Intel enthusiasts, brace yourselves! Something intriguing has appeared on Geekbench — a supposed “15th-gen” flagship CPU, the Core i9-15900K. However, don’t get too excited just yet, as this might be an early engineering sample that’s mislabeled.
The intriguing part is that the Core i9-15900K seems to share many specs with the already popular Core i9-14900K. This includes the identical core and thread count of 24 cores and 32 threads, and the same 8 MB L2 and 36 MB L3 cache. Moreover, it’s designed for the LGA 1700 socket, further suggesting that this CPU might not be the next-gen chip it claims to be.
Intel’s chips go through rigorous testing in pre-production phases, often resulting in varied model numbers showing up in databases. Such instances can lead to early samples being misidentified, and this could just be another example of that.
What catches the eye are the benchmarks tied to the so-called Core i9-15900K. With a single-core score of 2279 and a multi-core score of 11690 in Geekbench, it doesn’t quite meet expectations. The base clock stands at just 800 MHz with a boost up to 4.8 GHz, which pales in comparison to the 14900K’s P-Core boost of 5.8 GHz that yields a much higher score.
This particular CPU was analyzed using a JGINYUE B760I Snow Dream motherboard. This board, typically associated with a Chinese manufacturer, supports the ITX form factor and the LGA 1700 socket.
In summary, while this might sound like the next big thing from Intel, it’s safe to say we shouldn’t anticipate a new family of Intel processors called the 15000 series just yet. This reveals that what we see could ideally be part of the Core Ultra Series 2 instead of a brand new lineup. As always, let’s keep our eyes peeled for official announcements before drawing conclusions.
