Intel has announced the Core Ultra 200 series featuring a plethora of new information about the Arrow Lake generation. The latest details include; release dates, pricing, specifications, and early benchmarks that point to IPC improvements, new iGPU architecture, and more. We’re excited to see how all of this translates into independent performance when the CPUs drop on October 24th.

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Specifically, we’re concerned with the Core Ultra 200 flagship, the 285K – which is essentially the 15900K if the name change wasn’t a thing. With this being the flagship, you can expect the best performance and the highest price. If the latest benchmark leaks are to be believed, it’s looking good for the flagship’s generational improvements, we reported a 26% increase in V-ray performance over the 14900K.

It has been confirmed that the launch date of the Core Ultra 200 CPUs is October 24th, with reviews launching the same day. Videocardz confirms that Intel is inviting influencers to a Q&A and press briefing on October 7th regarding the October 10th announcement and October 24th launch.

✓ Editor’s Note

Article Summary

Using historical data and a recent confirmation, we know that the Core Ultra 9 285K will be announced on October 10th and released on October 24th.

We then predicted that the 285K will launch for around $589, which was then confirmed by Intel’s Core Ultra 200 announcement

There are a few significant changes in specifications that could make this a serious contender for one of Intel’s best CPUs, more below.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K release date

According to the latest news, the release date for the 285K will fall on October 24th, as TechPowerup mentions here. It was previously assumed that the October 10th date would be the launch of the CPU. Since then, Vidoecardz has put together that Intel will be releasing on October 24th with an announcement on October 10th. Intel has been inviting influencers to a press conference on October 7th to share this news and give some details about the upcoming CPUs.

Of course, the Intel announcement just confirmed the release date of October 24th.

We can also take a look at some historical data to help us gauge when the Core Ultra 9 285K might be released. If we take the last few generation’s release dates into consideration we get:

14900K – Oct 17th, 2023
13900K – Oct 20th, 2022 (retail launch)
12900K – Nov 4th, 2021

Source: TechPowerUP

As you can see, post-Covid Intel has a tendency to like to release flagships in or around October, which lines up with the leaks that we have seen popping up. Funnily enough, both the 14900K and 13900K were announced at the Intel Innovation event of their respective years, which is usually hosted at the end of September.

Where to buy Intel Core Ultra 9 285K: US

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K pre order

While there are limited product listings for the soon-to-be-released Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, you can pre order the flagship CPU from retailers such as Best Buy, Newegg, and B&H PhotoVideo. That being said, expected delivery dates are most likely going to fall on the 25th of October, as the new flagship has a release time of around 8am PT/4PM GMT.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K prebuilt PC product pages go live on Amazon US

While there is no sign of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on Amazon just yet, there are a number of prebuilt gaming PCs up for pre order that house the new flagship chip. Below, are the latest arrivals that offer the 285K CPU:

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K price

Intel has recently announced the Core Ultra CPUs, and with that information was the price of the upcoming chips. We can report that the Core Ultra 9 285K will launch at an MSRP of $589.

We can use a little historical data to compare with the official announcement. If we look back to the same CPUs that we compared the 285K to before, we can get a better comparison to past CPUs

14900K – $589
13900K – $589
12900K – $599

Source: TechPowerUP

As you can see, the price has pretty much stayed the same for the flagship models over the last three generations. And we are happy to report that this price trend (at least for the flagship) is continuing for a third year.

Taking advantage of the Core Ultra 285K release

The release (or the run-up to the release) will likely cause prices to drop for the last couple of generations. This is sometimes done because the manufacturer or retailer wants to get rid of old stock – but, as we just saw with the RTX 4090 price increase in the German Market, that isn’t always the case. You can use this to your advantage if you want to snag an older 13th or 14th-generation CPU now that Intel has fixed the issues with them.

Using Camelcamelcamel, we can observe this with the 12900K, as soon as the 13900K was released, we saw a massive drop of about $100, maybe even more.

Camelcamelcamel price drop of 12900K when 13900K was released

Interestingly, the 14900K, because of the generally bad reception of the 14th gen just being a refresh and very underwhelming, actually drove up the price of the 13900K. So it is clearly very dependent on the success of the CPU generation, as well as just the actual release of it.

14900K bad reception drove up the price of the 13900K briefly

We saw a price increase likely because of the users still using 12th/11th/10th generation Intel CPUs opting to upgrade to the cheaper and better value for money 13th generation instead of the poorly reviewed 14th generation. Intel would have chosen to increase prices to pad the poorer sales of it’s new tech.

Anyway, TLDR is if the Core Ultra CPUs bomb, then we might not see the same decrease in price as we did for the 12th gen when the 13th gen was released.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K predicted specifications

There have been numerous rumors supposedly containing the specifications of the Cre Ultra 9 285K, even the box has supposedly been pictured. But without a clear announcement or confirmation from Intel, it’s all up in the air.

One of the most detailed supposed specification leaks comes from @jaykihn0 on X, which reckons to detail the specifications of the entire Core Ultra lineup.

Intel Core Ultra predicted specifications

It’s unclear where this information came from, as no source was claimed so take this information with a pinch of salt. This isn’t your usual specs table, and a lot is going on here, so let’s break it down and focus on just the 285K.

CPU	Socket	Cores	P-core base	P-core boost	E-core base	E-core boost	TDP	TVB	TBMT 3.0	TBT 2.0
Core Ultra 9 285K	LGA 1851	8P + 16E (24)	3.7 GHz	5.4 GHz	3.2 GHz	4.6 GHz	125W	5.7 GHz	5.6 GHz	5.5 GHz
Core i9-14900K	LGA 1700	8P + 16E (32)	3.2 GHz	5.6 GHz	2.4 GHz	4.4 GHz	125W	6 GHz	5.8 GHz	5.6 GHz

Core Ultra 9 predicted specs vs 14900K

The Intel Announcement didn’t go into too much detail regarding the specifications of all the CPUs, but we can confirm that some of the specifications listed above are correct.

As you can see, Intel has not hyperthreaded any of the cores in the Core Ultra 9 285K, or any other Core Ultra CPU for that matter. This is a bold move, but it seems to have paid off as the Core Ultra 9 seems to outperform the 14900K quite readily. At least, that’s what preliminary benchmarks suggest.

The highest logged CB r23 multi-core score so far for the Core Ultra 9 is 43,011, and the highest 14900K score sits at 40,400. The fact that the Core Ultra can achieve that with eight fewer logical processors is rather astounding.

Some other differences according to NanoReview include the 7nm manufacturing process, compared to the 10nm process that the 14900K is built on, this is likely to create an IPC increase of around 10% – 15% if we were to make a guess. This is based on similar nm shrinkages on AMD offering the same range of performance benefits. As with anything that is rumored, take this information with a pinch of salt.

Do you need a new motherboard for the Core Ultra 9 285K?

Yes, you will need a new motherboard to house the Corer Ultra lineup of CPUs. This is because Intel’s latest lineup sits in a different socket. LGA 1851, whereas the current generation belongs to socket LGA 1700. These new motherboards should be released alongside the Core Ultra lineup because neither is useful without the other.

As of right now, we expect the Z890 chipset to be released first, but we don’t know much about the features that are coming to these motherboards just yet. We assume that they are going to feature Gen 5 PCIe GPU connectivity and storage as standard, as well as newer USB 4 connectivity. We just assume that we have nothing to back that up so don’t take it as gospel.

Final Word

Now that we have an announcement and a confirmed price of these Intel CPUs, we can start to take stock of their worth while we wait for their benchmarks to come through. These new CPUs are pretty hyped so we hope that they live up to the expectation. If not, we fear that the price of lower-end CPUs may suffer, as we outlined with the 13900K. Bear that in mind if you’re waiting for the Core Ultra 9 285K.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K release date, where to buy, & pre order

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