Core Ultra 5 226V vs Core Ultra 5 225U

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

The Core Ultra 5 226V uses the FCBGA2833 socket (PCIe 3.0), while the Core Ultra 5 225U uses FCBGA2049 (PCIe 4.0) — making them incompatible on the same motherboard. Both support up to LPDDR5X-8533 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: 8 (Core Ultra 5 226V) vs 20 (Core Ultra 5 225U) — the Core Ultra 5 225U offers 12 more lanes for additional GPUs or NVMe drives. Chipset compatibility: SoC (Core Ultra 5 226V) and Meteor Lake SoC (Core Ultra 5 225U).

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 (Core Ultra 5 226V) vs VT-x / VT-d / EPT (Core Ultra 5 225U). Both include integrated graphics — Arc 130V (Core Ultra 5 226V) and Intel Graphics (4 Xe Cores) (Core Ultra 5 225U) — 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.