Intel Bartlett Lake-S CPU Spotted On An ASUS ROG Z790 Motherboard

You're probably expecting us to be talking about one of the extant Bartlett Lake processors based on re-reheated Raptor Lake silicon. Nope! This is a Core 9 273PQE, one of the long-rumored 12 P-core LGA 1700 CPUs. However, lest you accuse us of clickbait, we'll get the disappointing part out of the way early: it doesn't work in the board it was photographed occupying.

The photo, shared by well-known hardware enthusiast Алексей (@wxnod on Xwitter), depicts the Core 9 273PQE processor installed into what is obviously a consumer Z790 motherboard. The CPU fits, and it looks legit as heck. Sadly, according to the person who actually took the photo (Talon2016 on the Overclock.net forums), the system doesn't boot with the Bartlett Lake CPU installed. That's no real surprise; extant BIOS firmware simply won't know about or be able to support the new chips, as they're quite different from previous LGA 1700 CPUs.

To refresh: Bartlett Lake-S is an Intel codename that refers to a series of processors for the LGA 1700 platform—the very same that hosted Alder Lake (12th), Raptor Lake (13th), and Raptor Lake Refresh (14th) processors. It ended up being the last Intel platform to bear "Core i-" series branding, as the company has now moved on to simply "Core" and "Core Ultra" branding for its consumer processors, with this new chip sporting the "Core" branding that indicates the lack of an onboard NPU.


Enthusiasts were very excited when these parts leaked because they represent deterministic performance. In other words, no more worrying about scheduling SNAFUs suddenly causing poor game and application performance as a thread slips over onto an E-core that shouldn't have. Most likely, even the top-end 12-core model will suffer in multi-threaded performance compared to, say, a Core 7 251E, the Bartlett Lake version of the Core i9-14900. That's to say nothing of the comparison against the Core i9-14900KS.

The unfortunate reality is that Bartlett Lake is not a family meant for DIYers, end-users, or consumers at all. Instead, this processor family is aimed squarely at "edge computing," which is a business term for "thin clients didn't work out so now we need to put PCs at every endpoint again." Jokes aside, some of these workloads absolutely require deterministic performance, and that means a hybrid architecture part simply isn't suitable.


Enter the all-P-core Bartlett Lake chips, which are actually available over at Mouser Electronics; part number CM8071506031056 is described as "CPU - Central Processing Units Intel Core 9 processor 273PQE (36M Cache, up to 5.90 GHz) FC-LGA16A, Tray." That's pretty darn clear as being Bartlett Lake 12P. They're $875 apiece, or "just" $771 if you buy ten at a time. Lead time is eight weeks on them, though, and the site only has three in stock, so you better get on it if you want one.

Videocardz did the legwork and figured out that the motherboard is an ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Apex, an ultra-high-end overclocker motherboard meant for extreme OC using LN2 and similar endeavors. It's not clear that any LGA 1700 consumer motherboards will get support for the "12P" Bartlett Lake chips, so Talon2016 and friends over at OCN are currently attempting to hack the necessary microcode into the BIOS for the Apex. We're keeping an eye on this story and keen to see how the new chips for the last-gen platform perform, so stay tuned.