How Enthusiasts Brought a Hidden Intel Chip to Life

You rarely see a processor escape its intended destiny. Yet that is exactly what happened with Intel’s experimental Bartlett Lake chip. An enthusiast known as kryptonfly managed to run the Intel Core 9 273QPE on a consumer ASUS Z790 motherboard.

At first, the system refused to go beyond the POST screen. The BIOS simply could not handle more than eight performance cores. Bartlett Lake, however, carries twelve P cores based on Raptor Cove architecture. With a custom patch, kryptonfly forced the BIOS to recognize all 12 cores. The black screen vanished. Soon after, both he and members of Overclock.net successfully booted Windows 11.

For a chip never meant for consumer systems, that moment felt historic.

Benchmark Battles and Power Tuning

Once Windows loaded, testing began. In Cinebench R23, user CarSalesman reached 33,111 multi core points at 5.4 GHz across all cores. Power draw peaked at 286 W. That score slightly surpassed the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and came close to the Intel Core i7-14700.

Earlier attempts told a different story. The chip consumed over 320 W and throttled at 4.3 GHz due to voltage drops. By limiting Vcore to 1.35 V and adjusting LLC settings, stability improved and clocks held steady.

Another tester, Talon2016, scored up to 33,818 points on an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex with 64 GB DDR5 memory. He even launched Battlefield 6 with Secure Boot enabled. That is impressive for silicon built for edge devices, not gaming rigs.

Why This Matters to You

Bartlett Lake includes only P cores with Hyper Threading. No efficiency cores. No consumer roadmap. Yet enthusiasts proved that limits can bend.

If Intel ever releases similar all P core designs to the public, you could see simpler scheduling, strong multi core scaling, and new overclocking potential. Experiments like this push vendors to rethink segmentation.

We believe this signals a future where hidden engineering samples spark real innovation. Keep watching this space.

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