Core Ultra 9 290K Plus officially scrapped
As we have exclusively revealed in early February , Intel has canceled its plans to launch the 24-core Core Ultra 9 290K Plus processor. Intel has only updated its product roadmap and shared the information with partners, but it was never communicated officially. At that time, Arrow Lake Refresh had not yet been officially confirmed.
The exact wording was that the company said the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus were already well positioned, and those CPUs already met the objective, so there was no need to launch the 290K Plus. The processor had already appeared in leaks and even resurfaced after the announcement.
PC Games Hardware has sought official confirmation from Intel that not only was the CPU canceled, but that it will not be released. What we can tell you is that the statement shared with the German media uses the exact same wording as the early February roadmap.
Intel is excited to deliver exceptional value with our Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus series processors. The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus are positioned to deliver outstanding gaming performance and incredible value compared to our competition. Our objective was to maximize performance for the desktop SKUs that are most widely available. As a result, Intel is not launching a U9 290K Plus SKU.
— Florian Maislinger, Tech Communication Manager, Intel Germany
The 290K Plus would feature the nearly identical core configuration as the 285K and 270K Plus, so the company appears to have decided there was no reason to add another SKU. While the 285K remains Intel’s flagship desktop CPU, the 270K Plus can benefit from software and hardware optimizations in some tests, often matching or even surpassing the 285K.
What this means is that Intel will likely not launch any new flagship desktop CPUs until Nova Lake-S . The 285K and 270K Plus are expected to remain the top LGA-1851 SKUs until the next platform update.
Source: PC Games Hardware
