Meteor Lake 16-Core Mobile CPU Surfaces On eBay For $999

While Intel was busy demonstrating its 14th Generation Meteor Lake processors at Computex 2023, others were already flipping the same hybrid chips on eBay. A "brand new" Meteor Lake mobile processor (via harukaze5719) has gone up for sale on eBay for $999, and the seller has two available.

The Meteor Lake in question is a mobile variant, so it's useless to anyone unless they have a compatible platform to house it. Meteor Lake will come to laptops first, which explains how merchants have managed to get their hands on early Meteor Lake chips and put them up for sale. Intel has yet to confirm whether it has any plans for the desktop. A leaked Intel roadmap claims Meteor Lake will reportedly debut as low-powered Core i3 and Core i5 parts. A subsequent rumor alleges that Intel has canceled the 6P + 8E configuration for desktop Meteor Lake.

According to the eBay description, the processor is seemingly a Meteor Lake P 6C+8A+GT2 model. The P-series SKUs are explicitly designed for thin and light laptops, so they typically have a low TDP with reduced clock speeds. Previous Raptor Lake-P and Alder Lake-P processors adhere to the 28W TDP limit, so Meteor Lake-P will likely follow the same guideline.

The Meteor Lake-P chip seems to feature six P-cores and eight E-cores. However, remember that there are two low-powered E-cores inside the SoC tile. Therefore, the Meteor Lake-P processor has a 16-core, 22-thread design, the same chip that Intel used in its Computex 2023 demo. If we don't consider the SoC cores, the Meteor Lake-P would share the same configuration as the flagship Core i7-1370P Raptor Lake-P that powers thin laptops, such as the Framework Laptop 13.

Meteor Lake-P leverages Redwood Cove and Crestmont cores that are slated to bring significant uplifts over the Raptor Cove and Gracemont cores inside Raptor Lake-P. Meteor Lake-P will also arrive with buffed-up integrated graphics. Leaked Meteor Lake benchmarks revealed the processors with Xe units with up to 128 EUs or 1,204 ALUs operating at 2.1 GHz. Raptor Lake-P and Alder Lake-P Xe iGPUs max out at 96 EUs for comparison. The added EUs and higher clock speeds could make Meteor Lake-P deliver graphics performance similar to entry-level discrete options from Nvidia or AMD. 

One of Meteor Lake's selling points is the VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) unit, which resides inside the SoC tile, and is responsible for AI workloads. The VPU, based on third-generation Movidius technology, is available in all Meteor Lake chips. Unfortunately, while Intel showed off the VPU's capabilities, the company didn't provide benchmark numbers.

Intel will rebrand Meteor Lake processors and provide insight into the new "Core" rework later. More details on Meteor Lake will be available in the year's third quarter. However, the processors won't hit the retail market until summer. Intel's plans for Meteor Lake are nothing short of ambitious, with the chipmaker aiming to ship millions of Meteor Lake chips to consumers over the next year.