An Intel Bartlett Lake processor normally locked to OEM and industrial channels has been modified to operate on a consumer Z790 motherboard, with early benchmark results placing it close to — and in some multi-core runs ahead of — AMD's Ryzen 9 9900X3D. The chip in question, the Core 9 273QPE, carries 12 Raptor Cove P-cores with 24 threads and a reported boost clock of 5.4GHz, according to coverage from Tom's Hardware published this week.
What Bartlett Lake Actually Is
Bartlett Lake is Intel's P-core-only processor family, designed for edge computing and industrial deployments rather than retail desktop systems. Unlike mainstream consumer chips from the same generation, it strips out efficiency cores entirely, concentrating all die space on high-frequency Raptor Cove performance cores. Intel has not made Bartlett Lake available through standard retail channels, and the Core 9 273QPE carries a QPE suffix typically associated with engineering or qualification samples rather than boxed consumer SKUs.
The modification enabling the chip to POST on a Z790 board is a hardware-level intervention, not a simple BIOS unlock. Details of exactly how the mod was performed have been circulating in enthusiast communities, though the process is technically demanding and not reversible without risk to the processor or motherboard. Independent confirmation of the specific modding method from a primary source had not been established at the time of publication.
Benchmark Numbers and What They Suggest
In Cinebench R23, the modded Core 9 273QPE is reported to score approximately 33,000 points in multi-core — a result Tom's Hardware compares to the Core i7-14700. That figure is notable because the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, AMD's 12-core 3D V-Cache desktop processor, typically scores in a similar range in the same test. The Tom's Hardware report states the Intel chip edges ahead of the AMD part in that specific benchmark run, though it is important to note these are informal modded-hardware results rather than controlled lab comparisons.
Single-core performance and gaming workloads, which strongly favor AMD's 3D V-Cache architecture in the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, were not the focus of the reported tests. The Bartlett Lake chip's advantage, if any, appears limited to raw threaded throughput under Cinebench conditions.
Why This Matters Outside the Lab
The practical implications for consumer buyers are narrow. The Core 9 273QPE is not sold at retail, the modification voids any warranty, and running OEM qualification silicon on consumer boards introduces stability and compatibility risks that no mainstream user would reasonably accept. What the exercise does reveal is the ceiling of Intel's all-P-core architecture in its current form — and how competitive that ceiling is against AMD's best 12-core desktop offering in compute-heavy workloads.
Intel has not commented publicly on the modification or its benchmark results. Whether Bartlett Lake silicon will ever reach a consumer-facing product line remains unannounced, but the modding community's results are likely to sustain pressure on Intel to clarify its desktop roadmap for all-P-core configurations beyond the OEM segment.
