Core Ultra 7 270K Plus vs Ryzen 5 2600

Compare the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Ryzen 5 2600 on real gaming and productivity benchmarks, full specifications, live retailer prices and performance-per-dollar, then jump straight to the cheapest in-stock option.

From$265.00
Buy

The short answer

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is the better buy here: it's both faster for gaming and gives more performance per dollar.

  • Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is about 148% faster for gaming at 1080p (gaming index 77.5 vs 31.2).
  • Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is roughly 527% faster in multi-core work, an edge in rendering, encoding and compiling.
  • Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is the cheaper chip right now, by roughly 4%.
  • Core Ultra 7 270K Plus delivers about 158% more gaming performance per dollar.
  • Core Ultra 7 270K Plus has more cores (24C/24T vs 6C/12T), which helps in heavily threaded workloads.
  • Ryzen 5 2600 has a lower TDP (65W vs 125W), so it runs cooler and is easier to cool quietly.

Gaming performance

CPU-bound gaming score: a geometric mean of in-game frame rates at 1080p, normalized so the fastest gaming CPU we track = 100.

Core Ultra 7 270K Plus77.5
Ryzen 5 260031.2

Does the CPU matter at 1440p or 4K? Much less. At higher resolutions the graphics card sets the frame rate, so the gap between two CPUs shrinks — often to nothing. The 1080p figure above is the demanding case, where the CPU is stressed and the difference actually shows.

Performance per dollar

Gaming index divided by the current lowest price — higher is better value. This moves with the market as prices change day to day.

Core Ultra 7 270K Plus30.4 / $100
Ryzen 5 260011.8 / $100

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus gives about 158% more gaming performance per dollar at today’s prices.

Full platform cost

A complete-platform price needs a live CPU price and an in-stock compatible motherboard on both sides. We can’t build one for Ryzen 5 2600 right now, which is common for older sockets like AM4 where we don’t track current boards. The gaming, value and specs comparisons still apply.

Specs head-to-head

Core Ultra 7 270K Plus
Ryzen 5 2600
Price (from)
$255.15
$265.00
Gaming (1080p index)
77.5
31.2
Cores / threads
24 / 24
6 / 12
Cores (P + E)
8P + 16E
Boost clock
3.9 GHz
Base clock
3.4 GHz
L3 cache
36 MB
16 MB
L2 cache
40 MB
3 MB
TDP
125W
65W
Max power
250W
88W
Socket
LGA1851
AM4
Memory support
DDR5, 7200
DDR4, 2933
Integrated graphics
Intel Graphics
None
Architecture
Arrow Lake Refresh
Zen+
Process node
TSMC N3B
GF 12nm
MSRP
$289.00
$199.00

Productivity & compute

Core Ultra 7 270K Plus
Ryzen 5 2600
PassMark (multi-core)
68,520
13,127
PassMark (single-thread)
5,066
2,235
Cinebench 2024 (multi-core)
2,482
396
Cinebench 2024 (single-core)
145
60

Efficiency

Gaming performance per watt (gaming index per 100W of TDP) — higher means more frames for the heat and power.

Core Ultra 7 270K Plus62.0
Ryzen 5 260048.0

Where to buy

Core Ultra 7 270K Plusfrom $255.15
RetailerAvailabilityPriceBuy
AmazonIn stock$255.15
Buy
NeweggIn stock$310.00
Buy
B&HIn stock$329.99
Buy
Ryzen 5 2600from $265.00
RetailerAvailabilityPriceBuy
AmazonIn stock$265.00
Buy

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