Intel’s Hidden 12 Core Beast May Have Just Stolen the Gaming Crown

 Intel Core 9 273PQE was never meant to sit inside your gaming PC. This Bartlett Lake processor targets edge systems, not regular consumers. Yet it has one very unusual feature: 12 performance cores and no efficiency cores.

On paper, the chip fits the LGA 1700 socket. In practice, most consumer motherboards do not support it because Intel never released a proper BIOS for P core only Bartlett Lake CPUs. Enthusiasts recently found a way around that problem with a modified BIOS, and German blogger Zed Up managed to test the chip in Windows.

The Benchmarks Show a Surprising Fight Against Core i9 14900K

Zed Up compared the Core 9 273PQE with the Intel Core i9 14900K in several games. At 720p, Bartlett Lake beat the 14900K by 5.4 percent in Horizon Zero Dawn and by 6.7 percent in Monster Hunter Wilds.

The gap grew in Outcast and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where the new chip was about 9 percent faster. In Rainbow Six Siege and Counter Strike 2, both processors delivered almost identical results.

These numbers make the Core 9 273PQE look like Intel’s fastest gaming CPU right now. Even the Core i9 14900KS rarely pulls far ahead of the 14900K in real reviews. Arrow Lake also failed to bring a clear gaming leap, while Core Ultra 200 Plus still struggles to beat Raptor Lake Refresh in games.

Exciting, But Not Practical Yet

We see Core 9 273PQE as a fascinating preview of what Intel could offer gamers with a simpler P core focused design. For most of you, though, it will remain a curiosity. The platform cost, BIOS trouble, and limited availability make Raptor Lake Refresh the smarter buy.

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