Today we're doing something almost no one asked for. That might seem odd – and it is – but curiosity got the better of us. We bought one of Intel's Core Ultra 5 225 CPUs, and we went with the F-model, as that seemed most appropriate.
So about a year ago, Intel quietly released a range of locked, non-K Core Ultra processors. The cheapest of these was the 225F, which currently retails for $160, or around $30 cheaper than AMD's Ryzen 5 9600X. For that price, you get 10 cores: six P-cores and four E-cores. So what's the deal with the 225F?
Admittedly, it's probably not a good sign that we're only looking at the 225F now, almost a year after its introduction. There are two main reasons for that. First, no one asked for it. There was virtually zero interest from our audience (and possibly builders in general), which is even less demand than we saw for the K-SKU parts.
When compared to a K-SKU part like the 245K, the 225F still packs six P-cores, though they're clocked 6% lower when comparing boost clocks and 21% lower at base clocks. The E-core count has been reduced from eight to just four, and because the Core Ultra series dropped Hyper-Threading, there are only 10 cores and 10 threads in total.
E-core clock speeds are also lower: down 4% for boost clocks and 25% for base clocks. These reductions drop the base TDP from 125 W to 65 W, while the maximum turbo TDP falls from 159 W to 121 W, a 24% reduction. Finally, Smart Cache capacity has been reduced by 17%, dropping from 24 MB to 20 MB.
Intel Core Ultra Specs
| CPU | Release date | Release price | P-core (performance) | E-core (efficiency) | L3 cache | Power | |||||||
| Cores (threads) | Freq. | Turbo | L2 cache | Cores (threads) | Freq. | Turbo | L2 cache | Base | Max Turbo | ||||
| Core Ultra 9 285K | Oct 2024 | $600 | 8 (8) | 3.7 GHz | 5.6 GHz | 24 MB | 16 (16) | 3.2 GHz | 4.6 GHz | 16 MB | 36 MB | 125 W | 250 W |
| Core Ultra 7 265K | $395 | 3.9 GHz | 5.5 GHz | 12 (12) | 3.3 GHz | 12 MB | 30 MB | ||||||
| Core Ultra 5 245K | $310 | 6 (6) | 4.2 GHz | 5.2 GHz | 18 MB | 8 (8) | 3.6 GHz | 8 MB | 24 MB | 159 W | |||
| Core Ultra 5 245 | Jan 2025 | $270 | 3.5 GHz | 5.1 GHz | 3.0 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 65 W | 121 W | |||||
| Core Ultra 5 235 | $247 | 3.4 GHz | 5.0 GHz | 2.9 GHz | 4.4 GHz | ||||||||
| Core Ultra 5 225 | $236 | 2.5 GHz | 4.9 GHz | 4 (4) | 2.7 GHz | 4 MB | 20 MB | ||||||
As for pricing, the 225F has an MSRP of $221, but at launch you could expect to pay around $250, which was a truly awful price for this part. It's no surprise that interest was nonexistent. Even so, we had planned to buy one and check it out, but other reviews took priority and we never got around to Intel's latest budget offering.
Just one month after release, the price dropped to $230. Four months later, in June, it fell to $220, then dropped sharply to $200 in late July before hitting its current price of $160 in early October where it has remained. At this price, it's one of Intel's better budget options. It comes in just $20 above the 12400F and $20 below the 12600K, with parts like the 14400F priced at $200.
From AMD, there's the 7500F at $145, the 7600X at $180, and the 9600X at $190. We're keen to see how the 225F stacks up against those parts in our gaming benchmarks, but before that, we'll briefly go over some productivity results.
Just to be clear, this isn't a detailed review of the Core Ultra 5 225F, we've already done that for the 245K. This time we're mainly interested in gaming performance, so think of this as a mini-review with a strong focus on gaming. With that out of the way, let's get into it.
Test System Specs
| CPU / Motherboard / Memory | AMD Ryzen 9000 Series AMD Ryzen 7000 Series |
Gigabyte X670E Master [BIOS F38] G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32GB DDR5-6000 CL30 |
| Intel Core Ultra 5 225F | Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero [BIOS 2201] G.Skill Trident Z5 CK 32GB DDR5-8200 CL40-52-52-131 CUDIMM |
|
| Intel Core i5-14600K Intel Core i5-12400F |
MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi [7D89v1H] G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32GB DDR5-7200 CL34 |
|
| Graphics Card | Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 OC Edition | |
| ATX Case | MSI Prospect 700R | |
| Power Supply | Kolink Regulator Gold ATX 3.0 1200W | |
| Storage | TeamGroup T-Force Cardea A440 M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD 4TB | |
| Operating System | Windows 11 | |
| Display Driver | Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver 591.44 WHQL | |
Productivity Benchmarks
Cinebench 2024
Starting with Cinebench single-core performance, we see that the 225F produced a score of 123 points. This places it roughly on par with the 14600K and the 7600X, making it 10% slower than the 245K, which isn't a great sign for gaming performance.
When it comes to multi-core performance, the 225F really fizzles out. That's another worrying result because, if anything, the main strength of the Core Ultra series has been the value it delivers in productivity workloads. With the 225F coming in slightly slower than the 7600X, this is a genuine concern.
7-Zip File Manager
Given what we just saw in Cinebench, it's no surprise that the 225F is only able to match the performance of the 12600K in the 7-Zip File Manager compression benchmark.
Sadly, decompression performance is even worse. The 225F comes in 11% slower than the older 12600K, making it 20% slower than the Ryzen 5 7600X.
Shader Compilation
One of the most important multi-core workloads for many gamers is shader compilation. Even here, the 225F is underwhelming – not terrible, but only able to roughly match the performance of six-core Ryzen processors.
Gaming Benchmarks
Rainbow Six Siege X
Okay so time for the gaming benchmarks and we'll start with Rainbow Six Siege, and damn are these results a bit tragic. Sure, over 300 fps on average is mighty impressive performance, but relative to the competition it's very underwhelming. Firstly we're talking about just a 6-8% uplift over the 12400F and that meant the 14600K was 27% faster when using the medium settings and 23% with the Ultra+ settings. Not only that but the Ryzen 5 7500F was 27% faster with the medium settings and then 32% faster when using Ultra+.
Marvel Rivals
The results in Marvel Rivals are better, but even so the 225F is thoroughly unimpressive once again, beating the 12400F by just an 11% margin with the medium settings and then 12% using the Ultra settings. That meant the 14600K was 15% faster while the 9600X was 20% faster using the medium settings and then just 12% faster with the Ultra settings.
Assassin's Creed Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows is heavily GPU limited when using modern CPUs, and this largely applies even with the 225F, though it did come in slightly behind the 12400F by a few frames, but overall very similar performance.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered saw the 225F throughput 162 fps using the medium settings, and that made it just 9% faster than the 12400F, while the older 14600K was 13% faster. Then we have the Ryzen 5 7500F which was 7% faster with the medium settings and then just 3% faster using the very high settings.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Testing with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty we find very disappointing results from the 225F, just 7-8% better performance than the 12400F. This meant that the 14600K was 11% faster using the medium settings and then a massive 23% faster with the ray tracing ultra preset. The 7500F was also 18% faster with the medium settings and 15% faster with the ray tracing ultra preset.
Counter-Strike 2
Next we have Counter-Strike 2 and with it another set of disappointing results for the 225F as it was only up to 12% faster than the 12400F across this data set. That made the 14600K 15% faster while the 7500F was 28% faster with the medium settings and 22% faster when using the very high preset.
Space Marine 2
Space Marine 2 is a very CPU demanding game which is why we see little to no difference in performance between the medium and ultra settings, the results are entirely CPU bound.
The good news is the 225F isn't terrible here, the bad news though, it's not good either, offering just 8-10% better performance than the old 12400F. The 7500F was also 4-5% faster, certainly not a big margin, but it is a previous generation budget part.
It's worth noting how impressive the 14600K is here, especially when using the Ultra preset, beating the 9600X by an 8% margin.
The Last of Us Part II Remastered
The 225F performed well enough in The Last of Us Part II Remastered, matching the performance of the 7500F. So although that made it faster than the 12400F, the 14600K was still up to 13% faster, though the Core i5 processor was also faster than AMD's entire 6-core range, at least the models tested here.
Spider-Man 2
The Spider-Man 2 results are interesting. Firstly, when using the medium quality preset the 225F looked great, maxing out performance at 187 fps to match the 9600X and 14600K, making it 10% faster than the 7500F, so it's first real win over the budget Ryzen 5 processor.
But when we switch to the more CPU demanding ultimate ray tracing settings, the 225F starts to struggle with weaker than expected 1% lows, while only matching the average frame rate of the 7500F. Again the 14600K was impressive here, beating the 9600X by a 9% margin, and the 225F by a 16% margin.
Mafia: The Old Country
The 225F was back to delivering disappointing results in Mafia: The Old Country. Using the more CPU limited medium quality settings, the 225F was 15% faster than the 12400F, but that wasn't enough to catch the Ryzen 5 processors, or the 14600K.
The 7500F for example was 16% faster, so a big performance difference there. That said, switching to the GPU limited Epic settings allowed the 225F to match the Ryzen 5 processors.
Assetto Corsa Competizione
The ACC results are also very disappointing, here the 225F was only able to match the 12400F, making the 7500F almost 30% faster in both the medium and epic quality tests.
Baldur's Gate 3
Finally we have Baldur's Gate 3 and this is a particularly bad title for the 225F as it managed to come in slower than even the 225F, making the 7500F 12% faster when using the medium settings and then just 6% faster with the ultra settings.
12 Game Average
Here's the 12-game average, calculated using the geometric mean. As you can see, when it comes to gaming performance, the 225F leaves a lot to be desired for a current-generation processor priced at $160. When compared to the older 12400F, we're looking at just a 7 – 9% performance improvement on average, depending on quality settings.
That means the Ryzen 5 7500F was 13% faster using medium settings and 9% faster with ultra settings. You're also getting 17% better average performance from the 14600K, or up to 24% greater performance with the 9600X.
A Tough Sell
We're not sure who had worse timing here – Intel or us – but it probably doesn't matter. It's fair to say neither side did particularly well. We can't imagine Intel has sold many 225F processors at this point, and with DRAM pricing going through the roof, demand is unlikely to pick up.
As a result, we don't imagine there are many of you reading this. Unless Intel drops this processor to $100 or less, and DDR5 pricing collapses, this situation looks bleak all around.
That said, let's not dwell on that – we'd rather forget it altogether. So, moving on, what else can we say about the Core Ultra 5 225F? Unfortunately, nothing positive. As we've already alluded to, even ignoring the current DRAM situation, the 225F simply isn't a compelling product at $160 – for anyone. That explains why, after nearly a year on the market, we can count the number of requests we've seen for this processor on one hand.
No one is buying the 225F as an in-socket upgrade. If you already own an LGA 1851 motherboard, you presumably already have a Core Ultra CPU, and in that case, it will be faster than the 225F. That leaves budget builders as the only potential customers – those looking to upgrade platforms or build an entirely new PC from scratch.
If you fall into either of those categories and are comfortable investing in a dead platform, there have been much better options from Intel in this price range over the past 12 months. The Core i5-14600K, for example, was selling for as little as $175 a few weeks ago. Oddly, that processor now appears to be back up at $220+, but even at that price, we'd still choose it over the 225F.
For gamers, the best budget option remains the Ryzen 5 7500F, which is still very affordable in many regions. For example, in Australia it can currently be delivered for just $210 AUD. By comparison, the 225F costs $260 AUD, the 14600K $360 AUD, and the 9600X $370 AUD. If we didn't have access to the 7500F, the 225F would look more appealing, as the 9600X costs a little over 40% more locally, whereas in the US it's just 20% more.
For gamers, the Ryzen 7500F is ~13% faster based on our medium-quality data, while the 9600X is ~24% faster. Both are supported on current-gen platforms with a future upgrade path, making Intel's 225F a very hard sell. For those interested in multi-core or productivity performance, the 225F at best matches the 9600X, but it's generally a bit slower.
That's the 225F in a nutshell. It needs to be significantly cheaper to even be worth considering, just like every other Core Ultra processor we've tested.