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The Core Ultra 5 225 shouldn’t be as disappointing as it is. Since Alder Lake, we’ve seen lower-specced Core i5s as a solid value alternative for folks with around $100 to $150 to spend. AMD has largely ignored this market, at least with its latest microarchitecture, poking the main range to create APUs or rereleasing older chips under new names. The Core Ultra 5 225 is priced to compete with AMD’s main Ryzen 5 offerings at this point, but it performs more like a value-focused alternative.
The pricing situation is made worse by the fact that the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus exists. Arrow Lake Refresh felt like a pricing reset for Intel, as it recognized the underdog position it had slipped into in the face of AMD’s X3D offerings. But, that reset has only applied to the Refresh CPUs; we’ve only seen small price cuts on the main Arrow Lake range, including the Core Ultra 5 225.
That gap is most clear in games. Your cheapest entry point without sacrificing a lot of performance is around $170 with the Ryzen 5 7600X, but to get to that next performance tier, you need to jump up to around $220 with the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus or Ryzen 5 7600X3D. Below $150, you quickly start making some big performance trade-offs for only a small decrease in price.
In games, the Core Ultra 5 225 just doesn’t justify its current price. If there’s any Arrow Lake CPU that should cost $180, it’s the 245K, which would marginally outclass the Ryzen 5 7600X for marginally more money at that price. Once again, at $150, the Core Ultra 5 225 would transform into a completely different CPU.
Application performance is less important at this price, but that’s where the Core Ultra 5 225’s price is most justified. It’s in the same ballpark as the Ryzen 5 9600X in multithreaded performance, and it’s extremely efficient. Still, that proximity to $200 stings for the Core Ultra 5 225 when the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus offers nearly twice the multithreaded performance for only $40 more.
The Core Ultra 5 225 earns back some stripes with its solid single-threaded performance, nearly keeping pace with the rest of the Arrow Lake stack and outpacing previous-gen options by wide margins. With access to a bit more power and clock speed, the Core Ultra 5 225 would likely close the gap with other Arrow Lake chips, but unfortunately, that’s not an option on this SKU.
There’s not a situation where the Core Ultra 5 225 makes sense with its current $180 price. The Ryzen 5 9600X is universally faster for $5 more, and spending an extra $20 to $40 on the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus or Ryzen 5 7600X3D will offer worlds-faster productivity or gaming performance, respectively. Even if you had a strict $200 budget to spend on a CPU, the Core Ultra 5 225 doesn’t make sense against AMD.
We’re rating the Core Ultra 5 225 in accordance with its current pricing, but hopefully, we’ll see price cuts. The chip starts to enter the conversation at under $150. Above that price, it doesn’t hold up.
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