Intel's Core Ultra 5 225F is an entry-level Ultra 5 CPU in the Arrow Lake lineup as it boasts 4 fewer cores than the rest of the Ultra 5 pack.
Intel has several more Arrow Lake SKUs left for the launch, mostly including the non-overclockable chips at lower prices than those launched in the initial batch. There are a few Ultra 9, Ultra 7, Ultra 5, and Ultra 3 CPUs with somewhat lower specifications than the already launched ones. Some of them have already leaked recently, the latest being the Core Ultra 5 225F CPU.
It's the slowest SKU in the Ultra 5 family and brings only 10 cores compared to the 14-core configuration of the Core Ultra 5 235, 245, 245K, and 245KF. However, in the leaked benchmark, the 225F shows somewhat equivalent performance to the Core Ultra 5 235 in both single and multi-core tests.
As a part of a pre-built system, the Core Ultra 5 225F was benchmarked on Geekbench 6.3, scoring 2653 points in single-core and 13028 points in multi-core tests. The scores are on par with the Core Ultra 235, which scored 2634 points in single and 13293 points in multi-core tests. Although this looks good for the 225F, Geekbench scores can vary significantly from test to test, and we need several more such benchmarks for a more accurate average.
As far as the single-core performance goes, the 225F is as lackluster as the 235, trailing behind the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 processors. The 225F comes with four less efficient cores than the Ultra 5 235, which makes the multi-core performance a bit impressive. Moreover, the clock speeds are also slightly lower than the latter. Another difference between the two is that the Core Ultra 5 225F won't bring integrated graphics, which means its price is going to be noticeably lower than the U5 235 and U5 225.
Intel Core Ultra 5 225F is expected to bring a 6-P+4-E core combination, 3.3/4.9 GHz of Base/Boost P-core clock, 2.7/4.4 GHz of Base/Boost E-core clock, and a TDP of 65W. One small difference between what was expected earlier is the L3 cache size. As per the Geekbench's page, the 225F is supposedly bringing 20 MB of L3 cache instead of 21 MB. The rest is unaffected.
Compared to the Ultra 5 235, not only are the clocks slower but the L3 cache is 3MB less too. The processor is expected to launch in the early part of 2025 along with other SKUs and so will the budget 800 chipset motherboards that won't allow CPU overclocking.