Specifications of Intel’s unreleased Core Ultra 5 250K Plus CPU have appeared on the online repository, Geekbench. This marks the first time any data about the processor has surfaced, giving a glimpse of what we could expect from the mid-range processor.
The Geekbench list tells us that the 250K Plus is an 18-core CPU, broken into a 2-cluster configuration of what we presume are six P-Cores and 12 E-Cores. As it is still technically a 15th Gen Arrow Lake-S CPU – it’s not a Refresh – that also means that the CPU will not support hyperthreading. As of today, AMD is the only one that still applies its version of the technology to its Ryzen CPUs, although it is known more commonly as Simultaneous Multithreading, or SMT, and it has no plans on adopting Intel’s hybrid-cores approach.
Getting back on point, the 250K Plus supposedly has a base clock of 4.2GHz and a boost clock of 5.3GHz, making it 100MHz faster than the Core Ultra 5 245K. That said, it’s still impressive to see a Core Ultra 5’s boost clock overtaking the top-end 12900K from nearly four years ago. That CPU had a boost clock of 5.2GHz, while its binned sibling, the 12900KS, has a boost clock of 5.5GHz, and could maintain that speed on two P-Cores.
Additional details point to the 250K Plus being tested on a Z890 board, and more specifically, an ASUS Prime Z890-P WIFI motherboard, keeping in line with the CPU’s LGA1851 socket. Oh, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM, although the frequency of the memory modules were not specified.
The scores of the 250K Plus is listed at 3,113 for the single-core test, and 15,251 on the multi-core test. But, as always, we strongly suggest that you do not take the scores of Geekbench as a tell-all, as the repository’s tests and benchmarks aren’t really used as a litmus test among reviewers.
The Timing Of All This Is “Convenient”
As the subtitle suggests, the timing in which the Geekbench details of the 250K Plus have appeared is very convenient, and comes just after rumours that Intel had reportedly cancelled its plans to release a Core Ultra 9 290K Plus CPU. We say reportedly, because the sources in the original report indicate that the blue chipmaker still hasn’t publicly announced the existence of its Core Ultra 200 Plus Series lineup, which means that, technically speaking, it was never announced.
Had the 290K Plus been released (which will never be), PC enthusiasts could’ve expected a 24-core CPU featuring eight P-Cores and 16 E-Cores. Not only that, but the processor could have had base and boost clocks that were nearly identical to its current king-of-the-hill, the Core Ultra 9 285K.
With the Geekbench metrics of the 250K Plus now out in the wild, though, the timing of it all seems pertinent to another rumour: Intel is still planning to release two Core Ultra 200 Plus Series CPUs, the 250K Plus, and the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus.
The latter model, in particular, is expected to ship out with 24-Cores – eight P-Cores and 16 E-Cores, along with a base and boost clock of 3.7GHz and 5.5GHz, respectively. For that matter, both unreleased SKUs are also expected to support faster memory speeds by default; instead of 6400MT/s, it’ll be rated at 7200MT/s.
