Intel is BACK. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. - Core Ultra 270K Plus & 250K Plus CPU Review

TL;DR

Intel's $300 Core Ultra 270K Plus delivers 95% of the 9800 X3D's gaming performance, making it Intel's best-value CPU in years.

Key Points

• 1.Intel's Ultra 7 270K Plus hits 95% of AMD's 9800 X3D gaming performance at 60% of the price. Priced at $300, it outperforms all previous Intel flagships and lands just 5% behind the 9800 X3D in 1% lows and 10% behind in average frame rate.
• 2.The Ultra 5 250K Plus at $200 beats the AMD Ryzen 9950X ($650) in multi-core workloads. In Blender and Cinebench, it dominates price-comparable AMD chips, though AMD holds an edge in Photoshop and some single-core scenarios.
• 3.Under-the-hood improvements include higher P-core clocks, extra 4 E-cores, more shared cache, and improved uncore/IO frequencies. These changes enable faster memory support and better die-to-die communication, explaining the performance jump despite confusing naming conventions.
• 4.Power consumption rose 10%+ vs non-Plus predecessors but remains lower than AMD's equivalents in gaming workloads. Thermal headroom is generous — Intel honors warranties up to 115°C and idle power draw is notably lower than AMD's.
• 5.Intel's Binary Optimization Tool (IBOT) claims up to 20% gaming performance gains but showed modest real-world results in testing. It's only confirmed for Plus-generation CPUs, leaving the 349 existing Aero Lake CPU owners without promised optimizations.