Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and Ultra 5 245K review: gaming losses, content creation wins

Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, F1 24, Forza Horizon 5.

Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Oct. 24, 2024

We've run our CPU benchmarks this time around at 1080p, 1440p and 4K, often using DLSS performance mode to shift the burden to processor performance even more heavily - so the 4K results serve as a rough proxy for native 1080p gaming in these cases. We're using an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card on each of our test beds, armed with DDR5-6000 CL30 memory for the majority of our platforms and DDR4-3600 CL16 for AM4.

This page contains three vehicular titles, starting with the classic CPU torture test flying low over the streets of New York City in Flight Simulator 2020, followed by races in both F1 24 and Forza Horizon 5.

Flight Simulator 2020

Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ultra, DLSS Quality

Flight Sim 2020 is brilliant for reviewers because flying low to the ground is incredibly demanding on the CPU, as new and high-quality data is streamed in rapidly. We only need DLSS quality mode here to get a tight CPU lock at essentially all three resolutions.

The 285K hits around 57fps, or a little more with its power limits removed, which puts it ahead of the Core i5 12600K and Ryzen 9 5600X but behind all other competition - not a brilliant showing for a flagship part. True, the 12900K is only a couple of percentage points better, but the 14900K holds a sizeable 15 percent advantage while the 9950X is 12 percent faster. The 245K is even more on the back foot, most closely resembling the Ryzen 5600X and Core i5 12600K.

F1 24

F1 24: DX12, Ultra, DLSS Performance

F1 is one of the few games on our benchmarking list that I play regularly, and for competitive play you really want as many frames per second as you can muster. The RTX 4090 we're using here is combined with the Ultra (but not Ultra High) graphics preset, so we have all of the bells and whistles except for RT enabled, plus DLSS in performance mode.

The 245K and 285K are confusingly similar in this test, both around 270fps, which puts both chips ahead of the 12600K but behind other models they ought to be beating, such as the 12900K and 14600K. AMD tends to do much better here, with the 9000X lineup around 340-360fps and the 7800X3D all the way up at 390fps average.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5, Extreme, DLSS Quality

Forza Horizon 5's integrated benchmark stresses both CPU and GPU, so we've opted for DLSS performance mode to keep things as CPU-heavy as possible.

This test represents another rare gen-on-gen win for the 285K, with a 211fps average result that is three percentage points clear of the 14900K - and about the same margin behind the Ryzen 9 9950X. Of course, the 7800X3D comfortably takes the overall crown with a six percent lead over the 285K. That's not a bad showing by any means, and the 245K also acquits itself with a 196fps average that comfortably outpaces the 14600K - albeit not any of the Ryzen 7000 or 9000 competition.