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If Intel ran back the Arrow Lake playbook, launching the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus at $300, it wouldn’t be impressive. There are some clear upsides in heavily-threaded applications, but at $300, the competition is fierce. At $200, the competition is lacking. We’ve seen the same six-core offering from AMD generation after generation, and Intel has barely managed to move the needle in this price bracket since the Core i5-12400.
The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus doesn’t just move the needle; it shatters the gauge. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D offers better gaming performance if you have a Micro Center close by, but otherwise, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus offers comparable gaming performance to the Ryzen 5 9600X and absolutely runs away with application performance. It’s often competing against processors that cost twice as much, especially in heavily-threaded workloads.
And, unlike the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, it’s not giving up a ton of efficiency to reach those marks. It consumes more power than the 245K, and Intel is still less efficient than AMD overall. Those increased power demands almost directly translate into higher performance, though. Further, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus managed to stay well below the other chips in our test pool in its thermal demands.
The only thing holding the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus back is the platform it’s on. The LGA 1851 socket will go away when Nova Lake CPUs launch later this year, so upgrading now locks you out of a further CPU swap down the line. AMD has built a moat for itself through platform longevity, and that’s only becoming more important as RAM and SSD prices continue to spin in the outer orbits of affordability.
That’s a downside for Intel, but it’s still largely offset by the performance. Unless you’re purely focused on gaming, you’re giving up an awful lot of performance by going with a Ryzen 5 9600X. And compared to Intel’s older Raptor Lake offerings, you’re also buying into a dead-end platform, giving up performance, and likely paying a higher price. In the market today, and with such an aggressive price, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is too powerful to ignore.
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