Intel is still working on its upcoming 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs that will drop in October 2023, but after that, we'll have the 15th Gen Core "Arrow Lake" CPUs that will release in October 2024... and we're already hearing early performance numbers on the CPUs. Don't worry, in 2024 and beyond we'll have our Ready to Ship Gaming PC range with the new flagship Core i9-15900K processor... and what a processor it's shaping up to be.
The upcoming Arrow Lake CPU architecture will drop in Q4 2024, introducing the new LGA1851 socket to the desktop, with leaker Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) teasing that it will feature an 8+32 (Lion Cove + Skymont) Core Tile that has been "reactivated in development" noting that "this is not 100% confirmation it won't be re-halted, but for now it's again progressing in development".
We're to expect a large 30-40% higher single-threaded performance over the current 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" architecture, while we can expect an 8+32 Arrow Lake CPU to beat 8+16 Raptor Lake CPU by 55-75% in multi-threaded tasks, wowzers. MLID teases that Intel has the following 15th Gen Core "Arrow Lake" CPUs progressing in development:
What do the 8+32 and 8+16, etc mean? Well, the first number (8) is the number of Performance cores (P-cores) while the second number (32) is the number of Efficiency cores (E-cores). So the flagship 15th Gen Core "Arrow Lake" Core i9 processor -- which should be the Core i9-15900K -- will have 8 cores and 32 threads for a total of 40 threads of ARL processing power... ARL is Arrow Lake.
The latest rumours are coming from Igor's Lab, which has reportedly received an "internal presentation from Intel" that shows performance projections for the new Arrow Lake-S processors, compared to the Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" processor that is on the market today, and the upcoming Core i9-14900K "Raptor Lake Refresh" processor, both in PL1 and PL2 modes (at up to 253W for the 13900K, 250W for the 14900K and 15900K processors).
Igor's charts tease that we can expect a 1-4% improvement from the new Core i9-14900K processor over the Core i9-13900K, while we can expect an increase of 1-21% more performance with the new Core i9-15900K over the Core i9-13900K. Impressive stuff to say the least, but lower performance numbers than what MLID provided.
The new 15th Gen Core "Arrow Lake" CPUs will arrive on a new LGA1851 socket, meaning there will be new motherboards and a new chipset released from Intel. The upcoming 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs on the other hand will continue along with the LGA1700 socket, so the upcoming 14th Gen Core CPUs won't require a new motherboard, just a new CPU and a BIOS update for the current 13th Gen Core CPU + 700-series motherboard owners.
