Intel's Bartlett Lake-S Steppings Reaffirm A 12 P-Core CPU But Will It Arrive On Gaming PCs?

If you're really opposed to the existence of hybrid CPUs, you could buy an Intel chip and disable the E-cores, but that really dumpsters your multi-core performance. What if Intel made a CPU like it used to, and like AMD does: with a purely homogenous core architecture, yet also with enough cores to remain competitive? That's why enthusiasts are excited about Bartlett Lake and its 12P+0e design.

We've seen this chip design confirmed several times over now; it definitely exists. Designed by Intel's NEX division (soon to be spun off into its own standalone company), Bartlett Lake as a processor family comprises rebadged Alder Lake and Raptor Lake silicon as well as a new chip design with 12 Raptor Cove P-cores.


We know it's a new chip design because usually-reliable Intel leaker Jaykihn0 just dropped the information that the parts sporting twelve P-cores are in fact A0 stepping. Assuming he's correct, that necessarily means that this is an all new chip design, and gives some reason to doubt earlier rumors (from e.g. Moore's Law is Dead) that the new Bartlett Lake design will be susceptible to the Vmin Shift Instability Issue that plagued high-power Raptor Lake chips.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of questions about these parts, particularly around their performance, pricing, and availability. Performance-wise, we expect even the top-end "12P" model to be slower than a Core i9-14900K or 13900K because it is unlikely to feature the extremely high clock rates of those CPUs, given that it is being created by the NEX division, which has a strong emphasis on reliability and efficiency over maximum performance. With lower clock rates and fewer cores, this chip won't be setting any benchmark records.

With regard to pricing and availability, these CPUs are very unlikely to hit regular retail channels, and in fact, there will assuredly be no boxed SKUs for these parts. Most likely, the new chips will be added to the extant Core 200 series, which are only available from OEMs in business systems. While it may be possible to find these parts for sale via grey market resellers, they probably won't be easy to come by, and they won't come cheap.