Amazon's Spring Sale rumbles on, and in its final days in the 'States, it's knocked a staggering 37% off one of the beefier processors in AMD's current lineup - the 12 core/24 thread Ryzen 9 9900X. At $315 from Amazon USA, it's dropped to a new low price from the big online retailer down from a previous price of $370 or thereabouts, although Amazon is stating a bigger 37% discount on its $499 list price.

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AMD's Ryzen 9000 series of gaming CPUs might not have provided the hefty uplift in performance that we expected, after the revolution that the AM5 socket chips first brought, but they've nonetheless proven to be more efficient and slightly quicker options than the Ryzen 7000 chips they replaced. Slap bang in the middle of this range of options is the Ryzen 7 9700X, an eight-core and 16-thread processor that can be had for decent money. It's currently $265 from Amazon US in the Spring Sale, working out to a genuine reduction on a decent option for most folks that makes for a much more compelling option if you want to change over to AM5 from an older system, or want to upgrade your existing rig to the latest generation.

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Regardless of whether Intel would say it out loud, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus both represent an attempt to right the wrongs of the original Arrow Lake/Core Ultra 200S family. That bundle of chips was, necessarily, more power-efficient and cooler-running than the hotheaded 14th Gen models before them, though this came at the cost of hamstrung gaming performance. Rarely a desirable quality in a gaming CPU, that.

These two Core Ultra 200S Plus (or Arrow Lake Refresh) processors do, in comparison, achieve some appeal. They’re inexpensive and excellent multitaskers, and while they do still have efficiency on their silicon brains, Intel have looked to bump game speeds back up by rejigging their innards into a less latency-prone layout.

Alas, it’s not enough. Not only are Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus slower in games than AMD’s best chips, they once again fail to convincingly outpace Intel’s own back catalogue – the 2023 vintage 14th gen processors, included.

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