Intel is all set to launch its 14th Generation of Meteor Lake CPUs later in 2023 and the leaks around the line-up keep surfacing online now and then. While AMD’s Ryzen 7000 3D CPU lineup has been announced at CES 2023, for those who are waiting for the Meteor Lake series of CPUs, this story has all the details regarding the launch date, specs, benchmarks, and more.
Intel has itself confirmed certain details about the AI Features coming to the 14th Gen Meteor Lake Series, other than that nothing has been made official yet. However, many rumors and leaks are going around which we are trying to sift through in this write-up. So read along.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs: Launch date
The leaks surfacing online claim that the 14th Gen Series of CPUs will most probably launch in Q3 2023 that is between July to September. However, there is a possibility that these CPUs might not come with major upgrades and a performance jump over the 13th Gen desktop CPUs. Intel’s roadmap indicates that there will be a Raptor Lake-S Refresh series coming up in Q3 2023 and a post by a Weibo user claims that it will be called the 14th Generation by Intel. It is still unclear if the desktop or laptop 14th Gen CPU lineup is being referenced here.
From the roadmap, it is clear that some of the CPUs will definitely be launched in 2023 but leaks recently have been confusing about what the processors will entail. It seems like there will be different architectures under the 14th Gen branding. Some of the laptop or desktop 14th Gen CPUs might be a refreshed version of Raptor Lake S architecture.
Some new laptop chipsets featuring new Meteor Lake architecture might launch before September 2023 as well. But judging by various leaks this year, some of Intel’s 14th Gen CPUs will get a release by Q3 or Q4 2023 (it could be a laptop or desktop CPU or maybe both). Also in case the Meteor Lake Series doesn’t come out in 2023, it will be launched in 2024.
What is almost sure is that Intel will have an answer to AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series 3D V-Cache CPUs and they will launch it by Q4 2023. These processors will offer competitive performance by winning in some benchmarks and losing in some.
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Will Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs get a new Motherboard?
Before we talk about which new motherboard 14th Gen CPUs will get, let’s make one thing clear. You won’t be able to use the Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPU with a 13th Gen Z790 motherboard because a decent number of reports claim that the 14th Gen series is getting a new motherboard for desktop CPUs and it will be called LGA 1851. Intel is also expected to launch the Z890 motherboard chipset that is expected to come with PCI-e 5.0 implementation for M.2 NVMe SSDs. Intel’s Z890 motherboards will come with support for Gen 5 NVMe SSDs in contrast to older generations.
An image that compares older Intel 12th and 13th Gen sockets to LGA 1851 for 14th Gen has surfaced that shows the new socket is similar to LGA 1700 socket size. This means both these sockets will have cooler compatibility.
Whether Raptor Lake Refresh will be under 13th or 14th Gen is still unknown and also if it will be on LGA 1700 or LGA 1851 socket remains to be seen. Leaker @OneRaichu on Twitter claims that this new socket will support 3 processor generations from Intel.
If the Raptor Lake Refresh Series comes with LGA 1700 and is supported by Z790 motherboards, it would mean Intel has used the LGA 1700 socket for 3 different processor generations. This will be a major win for the existing LGA 1700 motherboard owners.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs: Specs & Benchmarks (expected)
A few days ago there was a leaked benchmark for Meteor Lake CPUs meant for laptops but there were no numbers to talk about. The processor was unrecognized by the website and it might be the early sample of an Intel Meteor Lake CPU. The CPU underperformed and this was mostly due to the hardware being in an early testing phase.
However, this leak does give us an idea about the specs of the 14th Gen Meteor Lake Series. The CPU has 12 cores and 16 threads out of which 4 P-Cores on this CPU hyperthreaded to 8 threads. That leaves 8 E-Cores and their respective threads and in the end, this totals to 16 threads. There will be a Hybrid E-Core+ P-Core design here.
The benchmark tips are that Intel Arc graphics and Intel’s 14th Gen CPUs will have drastically different integrated graphics performance compared to previous generations.
Igorslab.de has also shared some specs for the mobile variants of the Intel 14th Gen processor. These processors are expected to come with LPDDR5 7400MHz memory support.
@BenchLeaks on Twitter claims that the laptop Meteor Lake CPU called Core Ultra 7 1003H was in a PugetBench Lightroom test which has now been deleted from the website. However, the screenshot was taken before it could be deleted so here’s a look at the leaked benchmark in which the processor name as well as Intel Arc graphics are visible.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs: Expected GPU details
Intel seems to be revamping its integrated graphics architecture quite a lot for the upcoming 14th Gen CPUs and is also adding AV1 codec support.
Intel held an investor meeting in 2022 in which the former head of Intel’s Accelerated Computing and Graphics division, Raja Koduri talked about the Intel Meteor Lake and what improvements it will bring in the future. He said, “Meteor Lake is a brand new architecture that will enable tiled GPUs to be integrated into a 3D package. This is super exciting as this allows us to offer discrete graphics class performance with the efficiency of integrated graphics.” Furthermore, “this is a new class of graphics-you can’t call it integrated or discrete,” he added. Here is the roadmap that was shared by Intel-
The roadmap indicates that the Intel Arc Tile GPU will be implemented in the Meteor Lake CPU architecture and the next generations of CPUs too. This new generation of Intel Arc graphics will be called Intel Arc Battlemage.
Many of these new technologies which are being talked about for the mobile CPU lineup will also make their way onto the desktop CPU lineup. According to YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead, they fully expect Meteor Lake to at least double 96EU Raptor Lake performance at the same power. 96EU means the number of execution units on Raptor Lake CPUs.
The 14th Gen CPUs might have up to 512MB of cache implemented to be utilized by the integrated graphics on a Meteor Lake CPU. This is called Adamantine Cache. Desktop CPUs might not get a major boost in graphics but laptop CPUs definitely might. Recently, the same YouTube channel claimed that low-end graphics cards will become undesirable after Meteor Lake, because of the high-performance output they will have.
According to the latest leaks, the high-end Meteor Lake Xe GPU can beat the mobile GTX 1650 and possibly even the RTX 3050. This would mean that entry-level gaming will be possible on Meteor Lake CPUs without a dedicated GPU, but better graphics performance will also highly benefit other applications. Battery life is also expected to drastically improve with these new efficient GPUs.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs: Performance leaks
Currently, there are no performance benchmarks available but information is available about the efficiency improvements. The new architecture is estimated to be up to 50% better in terms of overall efficiency due to the Intel 4 manufacturing process.
This is a 7nm manufacturing process under the hood and as Intel was able to increase efficiency with 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs while being on the same manufacturing node, so how much this will be effective remains to be seen.
Popular leakster @One Raichu on Twitter claims that it could have 2x the performance levels when compared to Raptor Lake. The target of Meteor Lake CPUs is to have 1.5x efficiency improvement as it has to give the same levels of performance. Intel’s Core i9-13900K can pull off performance levels equal to the previous gen i9-12900Ks at just 65 watts and with the same 10nm manufacturing process, so increasing efficiency will be more important than changing the manufacturing process numbers.
Intel 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs: AI Performance Upgrades
Intel is all set to bring new AI features as a part of their 14th Gen Meteor Lake CPUs. The brand recently revealed how these improvements will cater to the growing needs of AI workloads. There is also going to be a VPU on Meteor Lake Chips which will represent an infliction point in computing.
This new VPU will benefit AI-specific tasks like GPU rendering performance will get better if certain AI workloads can be offloaded to VPU instead. In the future Intel will focus on AI performance innovation to meet the growing needs of new age computing.
Is Intel updating the naming scheme for Meteor Lake CPUs?
In one of the leaked benchmarks, the processor was called Intel Core Ultra 7. This feels strange as Intel has been naming their CPUs as Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7, and then Core i9 at some point. Now Intel is potentially updating the naming scheme with their Meteor Lake CPUs.
TomsHardware asked Intel to comment on this leak and Intel confirmed that they are making changes to branding. Names were not confirmed yet but the leaked benchmark in the earlier section where the CPU was named Core Ultra 7 gives a hint about what is going to happen. The iconic ‘i’ of Intel processors might be going away permanently.
The laptop chips are expected to release first followed by other chipsets.
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