Intel Sells The Fastest Sub-$200 CPUs That You Can Buy Right Now And AMD Can Barely Keep Up, Even With A Ryzen 9 5900XT

Intel Sells The Fastest Sub-$200 CPUs That You Can Buy Right Now And AMD Can Barely Keep Up, Even With A Ryzen 9 5900XT

Intel’s Budget CPUs Are Shockingly Fast—And AMD Is Struggling to Keep Up If you’re shopping for a new desktop processor under $200 in 2025, you might be surprised to learn that Intel—not AMD—is delivering the best bang for your buck. Recent benchmarks show Intel’s Core Ultra 5 245KF outperforming even AMD’s high-tier Ryzen 2000-era chips like the Ryzen 9 5900XT, despite costing significantly less. This flip in the CPU hierarchy raises a provocative question: Has Intel taken on the role AMD once held—as the value-driven performance leader? Credit: Intel The Rise of Intel’s Core Ultra 5 245KF At just under $220 (and frequently discounted below $200), the Core Ultra 5 245KF is rewriting expectations for budget CPUs. Packing 14 cores—six performance cores and eight efficiency cores—and a max boost clock of 5.2GHz, it churns out a PassMark score of roughly 43,000. That’s in the same ballpark as last-gen high-end chips that once retailed for $400 or more. More impressively, it does all this whi…