Two years ago, the Intel Core Ultra 200 series brought PC gamers to a state of existential crisis. The chipmaker’s desktop CPUs bore few performance gains and occasionally performed worse than Intel’s 14th-gen chips. Now, Intel is looking for redemption not by trying to win against the competition’s absolute peak gaming CPUs, but by claiming solid performance for a reasonable price.
Intel’s new Core Ultra 200S Plus lineup, built for the LGA-1851 socket, includes an Ultra 7 270K Plus and an Ultra 5 240K Plus. These are essentially upscaled refreshes of the previous Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 5 245K processors.
However, Intel promises it has massively boosted specs necessary for gaming with huge gains in multithreaded performance. Intel’s VP of client computing, Robert Hallock, said in a release that these chips are “the fastest desktop gaming processors Intel has ever built.” Yes, that includes the last-gen flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K.
Each chip now has four more efficiency cores than its previous counterpart. The 24-core Ultra 7 270K Plus CPU has eight performance and 16 efficiency cores. The Ultra 5 chip is based on an 18-core model configured with six performance and 12 efficiency cores. The Ultra 7 270K Plus is also overclocked up to 800MHz.
Though Intel’s previous Core Ultra 9 285K CPU was built more for productivity performance, these new chips are engineered for the gaming segment (easily the loudest and most upgrade-hungry of the entire desktop market). In a game like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Intel promises 39% frame rate gains compared to the 265K. The chip may have more modest gains in titles like Star Wars Outlaws at 9% and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows with a mere 4% uplift.
Intel compares its latest gaming-ready CPUs to AMD’s Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 7 9600X. The chipmaker’s own benchmarks promise you’ll see between 83% and 100% increases in multithreaded performance compared to those midrange AMD chips. Those midrange CPUs from AMD aren’t explicitly marketed for gaming like AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D and—more recently—its overclocked 9850X3D. Those CPUs will still take the crown for netting higher frame rates in games.
What may prove more interesting in the long run is Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool. It’s built to save performance when trying to run games from “a game console or an earlier architecture.” This could mean these chips are better for retro or modern emulation than other x86 processors.
If Intel isn’t aiming for the top-of-the-line, then it becomes a factor of price. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D costs $500. The Ultra 7 270K Plus and Ultra 5 240K Plus are being marketed for around $300 and $200, respectively. Those prices are on par with AMD’s mid-lane chips. These CPUs should be available starting March 26.
Intel is effectively saying its new Ultra 7 270K Plus, as its “fastest gaming processor,” will beat a Core Ultra 9 285K for gaming at a price that’s nearly half that of the chip that launched for $589 in 2025. If you’re a gamer who bought Intel’s top-end Arrow Lake chip at launch, Intel’s claim may have you gnawing on your finger to keep from screaming. The Arrow Lake chips proved to be such poor sellers that retailers and even Intel slashed prices just a few months after launch.
This is not a whole new chip launch on par with Intel’s Panther Lake for laptops. These aren’t even the Bartlett Lake chips built for older Intel chip sockets. Intel is implying this is just the start of a longer journey. The company let AMD snatch a stranglehold on desktop gaming CPU and now it has to claw its way back into the gamer’s good graces. Considering the price of RAM and other PC components like Nvidia’s GPUs, offering a relatively affordable gaming CPU for DDR5 builds may be the right approach.
Source: Gizmodo