IntelCore Ultra 7 Desktop Processor 265K - 20 cores (8 P-cores + 12 E-cores) up to 5.5 GHz

If you watch certain popular YouTube tech channels and read the hivemind babble at a certain site that rhymes with “head hit”, then you would believe that computers have no other purpose in this world but to play games. In that regard, there is no denying that AMD excels at building CPUs that out-game Intel (although, the margins are not as great as they want you to believe), but Intel excels in productivity tasks which is far more important than getting a few more frames in whatever the latest and greatest AAA game is. I mean, AMD uses computers to design and build their CPUs for all those gamey people (yes, some of them do stink - attitudes anyway), so productivity is king. Intel took a pretty good beat down for the issues with 13th and 14th generation CPUs and stumbled out of the gate with these Core Ultra chips, but these problems are blown out of proportion by the aforementioned outlets and I have not seen much in the way of retractions when Intel admitted (and fixed) the problems with this current gen, so be careful where you get your information. If you are considering buying this CPU, there are two videos I highly recommend watching. Go to YouTube and search “Is The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K Really That Bad? Blackbird PC”, and “We're looking at it ALL wrong...AMD Ryzen 9900x vs Intel Core Ultra 7 265k Tech Notice”. These are two YouTubers who provide proper objective results without all the drama and hyperbole of the popular channels who are just feeding the “head hit” beast and working their own personal agendas. I have run a few synthetic benchmarks and performance was very good, but I prefer real world results like video compression with Handbrake, which produced some seriously impressive numbers. The time it takes to process a 2-pass encode for Blu Ray files is about 50% -60% less than it took my i5 10600k, and it stays pretty cool with the highest temps on some of the cores hitting 84C with a Thermalright Phantom Spirit cooler. Even though my temps were perfectly fine out of the box, I still like to keep things as cool as possible and I have undervolted to a stable - 0.075. The Core Ultra chips benefit greatly from faster RAM, and 8000MHz seems to be the stable sweet spot from all the reviews I have watched, but I opted for less expensive 7200MHz which is more than adequate for a home setup. If there are concerns about CPU bending like previous gens, then look for motherboards that utilize the new reduced load ILM (RL-ILM). The initial release price was a bit tough to swallow, but now they are very budget-friendly and pretty much a no-brainer if you like to do things with your PC other than play games.

The Gaming performance is decent, the CPU is stable, and it doesn't run hot or consume a ton of power. In Gaming it beats on and beats out older 14nm Intel processors, and it can go toe to toe with Alder Lake processors. I haven't checked out the performance of the Integrated Graphics, but it is supposedly way better than what Intel had used for years with their Core i desktop processors.Where this processor really shines is with workstation type tasks. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar there isn't a better value. I ran a number of benchmarks such as a few different versions of Cinebench and the benchmark numbers this thing puts out is amazing. The Skymont based E-Cores on these Arrow Lake processors are greatly improved over the Gracemont E-Cores that were used in Raptor Lake and Alder Lake.The reason I bought this is I was forced to buy a motherboard with a 5090, and I decided to upgrade my Daughter's computer which had a Core i9-9900k. I gave her a choice between Intel and AMD Ryzen, and she picked Intel. Since I had a spare motherboard for both platforms, I decided on this processor. The Core Ultra 9 285k would have been nice, but I didn't see a reason to pay almost twice as much for four extra E-Cores and slightly higher clock frequencies.Given a choice for my own system, I probably wouldn't buy one of these unless I needed something cheap for CAD, Premiere Pro, or something that can leverage Quick-Sync. What I dislike the most is not the CPU, but the platform. Intel plans to release Arrow Lake refresh processors for this platform, then they'll ditch it for another socket with Panther/Nova Lake. At least AMD is going to squeeze out Zen 6 for socket AM5.Overall this is a good processor. In some ways it reminds me of the workstation type value the old FX-8150 and FX-8350 brought to the table, but it doesn't have all of the heat and power consumption issues that came with those processors.

"It does the thing"... I used this to replace a Ryzen 7950X in a NAS server that runs a few virtual machines -- no difference in VM performance, BUT HUGE difference despite being very similar on paper: Ryzen "ECO" mode is kind of a joke compared to Intel's P1 and P2 limit settings -- compared to the Ryzen in "ECO" Mode, with P1 and P2 both set to 65W the server is drawing 100W less from the wall measured by a power meter; I pulled P1 down to 30W in the end and it still runs fine (e.g., right now I'm typing this in a browser window from one of those VMs). The NAS lives in a closet, and the reduced heat level makes the entire room very noticeably cooler and quieter.More of an issue with how things are sold on Amazon -- I ended up buying a second one and returning the first because right after I bought the CPU there was a promotion for less than I paid AND including a bunch of games that together more than halved the price of the CPU.

Este procesador Intel Core Ultra 7 265K me ha sorprendido muchísimo. Con sus 20 núcleos (8 de rendimiento y 12 de eficiencia) y un boost de hasta 5.5 GHz, mi PC vuela en cualquier tarea que le pongo, desde gaming hasta edición de video y multitasking pesado.La diferencia en velocidad y fluidez se nota al instante, especialmente con programas exigentes y cuando tengo muchas aplicaciones abiertas. También me gusta que maneja muy bien el consumo energético gracias a su diseño híbrido.En resumen, si buscas un procesador potente, moderno y que rinda sin problemas para todo tipo de uso, este Intel Ultra 7 es una opción excelente. Muy satisfecho con la compra.

Great CPU, I was in need of upgrading and looking take advantage of the latest Intel offering. I plan to use the NPU capabilities of this line of Intel processors using the ASUS NPU boost option on the Asus Maximus Z890 Extreme motherboard. I was planning on going with the Ultra 9 however decided to save some money at the expense of a ~5% performance boost of the Ultra 9.