHz sooner hyperlink between the CPU and reminiscence controller, assist for DDR5 7200 MT/s reminiscence, and “early support” for 4-rank CUDIMM reminiscence modules, assuming your Intel 800-series motherboard helps these.

Both chips nonetheless run at 125W TDP like their instant predecessors; the 270K now has a base clock of 4.1GHz on the P-cores and three.4GHz on the E-cores, whereas the 250K’s clocks begin at 4.4GHz and three.7GHz respectively. The 250K has 30MB of Smart Cache, up from 24MB on the 245K, whereas the 270K nonetheless has 36MB.

“Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus desktop processors will maintain compatibility with all 800-series chipset motherboards currently on the market. New 800-series chipset motherboard models will be coming to market throughout 2026, including models that enable early support for 4-Rank CUDIMM memory,” Intel’s press launch reads, including that there can be KF variants of the chips (with out built-in graphics) as properly.