Should You Buy The Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 7 9800X3D?

Intel finally released fixes for the new Core Ultra processors, so is the 285K now worth buying? In this video, the next in our "Ultimate PC Component Fighting Championship" battle series, we are going to find out. In the UpcFC series we’ve been helping you make the right choice by pitting two components against each other in the PC octagon to see who wins. In this video our focus will be on the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, and how it compares to the current king of gaming, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. In addition to showing you benchmarks across 18 games, I will also outline the recent fixes from Intel, and show you how they impact performance. And if you stick around, I will share with you my pro tips for how to unleash the performance locked inside the 285K, something you will not want to miss.
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Key Components:
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Title: Should You Buy The Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 7 9800X3D?
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Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:21 - Video Focus (285K vs 9800X3D)
00:50 - The Launch of the Intel Core Ultra 200S Series
01:50 - What Were The Problems At Launch?
02:37 - What Changes Have Been Made?
04:00 - What Is The Performance Impact Of These Changes?
05:07 - What Changes Are Coming?
05:37 - Test Components
07:07 - Test Setup
08:14 - Impact of RAM Speed on Performance
09:02 - Test Methodology
09:46 - Benchmarks featuring Bruce Buffer
10:30 - Cinebench R24
10:35 - AIDA64 Extreme
10:40 - 3DMark Time Spy Extreme
10:45 - 3DMark CPU Profile
10:50 - Blender 4.2
10:55 - Geekbench 6
11:00 - 7-Zip 19.0
11:05 - Total War: Warhammer III
11:10 - Cyberpunk 2077
11:15 - Company of Heroes 3
11:20 - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
11:25 - Forza Horizon 5
11:30 - Civilization VI
11:35 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider
11:40 - Red Dead Redemption 2
11:45 - Middle-Earth: Shadow of War
11:50 - Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
11:55 - Formula 1 2024
12:00 - Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
12:05 - The Talos Principle II
12:10 - Far Cry 6
12:15 - Horizon Zero Dawn
12:20 - Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
12:25 - Assassin's Creed Mirage
12:30 - Black Myth: Wukong
12:35 - 17 Game Average
12:49 - How To Tune & Optimize The 285K
13:08 - Install High Speed RAM, Turn XMP On & Adjust Memory Sub-Timings
14:42 - Overclock Performance & Efficient Cores
17:23 - Overclock Ring Ratio, NGU Fabric and D2D Interface
18:40 - Set Power Profile, Set Power Plan and Turn Memory Integrity Off
19:43 - What About Intel APO & Undervolting?
20:52 - 285K Tuning & Optimization Summary
21:16 - Performance Impact of Tweaks
21:57 - 9800X3D Tuning & Optimization Summary
22:30 - Tuning & Optimization Limitations
22:57 - 285K vs 9800X3D Performance Comparison
24:06 - 285K vs 9800X3D Cost Comparison
24:40 - Final Recommendation
25:36 - Wrap-Up
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Blackbird PC Tech Links:
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Intel Arrow Lake Test Platform:
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AMD Test Platform Test Platform:
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[uwhat]

Great channel super detailed info hope it grows quickly

[Nods.O]

9950x vs 285k Would be another interesting battle.

[healingstat]

If you need 700$ cpu with 700$ motherboard to compete 9800X3D so we have a big problem somewhere...

Good job and appreciate your work. We need more videos like yours EDUCATING the public

[pikachupl]

Awesome video! I appreciate your hard work

[michaeljhonny]

The problem is Intel failed big time, they went from 10nm to 3nm process node and they came up with this trash of a cpu, no amount of sugar coating can fix this.
The main problem is that Intel should know by now that they need to come up with their own x3d stacked memory if they want to compete on gaming, they had all the time in this world and they didnt even bother, i mean the 285k humiliates the 9800x3d on everything else except gaming where it gets humiliated, so the answer is simple, they need to work on that, simple as that.

[yuan.pingchen]

The irony is that even though Intel uses TSMC's manufacturing process, it still remembers the high heat generation and frequency reduction caused by avx512. This means that we will not be able to use the avx512 instruction set invented by Intel on the Intel platform in the next few years.

[ignacioaltamirano]

incredible work, i have been waiting many days for this review, thank you so much, my motherboard is the same, i started playing call of duty, but after watching this video I will start tuning the processor, thank you men really very grateful.

[TheLoneBirb]

Great Video! I appreciate you taking the time to work with arrow lake and not just throwing it away as soon as the 9800x3d released like Jay and the other big pc tech channels. I'm an early adopter of the 285k coming from a 4th gen i7 4790k, so I know I will experience a world of difference either way.(just waiting on the 5090 to complete) And I will be doing workstation tasks like 3d rendering and video editing a bit more than gaming. My only concern is the P and E core overclock temperature increase. 91c seems a bit too much, so I may not be able to go the overclocking route. Does the 91c and high power draw occur in just short spikes, or is more steady?

[evofreak]

Are these new ram kits already available? I'm still stuck with a 7200 kit and leaving performance on the table. I live in Europe, belgium.

[Tubezilla]

Hi, Would you prefer the Unify or Ace board. Which would be the best Z890 board for overclocking?

[jeroenklaassen]

Maybe in your country the 285k could be good value. Over here its 200 euro more expensive then the 9800x3d and the 265k is more in line with the 9800x3d just a little cheaper but not much. Everyone is getting the 9800x3d.

[shadowarez]

I'd stick with the 9800x3D Intel has issues still going into this new gen of CPUs. Just got to wait till they become available to us mere mortals since allocation is set to certain tech tubers initially. Once the 9950x3D comes out we may get hands on lower SKUs if lucky.

[jookm]

Great review and I appreciate the performance tweaking tips. I still plan to use the 9800X3D once CPU and mobo are back in stock and will use that video to tweak. But this video is great for comparison and shows that maybe there is hope for Intel yet, at least when it come to performance.

[Wolverine]

9800X3d still far better for gaming. The mixcrocode update improved intel, but not near enough., For productivity Intel CPU is better with similar IPC of P cores and the very much improved e-cores having 24 in total due to 8. But the tile based latency intel has is just horrible for gaming and without 3DS vcache intel cannot mitigate it near enough to compete in gaming with X3D CPUs.

[TheSkyLynx]

Thanks a lot for these comprehensive tests and analysis.

[outlet]

"Huston, we have a problem. Gamers are running out of money."

[LordLucifer]

Do you have a guide for intel 265k? So I can copy your settings and try them out as I come from am4 I don't know anything about intel

[uwhat]

Alway was worth buying only if you are purely a gamer it was not. The channels that slated it was poor were gamer channels like Gamers Nexus, Level1 Tech (did not say it was poor) and non-gamer channels never said it was poor because it was not, I welcome improvements and bug fixes people who bought it like me have never had a complaint about it and I have 20 the next release of it will be vastly better as this was a big change for Intel. Good video though at least you understood the technology unlike most reviewers. The retail CPUs were nothing like the reviewer ones (I never had one BSOD on any of my 20 CPU's) though I don't care about games and windows did have a significant impact like it did with AMD when it released its own CPU's. Good vid

[RyanFennec]

So what you're telling me is "intel finewine" just gonna use that term to annoy amd guys who would say "amd finewine" because their products were so broken on launch it took 1 to 2 years to get all the performance out of it xd