Intel Cancels Core Ultra 9 290K Plus as Arrow Lake Refresh Plans Shift

Recently leaked benchmarks for the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus looked promising, but new reports suggest Intel has quietly pulled the plug on the chip before launch.

Core Ultra 9 290K Plus reportedly canceled

According to TechPowerUp, Intel has canceled the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, which was expected to serve as the flagship SKU of the Arrow Lake Refresh lineup. While the Arrow Lake Refresh still targets a March or April release window, Intel no longer plans to introduce a new Core Ultra 9-tier refresh model.

Instead, Intel will position the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus as the top Arrow Lake Refresh CPU.

Core Ultra 7 270K Plus becomes the top refresh SKU

Reports claim the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus will ship with 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores, matching the rumored configuration of the canceled 290K Plus. The processor reportedly boosts up to 5.5 GHz, with P-Cores reaching 5.4 GHz and E-Cores up to 4.7 GHz.

Clock speeds land roughly 100 to 200 MHz below what the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus would have offered, which means out-of-the-box performance gains from the Arrow Lake Refresh may look modest on paper.

Product overlap likely drove the decision

The reported cancellation appears tied to lineup overlap. Intel already sells the Core Ultra 9 285K, and adding the 290K Plus would have created three nearly identical high-end SKUs differentiated mostly by clock speeds. By removing the 290K Plus, Intel simplifies validation, manufacturing, and supply chain planning.

This move also frees resources as Intel prepares for the Nova Lake launch expected later this year.

Even without a new Core Ultra 9 refresh, Arrow Lake Refresh systems could still deliver gains through platform-level changes. Faster DDR5-7200 memory support, Intel Performance Optimizations similar to China-exclusive tuning, and refinements to P-Core and E-Core behavior could help close the gap.

Final gaming and productivity results will remain uncertain until retail CPUs ship and full reviews arrive in the coming weeks.

That is not the only potential cancellation making the rounds. Separate reports claim Intel may scrap the Arc B770 due to rising VRAM costs. In more positive news for existing users, enthusiasts recently managed to triple Arc A380 performance using an experimental XeSS 3 workaround, showing that Intel’s graphics stack still has untapped potential.