Intel’s 12 P core Bartlett Lake chip struggles to beat the older Core i9 13900K in games

Intel’s Bartlett Lake flagship has appeared in gaming benchmarks, and the results are not very encouraging for anyone expecting a major jump from its 12 Performance core design. The Core 9 273PQE was tested against several processors, including the older Core i9 13900K, and the newer chip failed to deliver a clear gaming advantage despite having four more P cores.

The comparison is interesting because Bartlett Lake uses a different core approach. Instead of combining Performance cores and Efficient cores like Raptor Lake, the Core 9 273PQE focuses on 12 Performance cores. On paper, that sounds like it should help in demanding workloads. In games, however, the extra P cores do not appear to change much.

PC Games Hardware tested the chip across around 15 games using a GeForce RTX 5090. The setup was tuned to stay close to the Raptor Lake platform in areas such as power limits and memory configuration. The Core 9 273PQE was pushed to nearly 5.30 GHz, although its official maximum boost clock is listed at up to 5.9 GHz. The Core i9 13900K, meanwhile, was reportedly able to run closer to its maximum turbo behavior during testing.

The benchmarks suggest eight strong Performance cores are still enough for gaming

The most important takeaway is that gaming still does not seem to benefit much from moving beyond eight strong Performance cores. The Core i9 13900K has eight P cores and 16 Efficient cores, while the Core 9 273PQE has 12 P cores. Even with that difference, the older Raptor Lake chip remained competitive and often tied the Bartlett Lake flagship in games.

That does not mean Bartlett Lake is a weak design overall. It may still make more sense in embedded or specialized systems where Intel wants a different kind of CPU stack. But for gaming PCs, the early results suggest there is little reason to get excited about a 12 P core only design if it cannot clearly outperform a chip that has been around for years.

There are still some limits to the comparison. Motherboard support, BIOS maturity, clocks, and platform tuning can all affect performance. Bartlett Lake may also not be as optimized for gaming as Raptor Lake, which has had more time to mature in consumer systems.

Still, the result is a useful reminder that more cores do not automatically mean better gaming performance. Modern games often depend more on clock behavior, cache, latency, scheduling, and engine design than raw core count. That may explain why Intel has not pushed 10 or 12 P core only Bartlett Lake chips as mainstream gaming products.

For PC gamers, the Core i9 13900K still looks strong in this comparison. Bartlett Lake may have a place, but these benchmarks suggest its flagship chip does not offer the kind of gaming uplift that would make older high end Intel CPUs feel outdated.