Making the best of a bad situation

• 

  Intel Core Ultra 5 245K

  Energy efficient productivity at a price

  $319 $329 Save $10

  As one of the cheapest Arrow Lake CPUs, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K has 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores, making it a solid CPU for work and play. However, it faces stiff competition from both Raptor Lake and AMD's Zen 5 chips.

  Advantages

  • Much better productivity performance than 9600X
  • Impressive thermals
  • Dedicated NPU

  Disadvantages

  • Lags behind in gaming
  • Costs a lot more than 9600X

• 

  AMD Ryzen 5 9600X

  Clear winner for gamers

  $249 $279 Save $30

  The Ryzen 5 9600X with 6 cores and 12 threads offers solid gaming performance, significantly beating the competition while costing less. Despite minimal advances over the Zen 4, it is a powerful CPU for gaming-oriented builds.

  Advantages

  • Much higher gaming performance than 245K
  • Low TDP
  • Costs much less than 245,000

  Disadvantages

  • Disappointing progress over Zen 4
  • Poor productivity performance

It's almost as if AMD and Intel decided together to release disappointing new CPU lines this year. On the one hand, AMD is ahead with the Ryzen 9000 processors and offers only minimal advantages over the previous generation Zen 4 chips. On the other hand, Intel's highly anticipated Arrow Lake chips debuted with unexpectedly poor results. The Core Ultra 5 245K and the Ryzen 5 9600X are currently the cheapest entry-level models on these two platforms.

Even if none of these chips are the best in what they do (not even from a value perspective), many of you will still compare them directly to each other. Both 6-core processors come with a few advantages and disadvantages (mainly the latter), so I will analyze their specifications, performance and efficiency to help you decide which one you should choose.

Price, availability and specifications

Arrow Lake vs Zen 5

Both the Core Ultra 245K and Ryzen 5 9600X are relatively new products, so you won't be able to get deep discounts on them easily. The Intel competitor will set you back around $320, while the Ryzen 9600X is more digestible (if not lower) at $279. The Ryzen chip is based on AMD's latest Zen 5 architecture and features 6 cores and 12 threads based on TSMC's 4nm and 6nm process nodes.

The 245K is Intel's 6P-Core and 8E-Core CPU based on the latest Arrow Lake architecture and also uses a TSMC node, the N3B, which is a 3nm process acts. Intel has ditched hyperthreading this time around, so you only get 14 threads, which is still more than the Ryzen counterpart. The 9600X has a much lower TDP and slightly higher boost clock, but the 245K's Efficiency cores certainly give it an edge in certain workloads.

• 	Intel Core Ultra 5 245K	AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
  socket	FCLGA1851	AM5
  cores	6P/8E	6
  Topics	14	12
  Base clock speed	4.2GHz / 3.6GHz	3.9GHz
  Increase clock speed	5.2GHz / 4.6GHz	5.4GHz
  PCIe	5.0	5.0
  Cache	24MB L3 + 26MB L2	38MB
  RAM support	DDR5-6400	DDR5-6000
  graphic	Intel graphics	AMD Radeon graphics (2 cores)
  architecture	Arrow Lake	Zen 5
  Proceedings	TSMC N3B	TSMC 4nm, 6nm
  TDP	125W	65W
  Current consumption	~159W	~88W

Gaming and productivity performance

At least the choice is clear

While I hesitate to recommend either of them as a clear favorite for gaming or productivity, the Core Ultra 5 245K and Ryzen 5 9600X sit quite well on opposite sides of the performance spectrum. The 245K showed surprisingly poor gaming performance, not only against the 9600X, but also against the Core i5-14600K, Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Ryzen 5 7600X.

We haven't gotten the Core UItra 5 245K to test it ourselves, but many reliable reviews have clearly shown that it falls short of the 6-core Zen 5 processor. You can easily see that the 245K is on average 9-12% slower than the 9600X and even slower for some titles. You may find 2-3 games where the Intel processor has the edge, but overall the 245K is a worse processor for gaming, especially given its significantly higher price.

When it comes to productivity, the 245K is the clear winner, handily beating the 9600X in almost every area. The 245K's Efficiency cores help deliver strong multi-threaded performance, and you can even achieve around 50% better results in workloads like rendering. Some tests show better results with the 9600X, but these are rare.

The 245K's dedicated NPU could be useful for some of your AI workloads, although the 13 TOPS it offers may not be a huge advantage.

The 245K delivered surprisingly poor gaming performance…as far as productivity goes, the 245K is the clear winner

Thermal efficiency

Mostly equivalent

In terms of thermals and efficiency, Intel has managed to make its chips less power hungry this time around, reducing power consumption by up to 50% compared to an equivalent Raptor Lake chip. However, compared to the 9600X, we see that the 245K uses more or less the same power. When gaming, you'll often find that the 245K delivers lower FPS at lower performance, and vice versa in productivity workloads.

Overall, however, none of the CPUs are difficult to cool, with the 9600X and 245K not exceeding 100W and 160W, respectively. The Intel processor still needs a better cooler, especially if you're buying it for multi-core workloads rather than gaming. With the Arrow Lake CPUs, Intel is heading in the right direction in terms of power consumption, but there's still a lot of work to do, especially when the Zen 5 chips look so much better in terms of performance per watt (at least in gaming).

As for temperatures, both CPUs won't exceed 65°C, either in gaming or productivity, assuming you have a 360mm AIO cooler. Even with a good air cooler, you shouldn't worry about temperatures as they remain well below the maximum operating temperature. Despite the 245K's higher power consumption in some workloads, its thermals are virtually identical to the 9600X, which is a big advantage for the Intel chip.

Which 6-core CPU should you buy?

You shouldn't buy any of these CPUs for gaming or productivity. Both the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 5 7700 offer the same gaming performance as the 9600X while being cheaper while still allowing you to stay on the latest AM5 platform. And if you're looking for an Intel productivity workhorse, you're probably willing to spend a little more and go for the Core Ultra 7 265K instead for better performance, or failing that, a Raptor Lake CPU previous generation.

However, taken individually, you can easily choose the better processor between these two chips by analyzing your use case. If you're building a new DDR5-based gaming PC, the Ryzen 5 9600X is the clear choice because it performs better in games while costing less. It also has a lower TDP and is identical to the Intel chip in terms of operating temperatures. You'll also notice that the overall system cost is lower with the 9600X because we only have the expensive Z890 motherboards available for the Arrow Lake CPUs.

On the other hand, if you're looking for the cheapest Arrow Lake processor for your productivity machine, the Core Ultra 5 245K absolutely decimates the Ryzen 5 9600X. Cooling is also not a particular challenge. You'll have to spend a little more on the processor and motherboard, but you can enjoy significantly better multi-core performance.