This 10-core Intel processor has dropped to a record low price in the Czech Republic! Is it worth it now compared to AMD?

Alza is dropping the price of the Intel Core Ultra 5 225F as part of Black Friday. It was commonly available for 4,000 CZK (in January it even cost 7,000 CZK) and now you can buy it for 3,599 CZK. This is a processor from the Arrow Lake generation, which did not succeed in the market as expected – but at this price, it can be interesting. If you’re not interested in gaming at Ultra settings and don’t need top performance, it’s a fairly solid choice. But beware, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X costs 5,000 CZK and is a better choice in many respects.

What is Arrow Lake and why does it have a bad reputation

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225F belongs to the Arrow Lake generation, which arrived in November 2024. Intel switched to a chiplet design (similar to AMD) and the TSMC 3nm manufacturing process. The problem is that the new design brought higher memory latency – around 90 ns compared to 60 ns for the 12th, 13th, and 14th generation Core. This is mainly evident in gaming, where fps drops are more frequent than with previous generations.

The Core Ultra 5 225F has 10 cores without hyperthreading (6× P-core + 4× E-core), a base clock of 3.3 GHz, and a boost up to 4.9 GHz. It features 20 MB of L3 cache and 22 MB of L2 cache. The TDP is 65 W, but it can jump up to 121 W during boosting.

Performance in benchmarks: reality without embellishment

According to Passmark benchmarks, the Core Ultra 5 225F achieves a score of 31,578 points in CPU Mark (multi-thread) and 4,472 points in the single-thread test. The competing Ryzen 5 9600X has 30,000 points in multi-thread and 4,567 points in single-thread. Intel thus leads in multi-thread by 5%, AMD in single-thread by 2%. The differences are minimal.

In Geekbench tests, the 225F achieved 2,653 points in single-core and 13,028 points in multi-core. The Ryzen 5 9600X averages 3,521 points in single-core and 16,072 points in multi-core in Geekbench. This means that AMD is 32% faster in single-core and 23% faster in multi-core in this test – despite having only 6 cores (12 threads) compared to Intel’s 10 cores.

An interesting comparison is also with the older Core i5-13600 from the Raptor Lake generation. It achieves 2,516 points in single-core and 12,375 points in multi-core in Geekbench. The Core Ultra 5 225F is therefore only 5% faster than a generation two years older – and that with half the number of threads.

Price vs. performance: where is the line?

At 3,599 CZK, the Core Ultra 5 225F is a fairly reasonable purchase. The Ryzen 5 9600X costs 5,000 CZK, so Intel offers a 1,400 CZK cheaper alternative. LGA 1851 motherboards can be found for around 2,000 CZK, which is a similar price to AM5. This means that a total build with Intel will cost you approximately 5,600 CZK (CPU + motherboard), while with AMD it will be around 7,000 CZK.

Conclusion: at this price, it makes sense

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225F for 3,599 CZK is an interesting offer, especially when you calculate the total cost including the motherboard. You save over a thousand CZK compared to the Ryzen 5 9600X, which is not negligible when building a mid-range PC – you can put that money towards a better graphics card or a larger SSD.

What do you think of this discount?