Intel Core Ultra 5 225 review: Arrow Lake’s forgotten CPU needs a price cut

Arrow Lake Refresh isn’t pushing down prices the way it should.

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Intel Core Ultra 5 225
(Image credit: © Tom's Hardware)

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After the power creep of Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh, Intel refocused on efficiency with Arrow Lake, and the Core Ultra 5 225 benefited a lot from that labor. This chip comes with just a 65W TDP, so lower power consumption in real-world applications is expected. However, I didn’t expect to see such excellent efficiency, with the Core Ultra 5 225 punching above its weight class in performance-per-watt.

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Intel Core Ultra 5 225
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Starting with power, the Core Ultra 5 225 ends up around 70W to 75W in all-out, multi-core workloads like Cinebench and Handbrake, peaking as high as 84W in Blender when rendering the Monster scene. Despite carrying the same 65W TDP as the base Ryzen 5 9600X, you can see that AMD’s chip demands more power in these workloads. In Y-Cruncher, the 9600X consumed 28% more power, and in Cinebench 2024, that grew to 29%.

The 225 also shows significant power decreases compared to last-gen’s Core i5-14400 in both single- and multithreaded workloads. Looking at Y-Cruncher with our single-threaded test, the Core Ultra 5 225 drew just 35W, which is 23.9% less than the Core i5-14400 and 31.3% less than the Ryzen 5 9600X.

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In idle scenarios, the Core Ultra 5 225 doesn’t top the charts, but it still only passes a moderate level of power draw. In true idle, the Core Ultra 5 225 and Ryzen 5 9600X are in lockstep, as they are in an active idle (YouTube playback) scenario. Interestingly, the Core i5-14400 posted better idle results in both tests compared to the Core Ultra 5 225.

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Intel Core Ultra 5 225
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Lower power consumption means lower performance, but the Core Ultra 5 225 still manages excellent efficiency. It tops the charts in all of our efficiency tests, delivering more performance for each watt consumed compared to every other chip in our test pool. Cinebench is a particular standout, with the 225 offering 30% better efficiency than the Ryzen 5 9600X and 48.9% better efficiency than the Core i5-14400.

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Intel Core Ultra 5 225
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Another way to visualize efficiency is through a scatterplot, where we plot performance against power consumption. With these charts, the bottom-right corner is the best performance for the lowest power, while the top-left corner is the worst performance for the highest power.

Test Setup

Our test beds are identical to ensure accurate data while testing. We use the same hardware and software configuration, short of the motherboard and CPU. Our frozen OS image is based on Windows 11 24H2, and we use the same version of the same apps to get comparable data.

We use the RTX 2080 FE for application testing, but it doesn’t do anything other than provide a display output for our application testing. Critically, it uses the same driver as the RTX 5090, which is what we use for game testing. With these two GPUs, we don’t need to worry about cleaning the driver off the system between our test passes.

We make a few tweaks in the BIOS to optimize performance while keeping the CPU’s warranty in mind. We enable XMP/EXPO alongside Resizeable BAR. We disable Windows Virtualization-Based Security, as well as manually disable any automatic boosting features that aren’t covered by warranty, including AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive and Intel’s Extreme power profile.

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Intel LGA 1851 (Arrow Lake and Refresh)

Row 0 - Cell 1

Motherboard

ASRock Z890 Taichi

RAM

2x16GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB DDR5-7200

Intel LGA 1700 (Raptor Lake, Alder Lake)

Row 3 - Cell 1

Motherboard

MSI MPG Z790 Carbon Wi-Fi

RAM

2x16GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB DDR5-7200

AMD AM5 (Zen 5, Zen 4)

Row 6 - Cell 1

Motherboard

MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi, Gigabyte Aorus X870E Elite X3D ICE

RAM

2x16GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB DDR5-6000

All Systems

Row 9 - Cell 1

Gaming CPU

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition

Application GPU

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founder’s Edition

Cooler

Corsair iCue Link H150i RGB

Storage

2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus

PSU

MSI MPG A1000GS, Gigabyte UD1000GM PG5 V2

Other

Arctic MX-4 TIM, Windows 11 Pro, Alamengda open test bench

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Jake Roach
Jake Roach
Senior Analyst, CPUs

Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom’s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cyrusfox
    No one is buying the 225 except businesses when the 250k plus retails for $220 and the 250kf for $200. If you want budget gaming cheaper, 14th gen is capable and then you can select DDR4 as well. For a DDR5 platform, 250k plus is the best you can find from Intel.
    Reply
  • Loadedaxe
    I agree with the above.

    For the roughly $50 difference between the 225 and the 250KF, the 225 just feels pointless. Even if retailers dropped it to around $100, DDR5 pricing still kills a lot of the value. At that point, something like a 14400 with DDR4 is the more cost effective and practical solution for most people.

    If DDR5 pricing ever returns to sanity, say 32GB kits under $100 again, then I could see Intel adjusting pricing to make these chips more viable and appealing. I wouldn’t hold my breath though on DDR5 returning to "normal" anytime soon.
    Reply
  • jakewhos
    pretty out of touch article imo who would be buying this for gaming clearly this is targeted more for low power home servers.

    great igpu paired with a very efficient chip
    Reply
  • usertests
    jakewhos said:
    pretty out of touch article imo who would be buying this for gaming clearly this is targeted more for low power home servers.

    great igpu paired with a very efficient chip
    It's too expensive in relation to other offerings and it has a compromised iGPU with two Xe cores disabled out of the full four the 245/250 have.

    Not a good buy for any purpose. Just get the 250K when you see it at $200 MSRP and tune it to use less power if necessary.
    Reply
  • jakewhos
    usertests said:
    It's too expensive in relation to other offerings and it has a compromised iGPU with two Xe cores disabled out of the full four the 245/250 have.

    Not a good buy for any purpose. Just get the 250K when you see it at $200 MSRP and tune it to use less power if necessary.
    You don't really need all the cores for anything the main sell is the newer architecture of the xe cores and you get the stock cooler.
    Reply
  • usertests
    jakewhos said:
    You don't really need all the cores for anything the main sell is the newer architecture of the xe cores and you get the stock cooler.
    Losing half the iGPU is a big loss. Performance should be about on par with any fully enabled Xe-LP iGPU, like the UHD 750 in an old i5-11500. Architectural improvements are barely relevant. Arrow Lake desktop gets Xe-LPG with DPAS instructions disabled. You get better AV1 decode and AV1 encode in Arrow Lake.

    Stock cooler isn't going to have a big effect on value. I say go to something older/used, or step up to the Core Ultra 245K/250K+.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    Maybe its better to just keep it over priced to make the 250 look like a value.

    Sometimes binning results in a product with no "sweet spot".
    Reply