Core Ultra 5 225U vs Core Ultra 5 226V

The Core Ultra 5 225U packs 12 cores / 14 threads, while the Core Ultra 5 226V offers 8 cores / 8 threads — the Core Ultra 5 225U has 4 more cores. Boost clocks reach 4.8 GHz on the Core Ultra 5 225U versus 4.5 GHz on the Core Ultra 5 226V — a 6.5% clock advantage for the Core Ultra 5 225U (base: 2.4 GHz vs 2.1 GHz). The Core Ultra 5 225U uses the Arrow Lake-U (2025) architecture (5 nm), while the Core Ultra 5 226V uses Lunar Lake (2024) (3 nm). In PassMark, the Core Ultra 5 225U scores 18,434 against the Core Ultra 5 226V's 18,400 — a 0.2% lead for the Core Ultra 5 225U. Geekbench 6 single-core — the metric most relevant to gaming — records 2,374 vs 1,962, a 19% lead for the Core Ultra 5 225U that directly translates to higher frame rates. Multi-core Geekbench: 7,846 vs 1,898 (122.1% advantage for the Core Ultra 5 225U). L3 cache: 12 MB on the Core Ultra 5 225U vs 8 MB (total) on the Core Ultra 5 226V.

The Core Ultra 5 225U uses the FCBGA2049 socket (PCIe 4.0), while the Core Ultra 5 226V uses FCBGA2833 (PCIe 3.0) — making them incompatible on the same motherboard. Both support up to DDR5-6400 / LPDDR5x-8400 memory speed. The Core Ultra 5 225U supports up to 128 GB of RAM compared to 16 GB — 155.6% more capacity for professional workloads. Both feature 2-channel memory with ECC support. PCIe lanes: 20 (Core Ultra 5 225U) vs 8 (Core Ultra 5 226V) — the Core Ultra 5 225U offers 12 more lanes for additional GPUs or NVMe drives. Chipset compatibility: Meteor Lake SoC (Core Ultra 5 225U) and SoC (Core Ultra 5 226V).

Neither processor supports overclocking. Only the Core Ultra 5 226V supports AVX-512 instructions — important for machine learning and scientific applications. Virtualization support: VT-x / VT-d / EPT (Core Ultra 5 225U) vs VT-x, VT-d (Core Ultra 5 226V). Both include integrated graphics — Intel Graphics (4 Xe Cores) (Core Ultra 5 225U) and Arc 130V (Core Ultra 5 226V) — useful as a fallback for troubleshooting or display output without a dedicated GPU. Primary use case: Core Ultra 5 225U targets Productivity. Direct competitor: Core Ultra 5 225U rivals Ryzen 5 8640U.