Gaming is wanting like a a lot better prospect for Intel Arrow Lake CPUs now, because of the newest Cyberpunk 2077 replace. Noticing that the patch notes acknowledged that the sport is round 33% quicker 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 overview, and the outcomes have been shockingly dangerous. Not solely was there no hope of this CPU competing with the newest chips from AMD, but it surely was even properly behind all of Intel’s personal 14th-gen CPUs. This was categorically not the very best gaming CPU.
It appeared as if the writing was on the wall for Intel after we carried out our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D overview just a few days later, however the brand new Cyberpunk 2077 2.2 replace guarantees to vary all that, at the very least on this one sport. 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 assumed 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 attainable, the efficiency enhance is an unimaginable 91%. Part of that enhance is, after all, all the way down to the truth that the primary consequence was so low.
The unique common body fee on this take a look at for the 265K was an abysmal 114fps, which is definitely the identical consequence it achieved in the identical sport with Extremely ray tracing settings, suggesting a severe bottleneck someplace. With the newest replace and microcode, nonetheless, this consequence rocketed all the best way 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 bounce 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 enhance. In the meantime, the minimal has additionally elevated from 88fps to 117fps. Evaluating the 265K towards the remainder of the sector exhibits 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, that means the Core Extremely 265K is not embarrassingly horrible, at the very least on this sport. You can construct a gaming PC primarily based on this CPU and never be pissed off with the poor efficiency on this sport 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 the event you’re planning to construct a gaming PC primarily based on one among these new CPUs, or a brand new AMD chip, take a look at our information to the very best gaming motherboard, the place we take you thru all our favourite choices at a variety of costs.
