Intel's faster Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs might be just around the corner

Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs, which will presumably be labeled as its 14th-gen processors, could turn up in October, according to the latest buzz from the rumor mill.

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Intel's Raptor Lake processors will soon see new turbocharged models (Image Credit: Intel)

This comes from ECSM, a Chinese hardware leaker on Bilibili (so add plenty of seasoning with this one), who reckons that pepped-up Raptor Lake models will arrive in October, starting with 'K' models (unlocked chips).

The vanilla non-K CPUs from the 14th-gen will turn up in the following month, November, or maybe December, ECSM asserts. The leaker also informs us that there'll be a new 8+12 SKU (with 8 performance cores and 12 efficiency cores) to slot between the 8+16 flagship and 8+8 processors.

An October launch (for K variants) sounds about right to us and would mean these new processors are perhaps not much more than three months away now. That being the case, we can doubtless expect an increase in leaks relating to expected performance levels going forward.

What about Meteor Lake? As has been widely rumored, this is no longer going to have a desktop incarnation - that's what Raptor Lake Refresh is for - but the first Meteor Lake laptop chips (also presumably 14th-gen) will pitch up in Q4 (as already expected).

Further afield

As for further down the line, Arrow Lake is supposedly arriving in Q4 2024, or Q1 2025, as things currently look, apparently maintaining an 8+16 flagship. That seemingly contradicts another recent Arrow Lake leak from YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), who floated the possibility of a supercharged 8+32 (40-core) flagship.

That said, MLID didn't seem sure on this and indicated that Intel could well revert to an 8+16 configuration for the Arrow Lake flagship processor, and certainly ECSM believes this is the case.

Mind you, even without a 40-core behemoth, Arrow Lake is still expected to be seriously faster than Meteor Lake - to the tune of 40% quicker for multi-threaded performance, if a comparison between two mid-range (6+8) processors of these generations pans out (again, as leaked by MLID).

Meanwhile, something even more impressive could be on the far horizon for Intel - Beast Lake (which may be a working title) might debut in 2026 and finally up the ante to 10 performance cores. (As opposed to 8 performance cores, which is the maximum Intel has ever pushed to since switching to its hybrid tech with Alder Lake, due to power usage issues).

Rumor has it that Beast Lake could be clocked seriously fast to finally take out AMD's 3D V-Cache chips on the gaming front - we shall see (hopefully) in a few years' time.