The Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus Series are set to hit store shelves in a day or so, yet there are still rumours and leaks of the blue chipmaker’s allegedly “cancelled” Core Ultra 9 290K Plus springing out from its rusty pipes.
Details of the 290K Plus’ performance metrics are appearing via the online repository, Geekbench. The allegedly cancelled CPU is shown to have scored 3,747 points on the single-core test, and 26,117 points on the site’s multi-core test. Further, the system was being run on an ASUS ROG Strix Z890-E Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard, along with 64GB of DDR5-6800 RAM. In other words, all four memory slots were populated.
Other details of the 290K Plus show that it is a 24-core CPU with eight P-Cores and 16 E-Cores, which also indicates no change in the total core count, which was rumoured to be the reason Intel had axed the production of said CPU. From a production and marketing standpoint, it would make no sense to have three SKUs with the same total core count; the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus that we recently reviewed was given four extra cores. Oh, and it has a boost clock of 5.6GHz.
As always, Geekbench isn’t necessarily the gold standard for hardware testing and benchmarking. That said, the fact that the 290K Plus is still making an appearance tells us a couple of possibilities: either Intel has been lying to us about the processor being cancelled, or the listing was a typo. The latter seems unlikely, though, considering that whenever products are listed on Geekbench, they usually tend to be the real McCoy.
In any case, best to take this with a grain of salt.
(Source: Geekbench, Videocardz)
