The Core Ultra 5 254K has dropped to its lowest price during the Amazon Spring Sale

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The Amazon Spring Sale ends on 31 March, so if you’re looking to upgrade your system or build a new gaming PC, now is the chance to grab some components for cheap. We spotted the Core Ultra 5 245KF on sale, and its price was slashed by 6%. While the Arrow Lake processors didn’t get the best start and their gaming performance is nothing to boast about, when it comes to multi-threaded output, the entire lineup offers better performance than their predecessors.
We’ve reviewed the Core Ultra 5 245K in-house, and it is almost the same as the 245KF, except for the fact that the latter doesn’t have integrated graphics. However, if you’ve got a discrete GPU, then you don’t really need an iGPU.
Intel Core Ultra 5 Desktop Processor 245KF
Core Ultra 5 245KF performance
To give you an idea of how the 245KF should perform, we’ll use our 245K review to showcase its gaming and synthetic output.
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Gaming performance
We paired this processor with the RTX 4070 Ti and ran Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p low. CPUs are tested at low resolution because it is easier for the GPU to render, and it keeps asking for the CPU for the next frame to render. If the CPU can’t keep up with the GPU, it results in a CPU bottleneck and hinders gaming performance.
This processor managed 189 FPS, which is better than what the 13600K delivered, 179 FPS. However, the Ryzen 5 9600X delivered 325 FPS, which is 57% better performance.
Synthetic performance
To test its multi-core performance, we ran a couple of benchmarking software programs like CPU-Z, Cinebench R23, and Geekbench 6. We got 10,448 points in CPU-Z, 22,797 points in Cinebench R23, and 18,384 points in Geekbench. For comparison, the 9600X managed 6,435, 16,315, and 14,909 points on the same tests. This shows how much better the 245K or KF is at productivity compared to the competition.
Is this deal for you?
The answer to this question depends on your usecase. If you’re putting together a PC for gaming, then you’ll be better off with the 9600X, 13600K, or even the 7600X. However, if you’re tackling productive workloads more often daily and want a processor that can handle resource-intensive applications better, then the Core Ultra 5 245KF trumps the rest of the budget CPUs, but remember that it’ll require an LGA 1851 motherboard along with DDR5 RAM. If you’ve already got those, then it’s great, but if you haven’t, then the upgrade will set you back a bit. You might find good options during the Big Spring Sale.
Intel Core i7-13700KF Gaming Desktop Processor
Intel Core Ultra 7 Desktop Processor 265K
AMD Ryzen™ 9 9950X
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core, 16-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor