Intel's Secret All P-Core Raptor Lake CPU Hits 7.4GHz In Wild Overclock

Enthusiasts had been clamoring for an all P-core Raptor Lake, but one never materialized, at least initially. The company would eventually make such a CPU, the Core 9 273PQE, but it's esoteric and rare, and it doesn't actually offer much advantage over the mainstream Core i9-14900K. Intel actually made one before that, though: the Core i9-14901E, which is an embedded CPU that simply uses a standard Raptor Lake CPU die with the E-cores disabled in hardware. That part's not overclockable, but the company planned to release one that was, and even made a few qualification samples. One of those parts has now popped up in the hands of overclockers on Bilibili, and the results are that they achieved a scorching 7.4 GHz overclock using sub-ambient cooling.


Lengyue's WestmereX channel, a well-known enthusiast and overclocking channel over on BiliBili, got ahold of one of these "Core i9-14901KE" processors in "QS", or Qualification Sample form. This is different from an ES, or Engineering Sample, which doesn't often represent the final form of the CPU. QS processors are generally very close if not identical to final processors, meaning that Intel got all the way to making QS versions of the chip before it canned the SKU. In fact, this part actually had a product page on Intel's ARK Product Information database at one time, but the page was deleted just a few months after it went up.

So how does it do? Well, as Lengyue himself says, it's a Core i9-14900K with the E-cores turned off. In fact, he specifically says that "you can't call it similar, because it's the same." It scores the same as a a 14900K in Cinebench, and it hits the same 5.5 GHz across all cores, power-limited, in that test. Cranking up the voltage and removing the power limits, it turbos to 5.8 GHz across all cores in the same test, with a minor improvement in performance, but again, it's nothing you couldn't do on a 14900K.


For fun, WestmereX put the chip under a chiller, bringing the temperature all the way down to -100℃, and managed to achieve a verified overclock of 7.4 GHz, although it wasn't stable enough to complete benchmarks at that speed. Falling back to 6.9 GHz, with a memory overclock of 8120 MT/s, the group managed to complete SuperPi with a 1 million digits result of just 4.641 seconds, which is incredible, but also as expected for this chip at that speed, largely thanks to the insane 5988 MHz ring frequency.

Yet again, this is nothing you couldn't already achieve on a regular Core i9-14900K. In the end, Lengyue says he's disappointed that the chip isn't improved at all over a standard Core i9 despite lacking the E-cores from the factory, but of course, that's because it is the same thing, just with the E-cores disabled. As he says, the QS processor is more of a novelty, worth more as a historical curiosity than for its technical qualities. The fastest processor on LGA 1700 remains and likely will forever be the Core i9-14900KS, although now that I've said that, maybe Intel will prove me wrong with one of those refreshed LGA 1700 CPUs it's supposedly cooking up.