AMD Ryzen 9 9950X vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Faceoff — it isn't even close

[Admin]

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K vs Ryzen 9 9950X competition is intense, so we put the chips through a six-round faceoff to find the winner.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Faceoff — it isn't even close : Read more

 

[ejolson]

They seem close to me.

I understand both systems have the same 5090 video card, but I could not find information on the RAM or timings. Did the Intel processor have faster RAM like it's capable of?

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Except it is close. As Techpowerup found in their review back in October 2024, the 9950X is 1.5% faster in games at 1920x1080 and 3% in applications, while the 285K is 3w more efficient in applications and 10w in games, pretty much all within the real world margin of error and natural variance between setups, so between the two it's basically personal preference or the better deal.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Review

Finally! Intel's new Arrow Lake architecture is launched. The new CPUs are full of design changes, like removal of Hyper-Threading, new Lion Cove P-Cores, an improved Thread Director and more. In our review we got surprising results that were both impressive and disappointing.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[USAFRet]

In the Productivity Performance charts, the Ultra 9 285 beats the Ryzen in nearly every category. Some of them, the Ultra 7 265 beats the Ryzen.

But on the final conclusion, you give the win in that category to the 9950.

Which would have changed the overall results from 5 - 2 to 4 - 3.
Much closer.

 

[truerock]

They seem close to me.

I understand both systems have the same 5090 video card, but I could not find information on the RAM or timings. Did the Intel processor have faster RAM like it's capable of?

I run DDR5-9200 CU-DIMM5

Corsair VENGEANCE® 48GB (2x24GB) DDR5 CUDIMM 9200MT/s CL44 Memory Kit - Silver CMKC48GX5M2X9200C44

with my Intel Core Ultra 9 285k which is tuned to run at 5700 MHz almost all the time.

I run games at 4k, 144HZ, 10bit with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 6GB

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

In the Productivity Performance charts, the Ultra 9 285 beats the Ryzen in nearly every category. Some of them, the Ultra 7 265 beats the Ryzen.

But on the final conclusion, you give the win in that category to the 9950.

Which would have changed the overall results from 5 - 2 to 4 - 3.
Much closer.

Pricing should also be a tie at worst, since the prices quoted for the 9950X and 285K are also different from another reputable store, B&H. The 9950X is $550 on sale at B&H while the 285K is $560, much closer than the stated prices, and for motherboards I see the Gigabyte Z890 AORUS ELITE WIFI7 is $240 on sale with X670E motherboards both above and below that. RAM and cooling will also be equal for most since they'll use the same models with each, so it should be 3-3 in my opinion, since I agree with you on the productivity award being mis-given to AMD.

But that would render this whole article, whose conclusion was known last year, redundant.

 

[austntok]

My 285k would win. 8600 CL36 cudimm, 57x all core P core, 50x E core, 40x ring, 36x NGU and D2D.

 

[blppt]

While both CPUs represent the pinnacle of their respective manufacturers' current general-purpose desktop offerings

I must have missed something, isn't the 9950X3D the current pinnacle of AMD's consumer desktop chips? Just because Intel lacks an equivalent shouldn't disqualify the AMD chip.

 

[cyrusfox]

people don't buy the best CPU sku for the iGPU, but I think that is a worthy note, the arc iGPU is great backup. I am not sure what AMD has on their desktop, one could argue it is a waste of silicon, but I have main driven off the iGPU a lot. I would never consider a KF or F sku.

 

[Dr3ams]

I never buy hardware based on benchmarks. I buy hardware for what I need it for and at a price that is acceptable to me. The last three years I kept telling myself I was going to upgrade my CPU, board, RAM and GPU. But when the time came to pull the trigger, I thought...why? Every application and game runs the way I want them to with the current hardware I have. Then why upgrade?

The things I have recently upgraded are the peripherals (keyboard, mouse, speakers and printer).

 

[ThatMouse]

Seems close enough to me, but if you game at all, there's a very clear no brainer build for you. Most consumers have no idea the issues going on in the hardware world and will get a Dell or some crap.

 

[YSCCC]

It seems pretty close to personally consider them a tie in performance, but judging the full load efficiency win for the 9950X and the socket will have one more gen seems a better option IRL.

 

[kyzarvs]

Except it is close. As Techpowerup found in their review back in October 2024, the 9950X is 1.5% faster in games at 1920x1080 and 3% in applications, while the 285K is 3w more efficient in applications and 10w in games, pretty much all within the real world margin of error and natural variance between setups, so between the two it's basically personal preference or the better deal.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Review

Finally! Intel's new Arrow Lake architecture is launched. The new CPUs are full of design changes, like removal of Hyper-Threading, new Lion Cove P-Cores, an improved Thread Director and more. In our review we got surprising results that were both impressive and disappointing.

www.techpowerup.com

Who spends this much on a CPU to game at 1080p though?

Don't get me wrong, I have no skin in the game, I really don't care which CPU is 'best' this week - I just think the test is silly.

 

[yzonker]

That has to be the biggest BS clickbate headline I've ever seen. In every test the CPUs were very close yet you put "It isn't even close".

Last time I ever visit this site.

 

[YSCCC]

Who spends this much on a CPU to game at 1080p though?

Don't get me wrong, I have no skin in the game, I really don't care which CPU is 'best' this week - I just think the test is silly.

Actually it's a valid comparison, in areas with smaller rooms in general, I know plenty of persons get TOTL hardware to game at 1080p, and it can have a few real reasons:

1) No GPU/CPU bottleneck causing any eye candy needing to be turned off
2) The system can last a few more years before the setup need replacement
3) For partial upgrade, that 40% CPU bottleneck usually means you can skip one more cycle on CPU/mobo upgrading, only plug a new GPU and it can have enough juice to run for 3 more years.

The test is on how the CPU bottleneck can be when you can just buy, say a RTX 7090 with every hardware reusing

 

[bit_user]

In the Productivity Performance charts, the Ultra 9 285 beats the Ryzen in nearly every category. Some of them, the Ultra 7 265 beats the Ryzen.

But on the final conclusion, you give the win in that category to the 9950.

When I count wins vs. losses, the 9950X wins 3/6 of single-threaded benches and 5/9 of multithreaded. So, that counts as a narrow win, I think?

 

[YSCCC]

When I count wins vs. losses, the 9950X wins 3/6 of single-threaded benches and 5/9 of multithreaded. So, that counts as a narrow win, I think?

I think it's the presentation of Tom's article though, at first glance the clickable sequence didn't show very clearly it's "single threaded" at first and first few are 285k winning by quite a lot, so probably quick skimming or even with a phone reading only the bars can be quite misleading

 

[-Fran-]

*Looks down to plebs discussing 9950X and 285K from my 9950X3D throne*
*giggles*

I'm half kidding there, for sure. If you have applications which can leverage AVX512, then this is not even a competition. I know, because I have such apps* and it's good.

Within this price range the 9950X should be the better pick in my eyes for one simple reason: Zen6 is on the horizon and, possibly, Zen7 as well (if what I'm reading/hearing is correct). If you truly need a CPU that can go wide without changing the whole platform and don't want to pay TR prices, then AM5, as a socket, is the smart buy. Sorry to say.

That being said, I'm still salty about that dual VCache'd model in the rumour mill. I could not care less for these two CPUs anymore.

Regards.

 

[ottonis]

So, this is a review of two "general purpose" CPUs. Yet, in the productivity suite, there are mostly rendering (several Blender, V-Ray) and video transcoding (Handbrake) tasks.
While a rendering scenario is cool to have, this is just a tiny fraction of the wide range of productivity tasks people actually employ.
Many people work with non-linear video editors such as Davinci Resolve, or use Lightroom/Photoshop/DxO Potolab for Photography post-production; , or are using AI-accelerated upscaling tools such as Topaz Labs VIdeo AI and Photo AI. Then there is a huge music production crowd using a DAW with tons of VST effects and VSTI instruments, sample libraries etc.

Why is this so important?
Because even though both AMD and Intel flagship CPUs may on average be fairly similar in performance, they still might devlier some serious differences in specific workloads and tasks, especially in the music production domain, where overall system latency is a hugely, massively critical factor. The first Ryzen iterations were notoriously bad at that but might have improved since then.

 

[nogaard777]

Not a day goes by without a Hassam article to perform mental gymnastics to bash Intel and suck off AMD. "It's not even close" my ass. It's really close.

There's so much wrong here. First you straight up lie about prices listing AMD lower than reality and Intel higher. In reality they're only ten bucks apart. Then the B650 boards are Not on par with Z890 because they lack pcie lanes, and even the overpriced X870 extremes still don't quite match it with no Thunderbolt, less CPU direct lanes that really matter, and slower USB, while costing MORE than Z890. Z890 is a superior platform. Period. Cherry picking gut bomb base model B650s is BS when they aren't equal.

I'll forgive you probably used sh*t memory because it gives diminishing returns as prices skyrocket, but it better have had at least 7200 when it's dirt cheap.

But the real crime and how you can always tell when it's an AMD biased article, is you always have to pick the overpriced 285k in an attempt to give AMD value. The 265k gives you 98% gaming and single core and 85-90% multicore of both those cops while being literally half the price. It gives up nothing in real world gaming if you don't play at 1080p with a 5090, while utterly curb stomping the more expensive 9700x, 9800x3d, and even edges the 9900x in multi core.

If you care about gaming and gaming only and like to burn money buy X3D. If you like to pay twice as much to gain a measly 10% in production you buy the 285k because professionals need those pcie lanes and thunderbolt.

If you want near-flagship level performance and didn't fail 3rd grade math you buy the 265k. Unless you simply hate Intel which I'm sure you do, you buy a 9700-9900x.

 

[nogaard777]

My 285k would win. 8600 CL36 cudimm, 57x all core P core, 50x E core, 40x ring, 36x NGU and D2D.

It's actually alarming how high my 265k overclocks with almost zero effort. Either I got a golden sample or I really think Intel dialed back these chips after the Raptor Lake drama.

Meanwhile any attempt to OC my Ryzen ends with a black screen retraining the DDR5.

 

[bill001g]

Like normal when there is little actual news they have to invent some. These are so close someone else could use different weights for things and come to the exact opposite conclusion.
Like how important is the power saving. This one has cropped up a lot lately I suspect because they can find little else to compare. It has a much different value to company that is buying 1000 machines than to a gaming user who plays games a few hours a day. If someone can afford a 5090 do they really care if they have to pay a couple dollars extra a month for power.

Maybe soon we will get a new line cpu or gpu so the people who write articles don't have to put garabge out just to get a paycheck.

 

[nogaard777]

Pricing should also be a tie at worst, since the prices quoted for the 9950X and 285K are also different from another reputable store, B&H. The 9950X is $550 on sale at B&H while the 285K is $560, much closer than the stated prices, and for motherboards I see the Gigabyte Z890 AORUS ELITE WIFI7 is $240 on sale with X670E motherboards both above and below that. RAM and cooling will also be equal for most since they'll use the same models with each, so it should be 3-3 in my opinion, since I agree with you on the productivity award being mis-given to AMD.

But that would render this whole article, whose conclusion was known last year, redundant.

He tried to use motherboard prices to skew it in AMD's favor, but his cherry picked trash B650 is not equivalent to a Z890. Even the X670E can't have more than one NVMe connected directly to the CPU without dropping your GPU to 8x. Not to mention Thunderbolt and more high speed USB ports that is going to matter to high end users. You're also not getting Wi-Fi 7 and 10gbit lan on a $150 B650.

Everything about this BS comparo screams "I ❤️ AMD!"

 

[TerryLaze]

Within this price range the 9950X should be the better pick in my eyes for one simple reason: Zen6 is on the horizon and, possibly, Zen7 as well (if what I'm reading/hearing is correct). If you truly need a CPU that can go wide without changing the whole platform and don't want to pay TR prices, then AM5, as a socket, is the smart buy. Sorry to say.

If ZEN 6 with 50% more cores is forced to the same power envelop as ZEN 5, so that you can use the same mobo, it means that you will get far less of that multithread than you think.
My guess is that AMD will have made ZEN 6 to leverage more IPC, so to have more transistors, and not to only be more power efficient without having any better IPC.
So ZEN 6 will be needing more power to reach the same clocks, and 50% more cores with however more transistors/IPC is not going to be as much more multi as you seem to think.

Point being buy what you need today, don't base your decisions on something that might or might not happen. If ZEN 6 is good you will probably want to put it on a new mobo with far more power.

 

[ottonis]

But the real crime and how you can always tell when it's an AMD biased article, is you always have to pick the overpriced 285k in an attempt to give AMD value. The 265k gives you 98% gaming and single core and 85-90% multicore of both those cops while being literally half the price.

The review was obviously about a head-to-head flagship vs flagship CPU-comparison. The 285K and the 9950X are thje multi-purpose flagships of AMD and Intel, respectively, so it's only fair and right to compare those two.

That a lower-tier 265K CPU might be the overall better value proposition is an entirely different topic, and a matter for a different kind of review.
And by the way: traditionally. the iCore 1X700 was mostly the better option over the much more expensive 1X900 iCore CPUs from Intel, offering most of the performance at significantly lower cost and less energy consumption.