Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs Reportedly Launch In October

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Refresh season is right around the corner.

Raptor Lake CPU
Raptor Lake CPU (Image credit: Intel)

It would seem that Raptor Lake Refresh isn't the only refresh that Intel has in mind. Reputable hardware leaker ECSM has revealed that Sapphire Rapids Refresh is also in the works while leaking the potential launch dates for Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake processors.

Starting on the consumer side, Raptor Lake Refresh is now the big talk. Intel recently downgraded the premium packaging on the Core i9-13900K and Core i9-13900KS. It may not sound like a significant move, but Intel typically does that when it's on the brink of launching a new series of processors. According to ECSM, Intel will unleash Raptor Lake Refresh in two waves. As usual, the K-series SKUs will arrive first, and the leaker claims they'll be on the shelves in October. Meanwhile, the non-K-series will likely launch between November and December, just in time for the holidays.

Raptor Lake Refresh won't come with a substantial performance uplift as with any refresh. The clock speeds will be higher, of course, and there's a rumor that the refreshed chips may have an improved integrated memory controller (IMC). However, the leaker believes that Intel will seemingly introduce a new SKU with an 8P + 12E configuration that would effectively slot between a Core i7 (8P + 8E) and a Core i9 (8P + 16E). Raptor Lake Refresh won't bring any new chipset or socket. The chips will slot fine into LGA1700 motherboards regardless if they're on the 600-or 700-series chipset.

ECSM stands firm that desktop Meteor Lake's cancellation remains unchanged. The 7nm processors will stay mobile-exclusive. We've already started seeing Meteor Lake-powered laptops at CES 2023, so the new processors, which will sport Intel's revamped branding, will be here in the year's fourth quarter.

Intel CPU Roadmap 2023 - 2025*

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ProcessorRelease Date
Raptor Lake Refresh K seriesOctober 2023
Raptor Lake Refresh non-K seriesNovember - December 2023
Sapphire Rapids RefreshEarly 2024
Meteor LakeQ4 2024
Arrow LakeQ4 2024 - Q1 2025

*Dates are unconfirmed by Intel.

Assuming that desktop Meteor Lake stays terminated, the desktop Raptor Lake's successor is Arrow Lake. Arrow Lake will continue to feature a multi-tile design, and this time around, the CPU tile will be a product of Intel's 20A process node. Unlike previous generations, Arrow Lake requires a new socket, like the LGA1851 one. According to ECSM, Arrow Lake might land between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025.

Intel's 4th Generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors haven't been on the market for a year. Yet, there are already rumors of a refresh. However, the refresh is strictly for the Sapphire Rapid WS series for workstations, the current W-2400 and W-3400 lineups. If the leaked information is accurate, Sapphire Rapids Refresh could arrive in early 2024 in the form of the W-2500 and W-3500 series. The new workstation processors will retain support for W790 motherboards. They'll rival AMD's upcoming Threadripper 7000 chips that wield Zen 4 cores.

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Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    From what little I've read about Raptor Lake, it didn't address some of the main weak spots in Alder Lake. For instance:
    https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/12/16/alder-lake-e-cores-ring-clock-and-hybrid-teething-troubles/
    I hope (but I'm not optimistic), that the Refresh is more than a mere clock-boosting exercise, and that they actually tackled some of the bottlenecks not addressed in Raptor Lake.
    Reply
  • I just hope Intel can bring the support of Digital Linear Voltage Regulator (DLVR), IF need be, which was a power delivery mechanism meant to be featured in the 13th Gen Intel's Raptor Lake CPUs. But was never added I suppose.

    Will it be worth adding to the REFRESH family though? According to the Intel's patent application that revealed these plans, it could save as much as 25% power.

    The process was to be less complex while allowing for cost-efficiency in controlling power levels and better heat dissipation. The outcome would produce an increase of twenty percent in improved efficiency and management.

    They claim D-LVR "drastically increases the CPU performance" at just a small added cost for the silicon and with some easy tuning. This is in part because by placing a D-LVR in parallel to a primary VR, processor cores draw less power and the effective voltage a CPU operates at is thereby lowered.

    FWIW, ASUS actually had this option on it's ROG Z790/Z690 motherboard series, only because they anticipated that future CPUs might utilize DLVR. The BIOS option was labeled as "CPU DLVR Bypass Mode Enable", but did not seem to bring any improvements though, lol.

    Two other board vendors also told that DLVR was indeed on its way to the desktop segment, before being cut down/fused early in the development of Raptor Lake series.

    But I presume this tech would be more beneficial for MOBILE chips instead, and that's where we might see it launch for the first time before coming to the desktop space, maybe MTL mobile series ?

    https://i.imgur.com/BmtPJzC.jpg

    Post edited for several typo errors !
    Reply
  • Apart from that, I don't expect "miracles" from this so-called RPL-Refresh family, since the architecture remains the same. Guesstimate. Same Arc as Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove P-Cores + Gracemont E-Cores)
    Same Process Node as Raptor Lake (Intel 7 aka 10nm++)
    Higher Clock Speeds Beyond 6.0/6.2+ GHz maybe ? Power hungry chips cometh soon ?
    Support For Faster DDR5 Memory DIMMs
    Much much higher Power Consumption (up to min 300-350W) or maybe more ?
    Compatibility with Existing LGA 1700 / 1800 Socket Motherboards, which is obvious.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    I'm rocking the 12700T here...
    I will wait a new 14500T FAST edition

    Low power cpu with nvidia 128 bits edition will be great! (ps wii U need 34w to work. that 12700T use 32w to play at 30 fps 1080P HD770)
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Amdlova said:
    with nvidia 128 bits edition will be great!
    Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about. Got a link?
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    bit_user said:
    Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about. Got a link?
    RTX 4060 or 4060TI "128bits"
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Amdlova said:
    RTX 4060 or 4060TI "128bits"
    Okay, so you meant one of their GPUs with a 128-bit memory bus. Got it.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Metal Messiah. said:
    I just hope Intel can bring the support of Digital Linear Voltage Regulator (DLVR), IF need be, which was a power delivery mechanism meant to be featured in the 13th Gen Intel's Raptor Lake CPUs. But was never added I suppose.

    Will it be worth adding to the REFRESH family though? According to the Intel's patent application that revealed these plans, it could save as much as 25% power.

    The process was to be less complex while allowing for cost-efficiency in controlling power levels and better heat dissipation. The outcome would produce an increase of twenty percent in improved efficiency and management.
    They will first milk every bit of power usage the industry will stand out of their CPUs before implementing that so it will make the biggest impact.
    Metal Messiah. said:
    Apart from that, I don't expect "miracles" from this so-called RPL-Refresh family, since the architecture remains the same. Guesstimate. Same Arc as Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove P-Cores + Gracemont E-Cores)
    Same Process Node as Raptor Lake (Intel 7 aka 10nm++)
    Higher Clock Speeds Beyond 6.0/6.2+ GHz maybe ? Power hungry chips cometh soon ?
    Support For Faster DDR5 Memory DIMMs
    Much much higher Power Consumption (up to min 300-350W) or maybe more ?
    Compatibility with Existing LGA 1700 / 1800 Socket Motherboards, which is obvious.
    Why are you calling it so-called??
    That's what every refresh has been in the last years, better binns due to better yields resulting in better clocks and not much anything more.
    The 13900, k and ks, already use 300-350W depending on how much cooling you use and on the default settings of the mobo. If you overclock you can get to more than 400W on good "normal" (non-exotic) cooling for both the k and ks.
    Unless reviewers start to use the warranted max turbo power as a limit every CPU will just reach whatever limit the cooling of the system represents.
    https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900k/22.htmlhttps://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900ks/21.html
    Reply
  • rluker5
    bit_user said:
    From what little I've read about Raptor Lake, it didn't address some of the main weak spots in Alder Lake. For instance:
    https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/12/16/alder-lake-e-cores-ring-clock-and-hybrid-teething-troubles/
    I hope (but I'm not optimistic), that the Refresh is more than a mere clock-boosting exercise, and that they actually tackled some of the bottlenecks not addressed in Raptor Lake.
    I'm at work all day so I can't post a hwinfo screenshot until tonight, but i' m seeing my ring run at the bios auto 5.0ghz with e-cores active or not on my 13900kf. P to e core latency has also dropped to the p to p core range.
    Both the p and e cores for RPL run significantly faster, or at the same speed with less power.
    I also have a 13600k in a living room itx and all of the p cores(in i5 and i9) can do 5.5ghz and all of the e cores can do 4.4ghz. At the same time. At stock volts. My 12700k could barely do 5.0/3.8 all core with extra volts. RPL was a big step up all around, but I don't think it is reasonable to expect the same out of the refresh.

    Maybe +200 mhz sounds more reasonable.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze said:
    Why are you calling it so-called??
    That's what every refresh has been in the last years, better binns due to better yields resulting in better clocks and not much anything more.
    The 13900, k and ks, already use 300-350W depending on how much cooling you use and on the default settings of the mobo. If you overclock you can get to more than 400W on good "normal" (non-exotic) cooling for both the k and ks.
    Unless reviewers start to use the warranted max turbo power as a limit every CPU will just reach whatever limit the cooling of the system represents.
    https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900k/22.htmlhttps://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900ks/21.html

    Yes, I know that.

    Don't get me wrong though, since I'm NOT saying any refresh CPU is a bad release, be it AMD or INTEL, but at what cost we would be getting a slightly higher performance ? And is the gain in performance, really worth the extra price and higher clocks/TDP ?

    Don't tell these refresh SKUs will have the exact same power consumption. I mean, they can be considered as having "normal" operating temps, but nowhere still close to the original RPL chips, imo. I have not read the K and KS chips reviews though. Will do it in a jiffy.

    What I'm trying to say is there are no "major" architectural changes done in any CPU refresh, apart from Intel using some better binned chips. Unlike the Meteor Lake series which would be featuring a full architecture overhaul.

    PS:

    Since I'm not getting ANY notifications here on Forums, as well as via Email, I'm now revisiting all the previous threads in which I posted replies, to check the update, lol. Kind of frustrating though.

    I will post more details later on.
    Reply