New Intel Core Ultra 5 with first tests. It’s surprisingly bad
Although Intel still does not officially confirm it, the embargo on reviews of the Arrow Lake Refresh series is scheduled to end on March 23, 2026. Interestingly, this time the premiere will take place without the flagship model. Nevertheless, performance results are increasing on the Internet, and today we will focus on the most frequently purchased segment. We are, of course, talking about Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus.
It is definitely better to wait until the end of the year for the Nova Lake family
The processor in question will receive a better configuration than the already available, “ordinary” model from last year. This means 18 cores and 18 threads clocked at up to 4.2 GHz. This will also be complemented by support for faster RAM memory, without OC – up to 7200, instead of 6400 MT/s. The declared power consumption is to remain unchanged, which means TDP 125 W.
How does this translate into computing power? The latest entry in the database of the popular Geekbench program reveals 3,113 points for single-threaded performance and 15,251 points for multi-threaded tasks. And… this is a worse result than in the case of Core Ultra 5 245K, which scores around 3,100 and 18,500 points. This indicates problems with the test platform, e.g. incompatible BIOS. After all, the current model offers “only” 14 cores and 14 threads.
Therefore, it is worth holding off on final conclusions until the official premiere and more full-fledged reviews. In addition to Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, Core Ultra 7 270K Plus (24R/24W, up to 3.7 GHz) will also be launched. Nevertheless, at the current prices of RAM and SSD memory, these are unlikely to be sales hits. Especially since these are the last steps of the LGA 1851 platform. At the end of the year we will see Intel Nova Lake and LGA 1954 boards.
