Intel has been through a tumultuous time lately. Not only has its share price dropped like a stone, but its Raptor Lake CPUs have been beset by problems this year, including game crashes, and even chips being permanently damaged, thanks to voltage shifts. Can Intel get back on track and recapture the hearts and minds of PC gamers? Sadly, the answer is no, as I found when running the new Intel Core Ultra 7 265K through its paces.
This chip sits in the middle of the new Intel Arrow Lake range, with 20 cores and a brand-new CPU architecture to help it on its way. Intel has made some bold claims about the low power draw of the new CPUs, but has been a bit more cautious about the gaming performance of the new chips, even admitting that AMD Ryzen 9000 X3D would beat Arrow Lake in gaming tests.
Gaming is only a part of the equation when you’re buying a CPU, though, and while AMD may end up winning the frame rate battle, there are other reasons to consider this new Intel CPU. To find out whether it’s worth buying, I’ve run it through a number of tests, including several games, as well as application benchmarks, and weighed it up against the current competition.
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