SYSTEM ANALYZER

Rate My PC: Intel Core Ultra 9 285 + AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT

Get a comprehensive performance analysis of your gaming rig with detailed benchmarks, bottleneck detection, and upgrade recommendations

Build Configuration

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PROCESSOR (CPU)

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GRAPHICS CARD (GPU)

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97 Score

Top 3% Ranking

97 / 100

ULTIMATE READY

Apex Performer

Top 3% of systems. Capable of 4K Ultra gaming and advanced rendering.

4K 60+ FPSVR ReadyRay Tracing

System Balance Analysis

CPU vs GPU performance ratio

Well Balanced

CPU

97%

GPU

97%

PROCESSOR

Intel Core Ultra 9 285

75,488 Benchmark Score

Top 3% Market Ranking

View Full Specs →

GRAPHICS CARD

AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT

58,392 Benchmark Score

Top 3% Market Ranking

View Full Specs →

Market Position

How your build compares to others

Budget

0-30

Mid-Range

30-60

High-End

60-85

Enthusiast

85-100

Your Build

Game Performance Benchmarks

Real-world 4K FPS in popular titles

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Performance Insights

Tips to maximize your system

Optimal Performance

Your system is in the top tier. You can run any modern game at maximum settings.

4K Gaming Ready

Consider a 4K 144Hz monitor to fully utilize your hardware capabilities.

Compatible Games See what you can play Compare CPUs Find upgrades Compare GPUs Find upgrades

Performance Tiers Explained

90-100

Ultimate

4K Ultra gaming, VR ready, ray tracing enabled, professional workloads

4K 60+ FPS VR Ready

70-89

High-End

1440p Ultra or 4K High settings, excellent for modern AAA titles

1440p Ultra 4K High

50-69

Mid-Range

1080p Ultra or 1440p Medium, great value for most gamers

1080p Ultra 1440p Med

30-49

Entry Level

1080p Medium settings, suitable for eSports and older titles

1080p Med eSports

0-29

Legacy

Basic gaming, older titles, consider upgrading for modern games

720p-1080p Low Older Games

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285 paired with the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT is an unusual combination: a current-generation desktop CPU sitting at the 95th percentile of all processors, matched with an end-of-life flagship GPU that still holds the 88th percentile. Together the pair lands at a combined percentile of 92, which places this build firmly in enthusiast territory. An important caveat up front: no measured FPS data exists for this exact combination in the database, so all frame-rate discussion below is estimated from benchmark scores rather than direct game testing.

Upgrade Path and Platform

The platform anchor here is Intel Socket 1851, the home of Core Ultra Series 2. The Core Ultra 9 285 is built on the Arrow Lake-S design, manufactured by TSMC on a 3 nm process node, with 17,800 million transistors packed into a 243 mm² die. Memory support is DDR5 only, running dual-channel with 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth, and ECC memory is supported — a feature that opens the door to workstation-duty use that most desktop chips can't credibly claim. On the expansion side, the CPU provides PCIe Gen 5 with 20 lanes directly from the processor, enough for a Gen 5 x16 graphics slot plus a fast Gen 5 NVMe drive without lane sharing compromises.

Power requirements are modest on the CPU side and heavy on the GPU side. The Core Ultra 9 285 carries a 65 W TDP, while the RX 6950 XT demands 335 W of its own, fed by two 8-pin connectors, with AMD suggesting a 700 W power supply for the system. That suggestion already accounts for the pairing, so a builder following the 700 W guidance has workable headroom; the CPU's low TDP is what keeps the total within that envelope rather than pushing past it. The GPU is a triple-slot card measuring 267 mm long, 120 mm tall, and 50 mm wide, so case clearance is a genuine consideration before purchase.

Because the RX 6950 XT is end-of-life and the successor to its Navi 21 lineage is Navi III, a sensible next upgrade is the graphics card, not the platform. The CPU sits at the 95th percentile and its nearest rivals — the AMD EPYC 8224P, AMD EPYC 4545P, AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D, and AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 — all land within a fraction of a percent of its average score. There is effectively no meaningful CPU upgrade available at this performance tier; the GPU, sitting at the 88th percentile with rivals clustered within half a percent, is where future gains live.

Usage Scenarios

High-refresh gaming. With a PassMark G3D score of 28070 and a Geekbench Vulkan result of 165212, the RX 6950 XT has the raw throughput for high-refresh play at 1440p and even 4K in less demanding titles. No measured FPS exists for this pairing, but the GPU's percentile position and compute figures point to high frame rates in esports and AAA settings alike, with the CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 4881 ensuring the processor won't sag in frame-time-sensitive scenarios.

Streaming. The 24-core, 24-thread Core Ultra 9 285 handles encoding and background tasks without stealing resources from the game. Its PassMark multithread score of 56602 and physics score of 3598 indicate ample spare capacity for a broadcast pipeline alongside gameplay.

Video editing. The Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 48945 shows the CPU chews through timeline rendering and exports, while the GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6 and 576.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth give video workloads room to breathe. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 205998 confirms competent GPU compute for accelerated effects.

3D rendering. A Cinebench R20 multi-core score of 20556 and R15 multi-core score of 4933 place this CPU among the top performers in the database. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 result of 4235 adds viewport and GPU-rendered preview credibility.

Software development. Code compilation scales with multi-core throughput, and the 95th-percentile CPU combined with a PassMark extended instructions score of 45357 makes long builds shorter. ECC support adds correctness assurance for long-running test rigs.

Student and office work. This pairing is frankly overkill for documents and browsing, but the single-core Cinebench R23 score of 6909 means snappy everyday responsiveness, and the integrated Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 64EU can drive displays even without the discrete card installed.

GPU Analysis

The RX 6950 XT is a big-silicon RDNA 2.0 design: the Navi 21 chip, built on TSMC's 7 nm process, carries 26,800 million transistors across a 520 mm² die at a density of 51.5M per mm². That silicon budget translates into 5120 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, 128 render output units, and 80 ray-tracing cores. There are no tensor cores — RDNA 2.0 simply doesn't have them, which matters for anyone comparing AI-accelerated workloads against architectures that do.

Clocking runs from an 1860 MHz base through a 2100 MHz game clock up to a 2310 MHz boost, with memory at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). The 16 GB of GDDR6 sits on a 256-bit bus delivering 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth — a figure that keeps the shader array fed at high resolutions and explains why the card holds up in memory-heavy workloads. Raw throughput numbers reinforce that: 23.65 TFLOPS FP32, 47.31 TFLOPS FP16 at a 2:1 rate, a pixel fill rate of 295.7 GPixel/s, and a texture rate of 739.2 GTexel/s.

The benchmark picture matches the hardware. A PassMark G3D score of 28070, GPU compute score of 14199, and Geekbench Metal result of 222653 place the card at the 88th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals by average score — the NVIDIA P102-100 at 58528, the Intel Arc A570M at 58239, the AMD Radeon PRO V710 at 58657, and the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM at 58085 — sit within half a percent of the RX 6950 XT's 58392 average, meaning the card competes in a tight band regardless of vendor. For rendering, the DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) feature support, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6 API coverage mean current engines run without feature compromises. The card connects over PCIe 4.0 x16 — worth noting, since the CPU offers PCIe Gen 5, and the GPU will simply run at its own Gen 4 speed.

Gaming Performance

To restate clearly: the database contains no measured FPS rows for this exact CPU-GPU combination, and the data-is-measured flag is false. Everything in this section is an estimate derived from the benchmark scores, not recorded game testing.

Working from those scores, the PassMark G3D result of 28070 and 88th-percentile GPU standing suggest comfortable ultra-settings play at 1440p, with 4K viable in most titles — the 16 GB frame buffer and 576.0 GB/s of bandwidth are exactly the resources high-resolution textures demand. The PassMark DirectX 12 score of 114, DirectX 11 score of 300, and DirectX 9 score of 303 indicate solid performance across API generations, so older titles and modern engines alike should run without API-related penalties.

The CPU side is not a concern for frame delivery. A Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6909 and PassMark single-thread score of 4881 put processor-side responsiveness at the top of the desktop range, meaning the estimated frame rates in CPU-bound scenarios — high-refresh esports titles at lower resolutions — should track the GPU's limits rather than the processor's. Combined at the 92nd percentile, this pairing should be estimated as a high-refresh 1440p machine and a competent 4K ultra machine, with the caveat that these are inferences from synthetic results, not measured frames.

Balance and Bottleneck

The bottleneck analysis here is straightforward: the CPU outclasses the GPU by percentile. The Core Ultra 9 285 sits at the 95th percentile versus the RX 6950 XT's 88th, and while both are strong, the gap in role is clear. In gaming, the GPU is the limiting component at 1440p and 4K — the estimated frame rates will be set by the RX 6950 XT's shader throughput and memory bandwidth long before the CPU's 24 cores come into play. Only at low resolutions with uncapped frame rates would the balance flip, and even then the single-core scores of 6909 (Cinebench R23) and 4881 (PassMark) suggest the CPU holds on for a long while.

In productivity, the reverse holds. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 48945 and PassMark multithread score of 56602 are processor-driven results; the GPU contributes through its OpenCL score of 205998 and GPU compute score of 14199 where applications are written to use it, but the heavy lifting in rendering and compilation is CPU territory. The memory subsystem supports both roles: 102.4 GB/s of DDR5 bandwidth on the CPU side keeps the cores fed, while the GPU's own 576.0 GB/s handles its local workloads.

There's also a generational imbalance worth flagging. The CPU is active, current-generation hardware on Socket 1851 with PCIe Gen 5 available, while the GPU is end-of-life and connects over PCIe 4.0 x16. That doesn't bottleneck gaming meaningfully, but it does mean the GPU is the aging half of the partnership — the component whose replacement would move the combined percentile the most.

Who Should Build It

1440p and 4K gamers whose priorities are ultra-settings image quality over modern features will get the most from this pairing; the estimated frame rates from the G3D and Vulkan scores point to exactly that use case.

Content creators — video editors, 3D artists, streamers — are arguably the best fit of all. The 95th-percentile CPU with its Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 48945 does the rendering work, the 16 GB GPU frame buffer supports timeline work, and the 88th-percentile GPU handles preview and effects acceleration.

Developers and small workstations benefit from a less obvious angle: ECC memory support on a desktop Socket 1851 platform. Combined with 24 cores and a PassMark integer math score of 164869, that makes this a legitimate compact workstation for compilation farms, data work, and long-running reliability-sensitive tasks.

Students and general users would be overspending capability they'll never touch — the single-core scores deliver responsiveness, but a fraction of this hardware does the same job for ordinary workloads.

Industries that fit: game development (viewport performance plus compile throughput), media production, engineering simulation on a budget of cores, and small-business compute nodes where ECC matters.

Benchmark Performance

The full CPU scorecard: Cinebench R15 multi-core 4933, R15 single-core 696, R20 multi-core 20556, R20 single-core 2901, R23 multi-core 48945, R23 single-core 6909. PassMark results span multithread 56602, single-thread 4881, physics 3598, integer math 164869, floating point math 194988, data compression 602121, data encryption 46949, extended instructions 45357, find prime numbers 459, and random string sorting 73651. The average benchmark score is 75488, placing the CPU at the 95th percentile of all CPUs.

The GPU scorecard: 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 4235, Geekbench Metal 222653, Geekbench OpenCL 205998, Geekbench Vulkan 165212, PassMark G3D 28070, GPU compute 14199, plus PassMark per-API results — DirectX 9 at 303, DirectX 10 at 164, DirectX 11 at 300, DirectX 12 at 114, and G2D at 1063. The average benchmark score is 58392, at the 88th percentile of all GPUs.

The combined percentile is 92. What that means in practice: this is a top-tier pairing whose ceiling is defined by the GPU. The CPU's rivals — EPYC 8224P (delta -0.1%), EPYC 4545P (delta 0.2%), Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D (delta -0.3%), Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 (delta -0.3%) — are server and professional parts, which tells you the CPU is competing outside its desktop weight class. The GPU's rivals cluster equally tightly, within 0.5% in every case, meaning its position is stable rather than statistical noise.

FAQ

Q: Does this build have measured game FPS data?

A: No. The database contains no measured FPS rows for this CPU-GPU combination, and the data-is-measured flag is false. All frame-rate expectations discussed here are estimates derived from the benchmark scores.

Q: How much power supply does this pairing need?

A: The GPU manufacturer suggests a 700 W power supply. The GPU's TDP is 335 W and the CPU's TDP is 65 W, so the suggested figure covers both with headroom.

Q: Can I overclock the CPU?

A: No — the multiplier is locked. The Core Ultra 9 285 boosts to 5.60 GHz from a 2.50 GHz base on its own.

Q: Does this build support ECC memory?

A: Yes. The CPU supports ECC on its DDR5 dual-channel memory bus, delivering 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth — unusual for a desktop part and useful for workstation reliability.

Q: Is the RX 6950 XT still in production?

A: No, its production status is end-of-life. It was released in May 2022 and its lineage's successor is Navi III, so future availability is secondhand or remaining stock.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: Its average benchmark score of 75488 sits within half a percent of the AMD EPYC 8224P, AMD EPYC 4545P, AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755X3D, and AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 9755 — a cluster of server and professional processors.

Q: Will PCIe Gen 5 from the CPU benefit this GPU?

A: Not directly. The CPU provides PCIe Gen 5 with 20 lanes, but the RX 6950 XT uses a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, so the card runs at Gen 4 speeds.

CPU Analysis

The Core Ultra 9 285 is an Arrow Lake-S design on Intel Socket 1851, part of Core Ultra Series 2, manufactured by TSMC on a 3 nm node — 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die. The core configuration is 24 cores and 24 threads, a one-thread-per-core layout with no SMT doubling. Clocks run 2.50 GHz base and 5.60 GHz boost, and the 65 W TDP for that core count is the standout efficiency figure on the spec sheet.

The cache hierarchy: 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 36 MB of shared L3. Per-core L2 of that size is generous and matters for workloads with large working sets per thread. The integrated Arc Xe-LPG Graphics 64EU rounds out the package, providing display output and basic graphics without the discrete card.

What the scores say about real workloads: the Cinebench progression — 4933 in R15, 20556 in R20, 48945 in R23 multi-core — shows sustained scaling that holds up across render engines, not a burst-then-throttle pattern. Single-core results (696 R15, 2901 R20, 6909 R23) confirm the per-thread speed is top-tier too, so lightly threaded applications like most games and many DCC tools don't pay a penalty for the efficiency-focused 65 W envelope. The PassMark spread reinforces versatility: 164869 integer math, 194988 floating point math, 602121 data compression, 46949 data encryption, and 73651 random string sorting cover everything from archiving to database work. The locked multiplier removes overclocking from the equation, but with a 95th-percentile standing and rivals that include EPYC server chips, there's little reason to chase it. The verdict: a processor whose benchmark profile justifies workstation duty on a desktop socket, paired best here with a GPU that — while end-of-life — still holds the 88th percentile and keeps the combined build at the 92nd.

Rate My PC: Intel Core Ultra 9 285 + AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT

Apex Performer

System Balance Analysis

Intel Core Ultra 9 285

AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT

Market Position

Game Performance Benchmarks

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

Performance Insights

Optimal Performance

4K Gaming Ready

Performance Tiers Explained

Ultimate

High-End

Mid-Range

Entry Level

Legacy

Upgrade Path and Platform

Usage Scenarios

GPU Analysis

Gaming Performance

Balance and Bottleneck

Who Should Build It

Benchmark Performance

FAQ

CPU Analysis

4K Gaming Performance

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

1440p Gaming Performance

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

1080p Gaming Performance

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

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