Home » PC Tech & Gaming News » New leak suggests Core Ultra 9 285K could be worse at rendering than 9950X

New leak suggests Core Ultra 9 285K could be worse at rendering than 9950X

Well, worse in some workloads anyway.

Updated: Sep 23, 2024 9:23 am
New leak suggests Core Ultra 9 285K could be worse at rendering than 9950X

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Core Ultra 9 285K benchmark results have been leaked for V-ray, and it’s looking good for generational improvement, but Intel is falling short of AMD’s flagship.

The Core Ultra 9 is the confusing (but becoming clearer) rebrand of the flagship Arrow Lake-S CPU, which is said to be unveiled sometime next month. You can think of this CPU as the i9-15900K we’ll never get. Regardless, a leak of a V-ray score submitted using the Core Ultra 285K has surfaced, and it’s not looking so great for Intel’s upcoming arrival.

The Core Ultra 9 285K features eight P-cores on the Lion Cove core architecture and 16 E-cores based on the Skymont architecture, but the CPU only has 24 threads. This is a bold move from Intel given that about every CPU I’ve ever known from them has been hyperthreaded, but if it works, it works, and it clearly does as you see when we compare the scores of the Core Ultra to the 14900K.

Core Ultra 9 285K V-ray performance

WccfTech has reported on a leaked V-ray benchmark containing a score submitted by the 285K, Intel’s new flagship managed to pump out a score of 44,883, which is around 26% faster than the 14900K, which scored 35,558 in the same benchmark. Incredibly impressive given that the 14900K is hyperthreaded and has an additional eight logical processors to work with.

Core Ultra 285K V-ray benchmarks
Core Ultra 285K V-ray benchmarks

This is a fantastic result for Intel, to gain 26% over the previous generation in any capacity is a win no matter which way you look at it. However, the very same benchmark could have 3D model artists and graphic designers turning to AMD for their processing needs.

AMD could be better than Intel for some rendering workloads this generation

We understand that a sample size of one isn’t much to go off, but we do know that AMD was once king of the castle when it came to multi-core performance, and with Intel dropping Hyperthreading, this could be the perfect time to strike.

The new Ryzen 9 9950X scores a massive 49,360 in the same benchmark, around 10% faster than the Core Ultra 9. 10% may not seem like a lot, but if you could drop 10% off an hour render 3 times a day, it starts to add up – time is money after all.

If this is how the rest of the rendering benchmarks shape up, then we could see a flock of renderers and graphics designers alike flocking to AMD for their latest processors. However, Cinebench leaks still show the Core Ultra on top. If we take this list from Nanoreview into account, we see the Core Ultra 9 around 3k points ahead of the 9950X despite having a logical processor deficit.

  • CB Multi Core Ultra 285K – 43,011
  • CB Multi 9950X – 40,997

As with leaks and rumors, we have to wait for the full reviews and scores to be released before we can make a definitive statement. It could be true that AMD is just better in some applications than Intel is, despite having an overall less powerful CPU.


Jack is a Tech and News Writer who has a vast and proficient knowledge of CPUs, Motherboards, and Computer technology.

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