The Intel Core Ultra 5 245K, a budget CPU, outperforms more expensive chips in new leaked multi-core benchmark scores
There have been lots of leaks There’s been a lot of talk around the Intel Core Lunar Lake series and its capabilities, but a new CPU-Z benchmark result for the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K Arrow Lake desktop processor has leaked, and they’re pretty impressive so far.
According to a popular Chinese hardware leaker, ECSM_OfficialThe Intel Core Ultra 5 245K scored 850.6 points in single-core performance and had a multi-core score of 10,907.1 points. This puts the Core Ultra 5 245K between the Intel Core i9-13980HX’s 842 points and the Intel Core i5-14600K/KF’s 852 points in terms of single-core performance, or roughly 99.8% of the performance of the Raptor Lake Refresh chip.
The processor shines in multi-core testing, however, as it bests the 14600K/KF’s 9,868 multi-core score by around 10.5%, putting it within 90% of the performance of the higher-end Intel Core i7-14700K, which scored 12,117 points. The 245K also lacks hyper-threading, so its 14 threads delivering performance on par with 20- and 28-thread chips is even more impressive.
While Arrow Lake is in its final stages, there are still plenty of tweaks and changes that can be made before the processors roll off the production line. Not to mention that performance leaks are always likely to be outliers due to an incredibly small sample size. So take these results with a grain of salt until the product launches and has been fully tested.
Is hyperthreading really that great?
According to IntelHyperthreading was dropped in order to improve the efficiency of its Arrow Lake chips. Judging by the leaked benchmark results, it was the ideal decision. The 245K has a maximum power consumption of 159 watts, compared to the 14600K’s 181 watts, and yet the former nearly matched the latter in a single-core test and beat it in a multi-core test.
Leaker ECSM_Official also noted that the tested 245K processor wasn’t fully optimized, with a frequency that was 100-200MHz lower than stock. If this is true, then it’s clear that the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K will most likely achieve even higher benchmark scores once it officially launches.
Hyperthreading is the name of Intel’s technology that allows more than one thread to run on each core in a CPU, meaning more work can be done in parallel (AMD and ARM also have similar technology). The idea is that with hyperthreading enabled, a PC can process more information in less time and run more background tasks without any interruption.
However, the fact that removing hyperthreading from the latest Arrow Lake chips can increase processor performance so dramatically raises the question of how useful the technology really is. It is likely that the amount of overhead required to implement the technology negates any benefits it may have.
It will be interesting to see how Arrow Lake performs at full capacity once it hits the market, and whether Intel will reconsider incorporating hyperthreading into its future processors.