Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Gaming Performance: There Are Serious Problems

One thing’s for sure - the CPU demands on today’s games are extreme in many cases. The days of mainstream processors routinely delivering well over 60FPS on every title are over. We need more performance - but unfortunately, we aren’t getting it with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. In fact, in some cases, it’s slower than a 12900K... or worse. Will Judd provided the numbers here and delivered our web review, but it’s down to Rich to share the bad news in video form. The Digital Foundry at Eurogamer review has more benchmarks, power efficiency, memory scaling and extreme mode testing. We did the work, but it doesn’t change our opinion on the product: Want some DF-branded tee-shirts, mugs, hoodies and various items based on DF catchphrases? Check out our store: Join the DF Supporter Program for pristine video downloads, behind the scenes content, early access to DF Retro, early access to DF Direct Weekly and much, much more: Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: 00:00 Introduction: Why We Need More CPU Performance 01:29 Core Ultra 9 285K: Productivity is Great, Gaming Performance Isn’t 02:40 DF’s Take On Automated Benchmarking 04:12 Cyberpunk 2077 Bugged? A Performance Collapse 05:27 Starfield Benchmarks 06:28 Dragon’s Dogma 2 Benchmarks 07:06 Baldur’s Gate 3 Benchmarks 07:33 Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Benchmarks 08:42 F1 2024 Benchmarks 09:48 Forza Horizon 5 10:09 Conclusions More Testing 11:31 Goodbye For Now