Thursday, March 26th 2026
Intel Officially Confirms: Core Ultra 9 290K Plus Won't be Released
When the rumor mill for Intel's "Arrow Lake Refresh" began, we expected three SKUs: Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, and a flagship Core Ultra 9 290K Plus. However, we later discovered that Intel is not launching the flagship SKU and will only release the Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 models. Instead, Intel chose to focus on delivering value with its Core Ultra 7 270K Plus SKU, which features 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores with a maximum turbo boost of 5.5 GHz. For individual boosting frequency, P-Cores reach up to 5.4 GHz, with a base speed of 3.7 GHz. E-Cores have a maximum boost frequency of 4.7 GHz and a base speed of 3.2 GHz. The main reason for canceling the flagship SKU is product overlap, as the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus would have the same core configuration as the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, just with slightly higher clock speeds. Consequently, Intel decided not to launch this SKU. It has now been confirmed by Intel Germany for PC Games Hardware that Intel will definitely not introduce this SKU at any point in the future.
Source:
PC Games Hardware
Florian Maislinger, Tech Communication Manager, Intel GermanyIntel 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.
32 Comments on Intel Officially Confirms: Core Ultra 9 290K Plus Won't be Released
LOVED the i9-10900K thing for it's "more cores" compared to same gen i7, then next i9 were pure marketing BS compared to that, I don't know how e-cores clocks could make it stand better for potentially OVERPRICE
With AMD's positioning in the marked with their X3D chips it makes sense for intel to skip the 290 i guess, they can't compete now anyway in area's such as gaming.
Only thing interesting now is upcoming Nova Lake..
be using keywords like Specre or Meltdown to sometihng else then processor vulnebarilities - otherwise you wouldnt use it in context of raptor lake