Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake processor makes tepid Geekbench debut

Intel's flagship Arrow Lake processor, the Core Ultra 9 285K, has just shown up on Geekbench ahead of its rumoured October 10 launch. The listing confirms numerous leaks from earlier that talked about its core/thread count, boost clock and (the lack of) hyperthreading.

The Core Ultra 9 285K scores 3,449 and 23,024 in Geekbench 6.3's single and multi core tests. It has 24 cores in an 8 P + 16 E configuration. Even though the listing says its max boost is 5.5 GHz, a closer look at its back end reveals a 5.7 GHz boost clock, which sits in line with earlier rumours. It was tested on a high-end Z890 Asus ROG Strix motherboard with 64 GB of 6,400 MT/s DDR5 memory.

Essentially, the Core Ultra 9 285K offers a 3% single-core and 7% multi core improvements over the Core i9-14900K (3,243/21,397). The latter is expected due to the lack of said hyperthreading, but the former could be better. That'll happen closer to launch with subsequent BIOS updates

AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 9950X, on average, scores around ~3,500 and 23,000 in Geekbench 6.3, putting it slightly ahead of the Core Ultra 9 285K. Of course, Geekbench is only one test and one can't jump to conclusions before Arrow Lake undergoes additional testing. Based on what we know so far, both SKUs appear to be evenly matched.