According to the latest rumors from a well-known Chinese leaker, next year’s desktop processor battle will continue to be between Raptor Lake – with Intel planning a refreshed set of current 13th-gen chips – and AMD’s Zen 4.
However, we’ll see at least some new silicon quite early in 2023, when we can expect to see Raptor Lake’s new flagship, the 13900KS, a processor that Intel has already said has a boost speed of 6GHz out of the box – quite an eye-opening feat.
AMD’s response to this, according to ECSM (on Bilibili (opens in a new tab)by VideoCardz (opens in a new tab)), these will be new versions of Ryzen 7000 processors with 3D V-Cache support – but these apparently will not go above the 8-core models. ECSM believes that 6-core and 8-core X3D spins on Zen 4 chips are available now, but nothing else is planned, nor a more powerful CPU with 3D V-Cache (or at least not noticed yet).
We’re rumored to see the 13900KS as well as the Ryzen 5 7600X3D and Ryzen 7 7700X3D in mid or later in the first half of 2023. So presumably we’re looking at April to June or around that time the new chips will actually be on sale (possibly the reveal could be much earlier).
Apparently later in the third quarter of 2023 (September or so), Intel plans to refresh Raptor Lake, taking the main CPUs from the current lineup and overclocking the clocks by 100MHz to 200MHz.
So it will just be a matter of small incremental bumps, and the main specs, number of cores and the like, of these new processors will remain the same as the current 13th generation models.
Apparently, Intel’s next generation of CPUs – Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake – won’t debut at all next year, and will instead arrive in 2024. We still expected Meteor Lake to appear in 2023, though not according to ECSM; but elsewhere in the rumor mill it is still possible. Add to that copious amounts of spice, of course, and other information provided by the leaker here.
Analysis: Not much to do in 2023 then?
Basically, Intel isn’t going to do much next year – assuming of course that ECSM is on the money with these fresh rumors – and so is AMD. We’ll get what sounds like a very minor refresh of Raptor Lake’s silicon, but Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake are still a long way off. So is the Zen 5, but we knew it was – it’s apparently Intel’s changed plans that are the bigger surprise here.
That said, a lot of people were expecting a hefty X3D variant from AMD, so it’s a surprise to learn we might not get it. At least not for starters, though to be honest, the 8-core 3D V-Cache model (probably 7700X3D) will be interesting for mainstream gaming anyway. This is the Ryzen chip that many people expect to be the powerful processor that will cause Intel problems in 2023.
Intel’s Meteor Lake is rumored to be configured with a top-of-the-line chip that has 6 performance cores and 16 performance cores, so in other words, no high-end desktop CPU (with other speculations indicating that the range may be more focused on mobile chips). 8 performance cores for the top desktop models (Core i7, i9) are expected to launch with Arrow Lake, so both will now land in 2024, covering different ends of the performance spectrum. Both Meteor and Arrow Lake will require a new slot and platform and should face Zen 5 sometime in 2024.
Meanwhile, it sounds a lot like a quiet year on the CPU front for 2023…
