Non-K Core Ultra 9 285 spotted in Geekbench — Matches 14900K in single-core, underwhelms in multi-core

The vanilla version of Intel’s flagship Arrow Lake Core Ultra 9 part has been spotted in the Geekbench browser. Discovered by Benchleaks on X, Intel’s 24-core Core Ultra 9 285 was benchmarked in Geekbench 6.3.0, showing strong single-core performance but strange multi-core results.

The Ultra 9 285 achieved a score of 3,081 points in Geekbench’s single-core benchmark and just 14,150 points in the benchmark’s multi-core counterpart. In the single-core department, the chip holds equal performance to many of its Raptor Lake-based predecessors, including the Core i7-13700KF, Core i7-14700K/KF, Core i9-13900K, and Core i9-14900K/KF, which have single-core scores in the 2,900 – 3,000 point range. However, the Arrow Lake chip is noticeably behind the Core i9-13900KS, which has a score of 3,134 points (Geekbench doesn’t have any official results of the newer i9-14900KS except for user-generated results).

However, multi-core-wise, the Core Ultra 9 285 is disappointing. Its score of 14,150 points is very weak, even compared to Intel’s previous-generation outings. The Arrow Lake chip doesn’t even outperform the 13th Gen Core i7-13700, which has a multi-core score of 14,862 points, despite the fact that it sports both an older architecture and fewer cores than the 285.

For example, against its direct predecessor the Core i9-14900, the Raptor Lake part is 24% faster. This is very different from other Arrow Lake models that we have compared to in the past, where the multi-core performance was far more in line with the Raptor Lake parts, if not faster than its predecessors. For instance, in late July we covered the Core Ultra 7 265KF in Geekbench 5 which pumped out a multi-core result that was 6% faster than the Core i9-14900K. We can’t compare the results directly to the 285 since the 265KF was benchmarked in Geekbench 5. However, the fact that the 265KF, which is a Ultra 7 part, was able to outperform the Core i9-14900K suggests where the Core Ultra 9 285 should land.

As with most of these Geekbench benchmark results before launch, we have to take this information with a grain of salt. The Core Ultra 9 285 benchmarked here may likely be a pre-production sample with different behavior than the production model, and Geekbench is just one benchmark that won’t show the full capabilities of the CPU.

The strong single-core performance accompanied by the unexpectedly weak multi-core results suggests Intel could be shifting the power limits for its Arrow Lake processors down, at least for the non-K variants. This would fit previous leaks that have suggested as much. But we will have to wait and see if that is the case once Arrow Lake launches and we get our hands on these chips.