Intel's "Bartlett Lake" lineup has been shrouded in mystery ever since its first leaks appeared. Not much is publicly known about the performance of the P-core-only lineup targeted for embedded and edge use. Intel has confirmed that Bartlett Lake-S will offer up to 12 cores with the flagship Intel Core 9 273PQE, based on the Raptor Lake architecture. We also saw a PassMark entry for the Core 9 273PQE, where the Bartlett Lake CPU was around 12% slower than the Core i7-14700K.
However, recently, a group of enthusiasts tried (and succeeded) in booting a Core 9 273PQE CPU to Windows on a Z790 motherboard. Now, a German reviewer, Zed Up Gaming, has compared the Core 9 273PQE against the Core i9-14900K. The latter is the Raptor Lake Refresh flagship, offering 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores, while the Bartlett Lake challenger has only 12 P-cores.
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According to the benchmarks from Zed Up, the Core 9 273PQE beats the Core i9-14900K by up to 10% in some tests. Especially in gaming, the Core 9 273PQE holds a notable advantage thanks to its P-core-only layout. There are some outliers, like Rainbow Six Siege, where the two CPUs were essentially tied, and Counter-Strike 2, where the 14900K managed a 1.5% lead, but in most other games, the Bartlett Lake flagship had an advantage.
The key factor behind the Core 9 273PQE's victory is its core layout. While Intel claims that P-cores and E-cores are similar in performance, we know that P-cores are vastly superior in workloads such as gaming due to their superior boost clocks. With 12 P-cores compared to the 8 in the 14900K, the Bartlett Lake CPU is better suited to gaming workloads, despite not even having an official BIOS from Intel.
This is an interesting benchmark result, but it doesn't change much in the grand scheme of things. Intel has previously confirmed that the Bartlett Lake-S CPUs, including the Core 9 273PQE, will not be brought to consumer platforms, despite them being compatible with the LGA1700 socket. Therefore, even though Bartlett Lake-S has been available to embedded and edge customers since March 2026, it is not a feasible option for the average gamer.
