I tested the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and 5 250K Plus against AMD’s best gaming CPUs — this should be a mismatch, but the results shocked me

For three years, if you wanted a great desktop CPU for gaming, you bought AMD, period. Specifically, anything with “X3D” on the end of the name. And it’s been that way because Intel’s previous shot at desktop chips (the original Core Ultra Series 2 or “Arrow Lake”) dropped the ball.

There were performance and power issues, an abnormally high latency between the chip and memory, and all of this led to gaming performance that fell behind even Intel’s older CPUs. One thing was clear: Team Blue had to go back to the drawing board.

And they’re back with what seems to be a refresh on paper — the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus ($199) and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus ($299). Strong pricing, but I was skeptical about what “plus” actually meant.

So I did what any normal person would do: I put them in an insane mismatch scenario against the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D. With more L3 Cache memory (AMD brands it as 3D V-Cache), you can always rely on these for strong, smooth game performance.

But Intel’s found a cheat code. Starting with the fundamentals of speeding up the Die-to-Die frequency (the travel time for data inside the chip), and optimizing it with an all-in-one Intel Platform Performance Package (IPPP) that brings so much more potential out of it, these chips come too close for Team Red’s comfort.

Don’t get me wrong, if gaming is your priority, AMD still takes the win. But only by a whisker, which is a concern because Intel’s chips are so much cheaper — the Core Ultra 5 being $250 less than the 7800X3D, and the Ultra 7 $180 less than the 9800X3D. And that’s before even getting into the data that shows the Core Ultras being fantastic all-rounders. But I digress, let’s get into it.

How Tom’s Guide reviews CPUs

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus & 7 270K Plus: Cheat Sheet

• What are these? These are a new line of Intel desktop processors — a refresh from the last gen that addresses a lot of the previous issues.
• Who are they for? Enthusiasts and creators who want a great all-around balance of productivity and gaming.
• What does it cost? Final retail pricing may vary (thanks, RAMageddon), but MSRP at the moment is $199 for the Ultra 5 and $299 for the Ultra 7.
• What do we like? These chips take a massive multi-threaded lead in productivity over AMD’s X3D chips in productivity and content creation, gaming performance has been upgraded nicely, and everything runs surprisingly cool.
• What don’t we like? Intel's use of a complex software stack like this performance package means you’re not getting peak power out of the box (a couple of extra steps to get it), and 1% frame-rate lows don’t match AMD’s hardware-cache-heavy design.

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus & 7 270K Plus: Specs

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus & 7 270K Plus: The ups

You could see what Intel was trying to go for with the O.G. Arrow Lake — a balance between work and play, which it didn’t deliver on. This is Team Blue’s comeback moment, and they’ve taken full advantage.

Aiming for the king

So Intel calls this its “fastest gaming processor.” Let’s put that to the test, shall we?

What is fascinating here is that these are actually beginning to trade blows with X3D chips, and you can see that when put into real-world gaming performance, too.

Now you may be looking at the frame-rate gap AMD has over Intel, at Intel’s lead in a couple of 3DMark synthetic benchmarks, and thinking “WTF!?” Well, that’s where we’ve got to go a bit geeky:

• Monolithic vs tiled: AMD’s X3D chips use a single monolithic chip with 8 cores. This means all the cores can immediately communicate with the memory and the GPU with very low latency. Intel uses a “tiled” architecture — basically different cores of the chip do different things, and while that Die-to-Die (D2D) frequency is 900MHz higher, that’s still a longer time for cores to talk to each other, which can lead to lower frame rates (even when the synthetic speeds may be higher).
• The Cache gap: AMD’s chips pack 96MB of L3 cache (known as the 3D V-Cache), which acts as a massive waiting room for game data like physics and NPC logic. The Core Ultra 7 270K only has 36MB, so even though your chip cores are technically faster, it still needs to sort out an overflow waiting room on the system RAM, which is going to be slower.

There are situations where this can be felt most (more on them later), but the big thing here is that Intel is back on the right track in terms of gaming performance, with nice gains over previous-gen Arrow Lake chips and closing the gap on AMD.

Beasty productivity performance

Same as the previous chips, these are productivity monsters. Whether acting alone or as a conductor to the GPU, the performance and efficiency core combo makes better sense of both day-to-day tasks and intense workloads to deliver zippier speeds.

So whether it’s pushing local AI to its limits (currently training a version of myself…it’s getting weird), complex 4K renders or just simple multi-tab web browsing, these won’t let you down.

And it’s also being done while they keep their cool much better, too. At peak stress of a multi-thread render, you can see that the Core Ultras sit far prettier at around 154-degrees fahrenheit, while the thermal density of putting 3D V-cache atop AMD CPUs like a blanket of sorts does spice things up a little.

Solid bang for your buck

But going band-for-band misses the bigger point, which is the lower price here. Yes, AMD is still ahead in terms of gaming, but with that gap narrowed and the price of Intel’s options being kept quite lower, the performance-per-dollar swings to Team Blue’s favor.

And Intel’s able to do this with some key technologies that allow the chip to work smarter, not harder. Before the IPPP, you can imagine the CPU as a chaotic kitchen — getting tons of orders in and not necessarily knowing what order to tackle them in. The salad gets soggy under a heat lamp while the steak is raw, and Gordon Ramsay is kicking off somewhere about it.

But the IPPP pipeline acts as an executive chef standing at the pass and has a set number of steps to go through:

• The Application Optimization layer (APO): The kitchen has been trained on a small number of dishes, so when the chef sees a rush of orders for the “Wukong Special,” they know exactly what to do. So far, APO supports 21 game titles — shame that it’s so small, but only up from here.
• The Binary Optimizer Tool (IBOT): Instead of letting the cooks (the CPU cores) work randomly on different dishes, the Executive Chef intercepts the tickets and tells each cook to work on all of one thing at once. Machine code gets translated and streamlined in real-time to unlock better performance.
• Die-to-Die frequency boost (D2D): By increasing this by +900MHz, the executive chef just installed a faster conveyor belt in the kitchen, so the food moves quickly to the dining room (the GPU and RAM) without any bottleneck.

This is all opt-in, and I highly suggest you do to extract the most bang for your buck.

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus & 7 270K Plus: The downs

But while Intel has royalty in its sights, there is one crucial place where it does fall down to AMD’s X3D silicon supremacy.

The 1% Low reality check

Testing game performance is much more than just telling you the average frames per second — you’ve got to look at the 1% Lows.

The intensity of graphics can turn on a dime from just looking at a plate on a table to a chaotic multi-person action scene, and while you can see the best FPS on average, measuring the average of the lowest 1% of frame rates shows you whether you’re in for a bit of stuttering in certain games.

For all the software trickery Intel’s done great work with here, it can’t overcome a pure hardware advantage. AMD CPUs have up to 3X the amount of memory cache on the chip, which forms a large hard-wired safety net for smoother gaming by putting essential instructions directly on the chip.

Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 suffer from a roughly 10-15% drop in 1% lows in comparison to AMD, leading to some small stutters that can be a problem in competitive titles.

Intel does have a couple of key things going on here to try to nullify this advantage — a fix to the latency with a 900MHz speed boost of Die-to-Die frequency (the speed at which data is moved around) and that software counter-attack with Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool (streamlining machine code in real-time to reclaim performance). This makes them much better than the Arrow Lake of old.

But Intel’s IBOT has a tiny bit of overhead, and if game logic gets chaotic, the instant response of a boatload of L3 cache is always going to win out. It’s not something that will overtly impact your gaming experience if you’re more of a single-player/cinematic player.

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus & 7 270K Plus: Verdict

Intel aimed for its all-rounder era before and failed. Now, they’ve only gone and done it! Are they going to take the X3D’s crown for gaming? Not with those reduced 1% lows if you’re feeling competitive online. But for the prices that Team Blue’s charging, does it really matter? Not particularly.

Whether it’s in lower-priced pre-builts compared to AMD systems or in planning out your own DIY setup, this is a better balance of capabilities that makes these great CPUs for heavy work and cinematic play.