Core Ultra 5 245K vs. Ryzen 5 9600X: Making the best of a bad situation

• Intel Core Ultra 5 245K

  Power-efficient productivity at a price

  $319 $329 Save $10

  One of the most affordable Arrow Lake CPUs, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K has 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores, making it a solid CPU for both work and play. However, it faces tough competition from both Raptor Lake and AMD’s Zen 5 chips.

  Pros

  • Much better productivity performance than 9600X
  • Impressive thermals
  • Dedicated NPU

  Cons

  • Lags behind in gaming
  • Costs much more than 9600X

• 

  AMD Ryzen 5 9600X

  Clear winner for gamers

  $249 $279 Save $30

  The 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 9600X offers solid gaming performance, comfortably beating the competition while costing less. Despite minimal gains over Zen 4, it’s a powerful CPU for gaming-focused builds.

  Pros

  • Much higher gaming performance than 245K
  • Low TDP
  • Costs much less than 245K

  Cons

  • Disappointing gains over Zen 4
  • Lacks in productivity performance

It’s almost as if AMD and Intel jointly decided to launch disappointing new CPU lineups this year. On the one hand, AMD dropped the ball with the Ryzen 9000 processors, offering minimal gains over its previous-gen Zen 4 chips. On the other hand, the much-awaited Arrow Lake chips from Intel debuted with unexpectedly lackluster results. The Core Ultra 5 245K and Ryzen 5 9600X are currently the most affordable entry points on both these platforms.

While neither of these chips is the best at what they do (not even from a value perspective), many of you will still be comparing them head to head. Both of these 6-core processors come with a few saving graces and downsides (mostly the latter), so I’ll dissect their specs, performance, and efficiency to help you decide which of these you may want to pick up.

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Price, availability, and specs

Arrow Lake vs. Zen 5

Both the Core Ultra 245K and Ryzen 5 9600X are fairly recent products, so you won’t easily find deep discounts on them. The Intel contender will set you back by around $320, whereas the Ryzen 9600X is a more digestible $279 (if not lower). The Ryzen chip is based on AMD’s latest Zen 5 architecture, and packs 6 cores & 12 threads, based on TSMC’s 4nm and 6nm process nodes.

The 245K is Intel’s 6 P-core, 8 E-core CPU based on their latest Arrow Lake architecture, which also uses a TSMC node, the N3B which is a 3nm process. Intel dropped hyperthreading this time, so you’re only getting 14 threads, which are still more than those on the Ryzen counterpart. The 9600X features a much lower TDP, and a slightly higher boost clock, but the Efficiency cores on the 245K are sure to give it an edge in certain workloads.

• 	Intel Core Ultra 5 245K	AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
  Socket	FCLGA1851	AM5
  Cores	6P / 8E	6
  Threads	14	12
  Base Clock Speed	4.2 GHz / 3.6 GHz	3.9 GHz
  Boost Clock Speed	5.2 GHz / 4.6 GHz	5.4 GHz
  PCIe	5.0	5.0
  Cache	24MB L3 + 26MB L2	38 MB
  RAM support	DDR5-6400	DDR5-6000
  Graphics	Intel Graphics	AMD Radeon Graphics (2 cores)
  Architecture	Arrow Lake	Zen 5
  Process	TSMC N3B	TSMC 4nm, 6nm
  TDP	125 W	65W
  Power Draw	~159 W	~88W

Gaming and productivity performance

At least the choice is clear

Despite my hesitation in recommending either of them as a clear favorite for gaming or productivity, the Core Ultra 5 245K and Ryzen 5 9600X slot themselves quite nicely on opposite sides of the performance spectrum. The 245K has shown surprisingly poor gaming performance, not just against the 9600X, but also the Core i5-14600K, Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and Ryzen 5 7600X.

We haven’t gotten the Core UItra 5 245K to test it for ourselves, but many reliable reviews have clearly shown it lagging behind the 6-core Zen 5 processor. You can easily see the 245K performing 9-12% slower than the 9600X on average, and even slower in some titles. You might be able to find 2–3 games where the Intel processor edges past, but overall, the 245K is a worse processor for gaming, especially considering its significantly higher price.

On the productivity side of things, the 245K is the clear winner, beating the 9600X hands down in almost every department. The Efficiency cores on the 245K help it deliver strong multi-threaded performance, and you can even see around 50% better results in workloads like rendering. Some tests show better results on the 9600X, but these are few and far between.

The dedicated NPU on the 245K might be useful for some of your AI workloads, although the 13 TOPS it offers may not be a huge advantage.

Thermal efficiency

Evenly matched, for the most part

Coming to thermals and efficiency, Intel has managed to make its chips less power-hungry this time, bringing down power consumption by as much as 50% when compared to an equivalent Raptor Lake chip. Against the 9600X, however, we see the 245K consuming more or less the same power. In gaming, you’ll often see the 245K deliver fewer FPS at less power, and vice versa in productivity workloads.

Overall, though, neither of the CPUs is hard to cool, with the 9600X and 245K not exceeding 100W and 160W respectively. The Intel processor will still require a better cooler, especially if you’re buying it for multi-core workloads instead of gaming. Intel is going in the right direction in terms of power consumption with the Arrow Lake CPUs, but there’s still work to be done, especially when the Zen 5 chips look so much better in terms of performance per watt (at least in gaming).

In terms of temperatures, both the CPUs will not exceed 65℃, whether in gaming or productivity, provided you have a 360mm AIO cooler. Even with a decent air cooler, you shouldn’t be worried about the temps, as they’ll stay well below the maximum operating temperature. Despite the higher power consumption on the 245K in some workloads, its thermals are virtually identical to the 9600X, which is a big positive for the Intel chip.

Which 6-core CPU should you buy?

You shouldn’t buy either of these CPUs for gaming or productivity. Both the Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 5 7700 deliver identical gaming performance to that of the 9600X, while costing less and still allowing you to stay on the latest AM5 platform. And if you’re looking for an Intel productivity workhorse, you’ll probably be open to spending a bit more and grabbing the Core Ultra 7 265K instead for better performance, or a prior-gen Raptor Lake CPU otherwise.

However, in isolation, you can easily pick the better processor between these two chips by analyzing your use case. If you’re building a new DDR5-based gaming PC, the Ryzen 5 9600X is the clear choice, performing better in games while costing less. It also features a lower TDP, and is identical to the Intel chip in terms of operating temperatures. You’ll also find the total system cost to be lower with the 9600X, since we only have the expensive Z890 motherboards available for the Arrow Lake CPUs.

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X

$249 $279 Save $30

The 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 9600X offers solid gaming performance, comfortably beating the competition while costing less. Despite minimal gains over Zen 4, it’s a powerful CPU for gaming-focused builds.

On the other hand, if you want the cheapest Arrow Lake processor for your productivity machine, the Core Ultra 5 245K absolutely decimates the Ryzen 5 9600X. It isn’t particularly challenging to cool either. You’ll have to spend a bit more on the processor as well as the motherboard, but you can enjoy significantly better multi-core performance.

Intel Core Ultra 5 245K

$319 $329 Save $10

One of the most affordable Arrow Lake CPUs, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K has 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores, making it a solid CPU for both work and play. However, it faces tough competition from both Raptor Lake and AMD’s Zen 5 chips.