Bartlett Lake (specs here) is a rather unique series of processors. In fact, these processors lack E-cores and consist exclusively of P-cores. However, despite several rumors, they are not intended for the consumer market, but solely for industrial and embedded applications. Even though they are physically compatible with Z690 and Z790 motherboards, the system won’t boot… Unless a BIOS is developed, which seems to be well underway.
Bartlett Lake: soon to bebootable on consumer motherboards?
AI inBIOS development?
A member of the Overclock forum is currently working on a solution to bring support for this series of processors. For now, things are just getting started, and he has managed to reach the POST screen, but no further—when he presses F1 to enter the BIOS, the screen goes black. So the system doesn’t boot, at least not yet, but progress is being made.
For BIOS development, kryptonfly is using artificial intelligence: Anthropic’s Claude. According to him, the BIOS was generated entirely by AI. Work is therefore underway; let’s hope he manages to take it further and make the system bootable, as we’re curious about the performance this type of CPU can achieve, both in games and in benchmarks. A showdown with a Core i9 14900K would be interesting.
What about the hardware used?
In terms of hardware, he’s using an ASUS Z790 AYW-OC motherboard along with a Core 9 273PQE. This is the top-of-the-line model in the series, featuring a total of 12 P-cores, 0 E-cores, and boost frequencies reaching 5.9 GHz. As for memory, the system is equipped with 32 GB ofDDR5 running at 4000 MT/s.
Unfortunately, although it uses an LGA-1700socket, this CPU series is not compatible with mainstream motherboards. Clearly, it will be up to enthusiasts to develop their own solutions unless a manufacturer sees a benefit in it, foroverclocking, for example.
