Gaming is trying like a significantly better prospect for Intel Arrow Lake CPUs now, due to the most recent Cyberpunk 2077 replace. Noticing that the patch notes said that the sport is round 33% sooner now on Intel Arrow Lake chips, I made a decision to strive it out for myself on an Intel Core Extremely 7 265K. The outcomes are completely transformative, turning this Intel CPU into a real gaming contender.
I first benchmarked this Intel CPU in Cyberpunk 2077 for our my Core Extremely 7 265K assessment, and the outcomes had been shockingly dangerous. Not solely was there no hope of this CPU competing with the most recent chips from AMD, but it surely was even effectively behind all of Intel’s personal 14th-gen CPUs. This was categorically not the perfect gaming CPU.
It seemed as if the writing was on the wall for Intel after we carried out our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D assessment a number of days later, however the brand new Cyberpunk 2077 2.2 replace guarantees to alter all that, at the very least on this one recreation. In the meantime, Intel has additionally issued a brand new 0x113 microcode replace with the promise of improved gaming efficiency (and a brand new 0x114 replace is coming quickly too), so I believed it was time for a rebench of this CPU, with a brand new BIOS and up to date copy of Cyberpunk 2077, utilizing our GeForce RTX 4080 take a look at GPU.
Because it seems, 33% is an understatement of the impact of this replace. After dropping all the way down to 1080p on the Excessive preset, with no ray tracing or DLSS, placing as a lot of a burden on the CPU as potential, the efficiency improve is an unimaginable 91%. Part of that improve is, after all, all the way down to the truth that the primary outcome was so low.
The unique common body charge on this take a look at for the 265K was an abysmal 114fps, which is definitely the identical outcome it achieved in the identical recreation with Extremely ray tracing settings, suggesting a critical bottleneck someplace. With the most recent replace and microcode, nonetheless, this outcome rocketed all the way in which as much as 218fps, whereas the minimal of 179fps is unrecognizable in contrast with the 88fps of earlier than.
After seeing that, I questioned how the brand new replace would have an effect on the CPU’s efficiency when you enabled all the attention sweet, so I switched to the Extremely ray tracing preset, with DLSS Tremendous Decision on the High quality setting. Once more, the leap is substantial, however to not the identical diploma, because it mainly has the identical start line.
At these settings, the Core Extremely 265K now averages 141fps, in contrast with 117fps earlier than, making for a 20.5% efficiency improve. In the meantime, the minimal has additionally elevated from 88fps to 117fps. Evaluating the 265K towards the remainder of the sphere reveals it’s now in entrance of the Core i5 14600K, but it surely’s nonetheless lagging a bit behind the remainder of the competitors.
Intel’s Core i9 14900K continues to be a greater gaming CPU, as are the AMD Ryzen X3D chips, however the distinction has closed considerably, which means the Core Extremely 265K is not embarrassingly horrible, at the very least on this recreation. You could possibly construct a gaming PC primarily based on this CPU and never be annoyed with the poor efficiency on this recreation now.
Possibly it’s not throughout for Intel within the gaming CPU world in any case, particularly if extra video games obtain optimizations for Intel Arrow Lake. In case you’re planning to construct a gaming PC primarily based on considered one of these new CPUs, or a brand new AMD chip, take a look at our information to the perfect gaming motherboard, the place we take you thru all our favourite choices at a variety of costs.
