Intel reportedly canceled Core Ultra 9 290K Plus after benchmarks showed little gain over the cheaper 270K Plus

Intel’s unreleased Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has appeared in new benchmarks, and the results may explain why the company never brought it to retail. The chip was expected to be the flagship model in the Core Ultra 200S Plus Arrow Lake Refresh lineup, but early testing shows it performs only slightly better than the much cheaper Core Ultra 7 270K Plus.

The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus was tested by Bilibili outlet 51972, which reportedly gained access to two prototype chips. The processor was verified through BIOS and Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool, which supports newer Core Ultra 200S Plus CPUs. That helped confirm the chip was not just a renamed or misidentified part.

On paper, the 290K Plus looked like a strong flagship. It was expected to offer 24 cores and 24 threads, with 8 P cores and 16 E cores, 36MB of L3 cache, 40MB of L2 cache, DDR5 7200 support, and a boost clock of up to 5.8GHz. However, real performance does not appear to separate it clearly from the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus.

In productivity benchmarks, the 290K Plus was only around 2 to 3 percent faster than the 270K Plus in many tests. Rendering performance was also only about 4 percent better on average. That kind of lead is difficult to justify for a flagship part, especially when the cheaper chip is already close enough to match it with some tuning.

Gaming results tell a similar story. The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus showed up to an 8 percent gain in some games, but the average uplift was closer to 2 to 3 percent. In several tests, the two chips were almost tied.

The bigger problem for Intel would have been pricing. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus has an MSRP of $299 and is reportedly available for around $280. A Core Ultra 9 290K Plus would likely have needed a much higher price, possibly around $399 to $499. With such a small performance lead, that price gap would have made the flagship harder to recommend.

The test also showed that AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 remains a stronger gaming chip in many 1080p and 1440p results. That would have made the 290K Plus even harder to position as a high end gaming flagship.

Intel may have decided that launching the 290K Plus would only weaken its own lineup. If the 270K Plus can deliver nearly the same performance at a much lower price, the canceled flagship would have had little room to stand out.

For buyers, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus now looks like the more important chip in the Arrow Lake Refresh lineup. It offers close to flagship level performance for far less money, while the 290K Plus seems to have become a rare prototype that shows why not every high end chip makes it to store shelves.