Intel 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh Desktop CPUs Rumored To Clock Up To 6.2 GHz

Intel's 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh Desktop CPUs are expected to further boost the clock speeds compared to 13th Gen Raptor Lake chips.

Moore's Law is Dead has new details regarding Intel's 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh Desktop CPU family which he states is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2023 and will be supported by existing LGA 1700 platforms. The lineup will come in both desktop "S" and mobility "HX" variants & will sit alongside the Meteor Lake-P and Meteor Lake-M families.

Based on the rumor, the Intel Raptor Lake Refresh Desktop CPU family will not include more than 8+16 core configurations but it is expected to feature some new SKUs, mainly a 6+8 and a 2+8 SKU configuration which can be marketed as a Core i5 and Core i3 tier design. These may or may not be actual launch SKUs and can be internal test drivers.

The most important thing mentioned within the leak is that Intel is once again going to focus on increasing the clock speeds for its chips. The top Intel 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPU is said to boost up to 6.2 GHz and there's also the possibility of an even higher-binned variant that clocks up to 6.5 GHz. That 6.2 GHz clock speed will be a 7% increase over the Core i9-13900K which peaks at 5.8 GHz and a 3% increase over the 13900KS which peaks at 6.0 GHz.

Whether this is a special "KS" edition chip or the standard part with its TB 3.0 frequency remains to be seen. The higher frequency might allow Intel to reach close to AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D chips but at the cost of much higher power.

There are some rumors that the lineup may offer another bump in terms of multi-threading performance and utilize even large cache pools. Rumors also suggest DLVR (Digital Voltage Regulator) be housed within the Raptor Lake Refresh chips which were expected for the non-refresh family but there's no official confirmation yet.

The lineup will be including all consumer and entry-workstation platforms with 35W, 65W, and 125W SKUs. Now we know that Intel's Raptor Lake refresh is just going to be an intermediate solution like Emerald Rapids-SP (Xeon platform) before the true next-gen parts arrive. This CPU lineup is expected around August 2023.

Intel does plan on hosting its upcoming Vision event on May 9th so we might just hear about the desktop plans during that. Intel is planning a major rebranding of its Core chips so we might see a very different naming scheme than simply calling the top SKU as Core i9-14900K / Core i9-13950K.