Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus

A modest 4-core Xe-LPG integrated GPU, adequate for display output and light desktop use but not intended as a gaming solution; this is a chip built around a discrete GPU pairing for anyone who wants integrated graphics purely as a fallback or for a headless build.

Intel's own testing reports roughly a 7% single-thread and 9% multi-thread uplift over the outgoing Core Ultra 9 285K, and claims a 2% single-core and 11% multi-core advantage over AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D in the benchmarks Intel has published. The Plus family's gains come primarily from the higher die-to-die and ring clock speeds Intel added platform-wide, alongside the core clock increases, rather than from a new silicon design; Intel has also shipped a new Binary Optimization Tool alongside the launch aimed specifically at improving enthusiast workload performance.

Geekbench 6 Single-Core scores estimate real-world responsiveness in everyday use: a browser, office applications, and most games lean on one fast core more than many slower ones. Geekbench 6 Multi-Core scores estimate performance under genuinely parallel workloads: video encoding, 3D rendering, compiling code, and running several demanding applications at once. Cinebench 2024 measures sustained multi-threaded rendering specifically and is a useful cross-check against Geekbench for workloads that hold every core at high load for minutes rather than seconds. See the benchmark comparison chart above for how this chip measures up against others in its class.