Unreleased Core Ultra 9 290K Plus shows up again
Was it a good decision to cancel 290K Plus from the Arrow Lake Refresh lineup set to launch in two days? Perhaps, the tests have shown that the 270K Plus can outclass the 285K non-Plus already, so was there any room for another 24-core part? Intel decided that there is no need for another SKU, perhaps for good, given the $299 price on 270K and 290K would certainly cost more.
As you recall, we revealed that Intel reportedly canceled the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus shortly before launch, and the chip was indeed not part of the Core Ultra 200S Plus desktop announcement. Intel officially introduced only the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K/KF Plus, with no mention of a 290K Plus SKU. The most surprising fact was that the 290K Plus already appeared in leaks, and seemingly it was a launch-ready SKU.
That makes a fresh Geekbench result more interesting. A new entry uploaded yesterday shows an Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus running on an ASUS ROG STRIX Z890-E GAMING WIFI motherboard. The listing shows a 24-core Arrow Lake configuration, 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, with a 3.70 GHz base clock, up to 5.6 GHz maximum frequency, and 64 GB of DDR5-6800 memory.
Source: Geekbench
The benchmark scored 3,747 points in single-core and 26,117 points in multi-core. Those numbers are not proof of a retail launch, but they do confirm that at least one sample is still being tested well after Intel finalized its desktop refresh lineup. That fits earlier reporting that samples had already reached partners before the reported cancellation.
At this point, the 290K Plus appears to be a processor that progressed through validation and partner testing, but was ultimately left out of Intel’s final retail plans. Nothing so far suggests Intel still intends to launch it, which means it may end up remembered as the fastest LGA-1851 CPU that never officially reached the market.
