Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU Review

Rendering

In Blender, we again see some strong gains across the board when comparing the new Core Ultra series to the 14th generation predecessors with a 12% uplift on the Core Ultra 5, 14% on the Core Ultra 7 and a 20% improvement with the Core Ultra 9. Compared to the competition, this again puts Intel ahead with the Core Ultra 9 when compared to the flagship 9950X, albeit only by 3% which is right on the cusp of margin of error.

Cinebench 2024 showed strong performance across both single-core and multi-threaded workloads. The U5 saw an 8% uplift in single-threaded performance over the 14600K, along with an 11% improvement in the multi-core test. The U7 saw a smaller, but still healthy 6% increase over the last generation in single-threaded, and again, 11% in multi-threaded over the 14700K and the U9 saw a slightly better 13% in single-core and an impressive 17% uplift in multi-core, which also puts it ahead of AMD by 6% in single core and 16% ahead in multi-core, so it can now be argued that Intel hold the crown again for the best performance CPU, but we do need to look at games to see how that translates.

In Corona, this time we’re looking for the lower the number the better, and AMD have this one sewn up coming in with the best result at 35 seconds, though Intel are only just behind on the 285K at 39 seconds. When looking at the previous generation, the CPUs to suffer somewhat here, coming in slower, which is likely down to the lack of hyperthreading, but optimisations through drivers and software development could see things improve, because while the U9 and 14900K are close, the U7 and U5 are separated quite dramatically from the processors they’re replacing.

The stack is fairly predictable in Keyshot Viewer, the U9 sitting between the Ryzen 7 9950X and the 7950X. The Core U7 is sitting between the 13900K and the 14700K, while the Core U5 is just ahead of the i6 14600K, but overall it’s clear that more cores is the key to success here.

It’s also basically the same story in V-Ray, with the three CPUs taking 2nd, 4th and 9th on the chart, but again they’re about where we expected, with some small gains from the old to the new Intel CPUs.