Intel’s unreleased Bartlett Lake processor has now successfully booted into Windows on a standard Z790 motherboard after a user modified the BIOS and firmware to bypass official platform restrictions, which shows that the chip can run on consumer LGA 1700 systems despite lacking official support from motherboard vendors.
Overclock enthusiast Kryptonfly managed this breakthrough by tricking Intel’s firmware during early initialization, making the system recognize the Core 9 273PQE as a Raptor Lake CPU, which allowed the system to pass POST and load into Windows without triggering the usual 5F error code that blocks unsupported processors on these boards.
How the Bartlett Lake CPU Works on Z790
The Core 9 273PQE stands out because it uses a pure performance core design with 12 P-cores and 24 threads, running at around 3.4 GHz based on shared CPU-Z screenshots, and this configuration differs from Intel’s hybrid architecture seen in chips like the Core i9 13900K and 14900K that combine performance and efficiency cores.
The successful boot confirms that the physical compatibility between Bartlett Lake and LGA 1700 motherboards exists, but Intel has locked support at the firmware level, which explains why no official BIOS updates enable these CPUs on consumer boards.
Performance and Availability
This development raises interest around how a 12 P-core design performs against hybrid chips with higher core counts, especially in workloads that favor strong individual cores, although real benchmarks are still limited at this stage.
Intel has no plans to release Bartlett Lake processors for the consumer market, which means this setup remains limited to enthusiasts willing to modify firmware, but it still shows unused potential in Intel’s current desktop platform.
