Intel Bartlett Lake Core 9 273PQE Gaming Benchmarks Show Little Gain Over Core i9-13900K
Intel’s Bartlett Lake lineup has drawn attention because of its unusual P-core-only design, but early gaming results suggest that more Performance cores do not automatically translate into better frame rates. The flagship Core 9 273PQE, a 12-P-core processor, has now been tested against Intel’s Core i9-13900K, and the results show a surprisingly close battle across a wide range of games.
The Core 9 273PQE is an interesting chip because it drops Efficient cores entirely and instead focuses on 12 Performance cores. On paper, that sounds like a strong setup for high-end desktop gaming, especially when compared with the Core i9-13900K, which uses 8 Performance cores and 16 Efficient cores. However, gaming benchmarks indicate that Intel’s older Raptor Lake flagship still holds up extremely well.
In testing across around 15 games, the Core 9 273PQE was unable to deliver a clear lead over the Core i9-13900K. Despite having four additional Performance cores, the Bartlett Lake CPU mostly tied with the 13900K, with only a few titles showing minor differences. This suggests that current PC games still do not benefit much from having more than 8 high-performance CPU cores.
The benchmark system was configured to keep the comparison as fair as possible, with similar platform settings, power limits, and memory configurations. A GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card was used to reduce GPU bottlenecks and better expose CPU performance differences. The Core 9 273PQE was reportedly pushed close to 5.30 GHz during testing, although its official specifications list boost clocks of up to 5.9 GHz. In real gaming workloads, however, reaching maximum turbo frequency consistently is not always realistic.
One important point is that the Core i9-13900K appeared to operate closer to its peak turbo behavior during the tests. This may have helped it keep pace with the 12-P-core Bartlett Lake chip. Platform maturity could also play a role, since Raptor Lake processors have been widely optimized across consumer motherboards, BIOS versions, and gaming workloads. The Core 9 273PQE, on the other hand, is not positioned as a mainstream gaming CPU in the same way.
Still, the overall takeaway is clear: the Core 9 273PQE does not provide a meaningful gaming advantage over the Core i9-13900K. For gamers, this reinforces the idea that clock speed, cache behavior, memory performance, and platform optimization often matter more than simply adding more Performance cores.
The results may also explain why Intel has not pushed 10-P-core or 12-P-core-only Bartlett Lake processors into the regular consumer gaming market. Instead, Bartlett Lake appears better suited for embedded or specialized use cases where its core layout may make more sense. For mainstream PC gamers and enthusiasts, Intel’s Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh processors remain highly competitive options.
In short, the Core 9 273PQE is an intriguing CPU from a technical standpoint, but it does not look like a major upgrade for gaming. The Core i9-13900K continues to prove that 8 Performance cores, when paired with strong frequencies and a mature platform, are still more than enough for today’s high-end gaming PCs.
