Buzz
The truth about the Core Ultra 200S isn’t as bright as Intel makes it seem.
Intel’s Core Ultra 200S processors didn't leave a strong impression when they launched in October. While they perform well in computing tasks, their gaming performance disappointed, as they were outperformed by the previous Raptor Lake generation in several titles. Intel attributed this to energy configuration issues, anti-cheat software conflicts, and the lack of a Performance & Power Management (PPM) package.
Initial fixes were rolled out through Windows 11 updates, and the latest BIOS update was introduced at CES 2025. According to Intel, these updates significantly boost gaming performance, with Cyberpunk 2077 achieving a 26% FPS increase and Far Cry 6 seeing a 16% FPS boost. Even 3DMark TimeSpy's overall score reportedly jumped by 97%.
Performance tests from Tom's Hardware
Despite Intel's numbers, real-world testing by Tom's Hardware shows that the actual performance gains are far less impressive than Intel suggests.
Tom's Hardware's real-world tests show that the results aren't much different, and in some cases, they even perform worse.
Using the Core 9 285K with an Asus motherboard, Tom's Hardware observed a slight performance drop of around 3% in gaming benchmarks after the update.
When tested on an MSI motherboard, the performance showed a small improvement of 3.7% compared to the original setup.
Compared to the fastest results from the 285K on the MSI board, the Ryzen 9 9950X is now 6.5% faster (previously just 3% faster), and the Ryzen 7 9800X3D still outperforms the 285K by nearly 40%. This gap remains substantial. This suggests that the update didn’t improve Arrow Lake’s competitive standing against AMD processors.
What’s more troubling for Intel is that the previous generation processor, the Core i9-14900K, showed a much stronger improvement than the Core 9 285K after updating to the new Windows version. Tom's Hardware only updated the operating system for the 14900K—no new firmware updates. The results show that the 14900K is now 7% faster than when tested on the old Windows version. It seems that Windows fixed some issue with Intel processors, making the 14900K outperform the 285K by 14%.
For the game Cyberpunk 2077 specifically, there was a noticeable performance increase after the developers released a patch for the game’s source code.
The same happened with Far Cry 6.
However, Intel has stated that this issue originates from the game developer's side and that they have already fixed the problem themselves, meaning it is not directly related to the BIOS update. Intel also emphasized that gamers should not expect further game updates that might improve the performance of the Arrow Lake series in the future.
Tests show that Intel has yet to resolve the major issue with the Core Ultra 9 285K, and in fact, older Intel processors are significantly faster in gaming benchmarks. Once again, Intel has disappointed users with false claims.
