The Core Ultra 7 270K was too good, so Intel scrapped the flagship Core Ultra 9 290K Plus — benchmarks of the 290K prototype find slim 2% faster performance in gaming and applications
Intel canceled the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus despite its development and prototype testing. Benchmarks of the engineering sample show only a 2% performance improvement over the Core Ultra 7 270K in gaming and applications. The minimal gains likely made the flagship CPU unjustifiable for release.
- ▪The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus was based on the 285K with a 24-core configuration and DDR5-7200 support.
- ▪In synthetic benchmarks, the 290K Plus averaged only 1.5% higher performance than the 270K Plus.
- ▪In gaming, the 290K Plus showed an average 2% FPS improvement at 1080p and just 1.5% at 1440p compared to the 270K Plus.
- ▪The 290K Plus was 9.3% faster than AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 in Ansys Fluent Simulation but lagged behind overall in productivity tasks.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
PC Components CPUs The Core Ultra 7 270K was too good, so Intel scrapped the flagship Core Ultra 9 290K Plus — benchmarks of the 290K prototype find slim 2% faster performance in gaming and applications News By Hassam Nasir published 16 May 2026 The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus just wouldn't have made sense. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Intel) Share Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Intel canned the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus from the Arrow Lake refresh lineup announced a few months ago, despite a swirling of leaks and rumors confirming its existence.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tom's Hardware.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Tom's Hardware
