Tuesday, April 15th 2025

Intel "Bartlett Lake-S" Gaming CPU is Possible, More Hints Appear for a 12 P-Core SKU
Intel's "Bartlett Lake-S" architecture, previously only offered for edge and networking deployment, may spawn a 12 P-core variant for gamers that eliminates efficiency cores entirely. This hopeful configuration would specifically target applications that benefit from consistent single-threaded performance and deterministic core behavior, addressing a market segment underserved since Intel's transition to hybrid architectures. Recent software support developments strengthen this speculation, with diagnostic utility AIDA64 explicitly adding "improved support for Intel Bartlett Lake-S CPU" in its 7.65.7404 beta release notes from April 13, 2025. This update precedes any consumer launch announcement, suggesting possible platform expansion. MSI-affiliated overclocker Toppc amplified these rumors by highlighting the AIDA64 changelog while referencing undisclosed developments under NDA, a pattern historically preceding consumer product launches.
The rumored gaming-oriented CPU would leverage the LGA 1851 platform compatibility, enabling drop-in upgrades for existing 800-series motherboard owners. Unlike the current flagship Core 7 251E with its 8P+16E configuration, a pure performance-core implementation would eliminate the Windows scheduler complications that sometimes impact frame timing in latency-sensitive games. Current hybrid designs force game engines to navigate complex thread scheduling across heterogeneous cores, with performance-critical threads occasionally migrating to efficiency cores during intensive scenes. A homogeneous 12 P-core architecture would eliminate this behavior, providing stable thread assignment and potentially reducing the 99th percentile frame time variances that affect perceived smoothness in CPU-bound titles.
Sources:
Toppc on Bilibili, via VideoCardz
The rumored gaming-oriented CPU would leverage the LGA 1851 platform compatibility, enabling drop-in upgrades for existing 800-series motherboard owners. Unlike the current flagship Core 7 251E with its 8P+16E configuration, a pure performance-core implementation would eliminate the Windows scheduler complications that sometimes impact frame timing in latency-sensitive games. Current hybrid designs force game engines to navigate complex thread scheduling across heterogeneous cores, with performance-critical threads occasionally migrating to efficiency cores during intensive scenes. A homogeneous 12 P-core architecture would eliminate this behavior, providing stable thread assignment and potentially reducing the 99th percentile frame time variances that affect perceived smoothness in CPU-bound titles.
30 Comments on Intel "Bartlett Lake-S" Gaming CPU is Possible, More Hints Appear for a 12 P-Core SKU
Previous rumours were pointing at socket 1700
Go back to the drawing board, or just stick to the old trusted way of doing things.
The E-Cores have 14th gen IPC/PPC and they make the CPU really cool.
Frankly, unless this is treated, I don't see having 12 P-cores as a game-changer. No pun intended.
Those silly pointless efficient cores that I was calling from day one "marketing cores" was a genius move and I would have given to those who thought it, the biggest bonus Intel have ever given to an employee. And considering they dropped HyperThreading, I guess they will go the "efficient way" by adding more and more E cores in their future processors. Because almost no one reads "This CPU comes with X threads". Almost everyone reads "This CPU comes with X cores". And 99% of people can't even realize that their 10 core monster is slow, because only 2 of those cores are P cores.
Those little cores are a huge marketing advantage.
GPUs are already wasting enough kw.hrs. And me thinks we should stand back a bit and consider what we are wasting them on...
And to give you a better example than your 8th and 10th gen Intel cores, until recently I was running a 6 core, 14 years old, AMD Thuban (AM3+) and it was feeling smooth and fast. And I would have kept it running if the motherboard haven't decided to say goodbye to the world. The only way to realize that it was slower in about everything typical, like browsing and opening word and excel files, next to an AM4 system, not to mention AM5, was to put those next to each other. Then you could spot the 1-2 sec of difference in opening apps for example, even when running the same type and speed storage subsystem in both AM3+ and AM4 systems. So, yes, most people will buy that 10 core monster and most of them will feel their system fast, until they decide to do something more compute heavy. But even then they will probably think that something else is slowing down their system. Maybe a virus or something. Those who will buy that 10 core munster to do something compute heavy from day one, they will get disappointed.
Now I understand what you mean by saying that E cores are becoming faster. Atom cores are becoming faster the last 15+ years. But the thing is that those cores will ALWAYS be slower than P cores, either Intel P cores or even AMD P cores. Except if somehow Intel comes out with some huge performance advances and AMD drops behind. And considering that single digit performance differences some times differentiate models, having slower cores in a CPU means you don't get the performance you think you get. You think that you are "X fast" in general, but in fact you are "X fast" in single/low threaded applications and "X-10%" or "X-20%" slower in heavy threaded applications compared to a P cores only model.
P.S. In the past there where a couple of videos showing that systems with E cores wheren't as smooth as expected, but there was a kind of stuttering observed in their performance. Maybe the switch of the CPU between P cores and E cores in handling tasks wasn't as smooth as it should be. But those videos never really gone viral, so probably they where individual cases and not something common.
They are only energy inefficient when it comes to heavy workloads with no fixed duration, like offline simulation, offline rendering, and such.
When Intel goes to 12P core CPUs people like you will be screaming about how much better a 12P core CPU is compared to an 8P core CPU because X game/application can utilize all those extra P cores. For now you will be simply saying "That's just absurdly wrong".
I am fine with that.
They should probably consider something like 6P, 9E, 12LP and different cache structures on each that are balanced if they continue on with or come back to the hybrid design unless they plan to outright ditch it for all P cores again.
If Intel is going all P cores again they need to heavily modify the cache per P core if only offering that many cores especially with the removal of HT already. To me it appears like that probably what they've decided to do with these options is a more P core only design with higher cache per core, but these seem aimed pretty much strictly at people that want more the scenario I mentioned above and don't mind what they give up in place of it. That's perfectly fine there is room for both options to coexist within the market. Different strokes for different folks.
I wonder if Intel potentially consolidated 8P + 12E into a 12P design that doesn't have the software level threading contention in some way by basically merging the 16E into the existing 8P hardware design frame work in sort of a interpolated design crossover because that's entirely plausible if you interpolate the two you could end up at 12P cores that are more powerful than current P cores. It would take some careful engineering balancing, but it absolutely seem like it could've been sorted out. It's a bit like what AMD did on GPU design side when they revamped things from VEGA to the next architecture with a few key strategically re-balancing adjustments. The details of what they've done is what matters. It's likely just a node shrink coupled with more cache per P core with Intel aiming this at a target audience that wants this particular scope of performance.
I've been screaming in every thread about how crap the 12p core will be compared to 8+16 for a year now. It will be slower in everything.