Intel Core Ultra 9 295K Benchmark Sweep — Faster, Hotter, Cheaper

Intel’s Arrow Lake refresh tops out at the 295K, and across our benchmark sweep it lands roughly 8% ahead of the 285K — at a slightly lower MSRP.

Single-thread performance picked up about 6% at iso-clock thanks to a meaningfully revised E-core architecture. Multi-threaded workloads see closer to 10% gains, with Cinebench R26 multi-core landing at 47,200 — comfortably ahead of any current Ryzen 9000 SKU.

The thermal story is mixed. The 295K runs about 4°C hotter under sustained all-core loads than its predecessor, and motherboards still default to absurdly aggressive power limits out of the box. Cap PL2 at 250W and you lose under 3% of multi-thread performance for a 12°C reduction.

For gamers, the 295K matters less than the 245K refresh that lands alongside it at $349. Gaming benchmarks at 1440p are within margin of the X3D Ryzen tier, and the 245K is the more obvious mid-budget pick.