There will be two upcoming contenders from Intel's camp to compete with the best CPUs on the market. Raptor Lake Refresh processors are rumored for an October launch; meanwhile, Arrow Lake processors will arrive in 2024. German publication Igor's Lab has reportedly obtained Intel's internal performance projections for both forthcoming processor lineups.
One thing to remember is that the performance projections are rough estimates of the level of uplift that we could see from Raptor Lake Refresh and Arrow Lake. It does not indicate the final product performance, so take the numbers with a pinch of salt.
Intel used the Core i9-13900K as the basis of its performance projections. The chipmaker reportedly limited the Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh processors' PL1 and PL2 to 253W and the Arrow Lake part to 250W. The trio of processors appear to share the same core configuration: 8+16+1. But what's interesting is the power consumption. According to this preliminary data, Arrow Lake may be as power-hungry as Raptor Lake. Intel supposedly normalized the results based on the Core i9-13900K and 100% mark.
According to the charts, the Raptor Lake Refresh processors bring performance improvements between 1% to 3% over current Raptor Lake chips. The results look accurate since it is a refresh, after all. Like past refreshes, the new processors will arrive with better clock speeds. It remains to be seen just how much optimization is left in the Intel 7 node. Keeping our expectations in check, Raptor Lake Refresh likely won't break the 6 GHz barrier. At the moment, it's uncertain if Intel plans to bring another KS model to the market. Igor's Lab believes such a chip may have a 6.2 GHz boost clock.
The estimations show that we shouldn't expect any iGPU performance upgrade on Raptor Lake Refresh. The integrated graphics is reportedly the same Intel UHD Graphics 700-series units with a maximum execution unit (EU) count of 32 with a 1.65 GHz peak clock speed that's unlikely to change.
It would seem that Intel is allegedly more optimistic about Arrow Lake. The leaked charts reveal that Arrow Lake could be up 3% to 21% faster than Raptor Lake, with significant performance increases in multi-core operations. Arrow Lake seemingly excels in floating-point performance. Intel recently released a document confirming that Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake support AVX-VNNI-INT16, SHA512, SM3, and SM4 instructions that focus heavily on AI and hashing functions. The AVX-VNNI instruction is vital since it helps improve performance associated with inference tasks in neural networks. Therefore, workloads related to AI, machine learning, and deep learning reap the benefits of Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake.
Arrow Lake's biggest eye-opener is the integrated graphics. Intel purportedly forecasts between 220% to 240% iGPU performance improvements over Raptor Lake in synthetic benchmarks, such as 3DMark Time Spy and 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. Like Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake will feature Intel's 3D Foveros packaging technology that stacks chipsets vertically. The Xe-LPG iGPU, based on Alchemist, will have its own tile, but the number of EUs and the clock speeds remain a secret.
Like its kin, Raptor Lake Refresh will continue to use the LGA1700 socket, meaning you can recycle your Intel 700-series motherboards. Vendors started deploying new firmware to support Raptor Lake Refresh a month ago. Nonetheless, some manufacturers will take the opportunity to release new motherboards based on the same chipsets for Raptor Lake Refresh.
Arrow Lake, on the other hand, will require a new socket. The current rumor is that chips will reside on the LGA1851 socket, which has 9% more pins than the existing LGA1700 socket. That means we'll likely see the introduction of the new Intel 800-series chipsets to accompany the LGA1851 socket.
Igor's Lab allegedly has more privileged information on Arrow Lake, such as the specifications for the LGA1851 and among other things. It shouldn't be long before we get to know Arrow Lake better, which is the real successor to Raptor Lake.
