Intel 14th-Gen Meteor Lake Release Date, Specifications, Price, and Benchmarks

Intel has been on a roll recently, specifically with the last two generations of processors, Alder Lake (12^th Gen) and Raptor Lake (13^th Gen).

They are finally offering more and faster cores, which results in substantially better performance while maintaining the same price point.

However, AMD is also coming up with incredible generational gains, so Intel has to keep its momentum; otherwise, the competition might quickly overtake them.

Fortunately, Intel’s 14^th-Gen Meteor Lake processors should be a solid upgrade over Raptor Lake and will help the company maintain its position in the CPU race.

But exactly how much performance will Meteor Lake bring to the table? Well, that’s precisely what this article will cover, alongside information for the release date, price, specifications, and more!

Let’s get right to it!

Release Date

Intel is pretty clear about its plans for future CPU generations, so we do have a general idea of when Meteor Lake will release.

Intel’s roadmap shows that Meteor Lake products will be ready to launch in 2023. We guess they will aim for Q3 or Q4 of 2023, while Arrow Lake (next-next-gen) is planned for 2024.

However, there are some rumors that Intel’s 14th generation processors will, in fact, be the refreshed Raptor Lake rather than Meteor Lake.

OneRaichu, a known leaker, mentions that MTL-S, Meteor Lake’s desktop CPUs, are canceled. Unfortunately, several other leakers and tech websites seem to agree that the planned 14th Gen CPUs are canceled.

The worst-case scenario is that the new CPU generation may release much later than expected.

However, Intel has been in the CPU game for decades now, so it’s hard to imagine that they’ll make such a blunder, so take all of these rumors with a huge grain of salt.

It’s still a long until we know the exact Intel 14^th-Gen launch day, but we’ll be sure to update you when more information is available!

Specifications

Intel’s 14^th-Gen processors will move from the Intel 7 (10nm Enhanced SuperFin) process node to Intel 4 (7nm Enhanced SuperFin), which should bring a considerable performance improvement.

Core, Core Clocks And Power

But that’s not all!

Based on the leaks we’ve seen from MLID, Meteor Lake will also come with new P-cores (Redwood Cove) and E-cores (Crestmont).

The new Crestmont E-cores will also have a 15% IPC improvement over Gracemont (Raptor Lake E-cores).

Redwood Cove on the other hand may provide up to 25% IPC improvement over Raptor Cove (Raptor Lake P-Cores).

With these new cores, Intel will supposedly reduce the number of P-cores on the flagship CPU (i9-14900K) to 6. So, 6 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores for a total of 22 cores and 28 threads. That’s 2 P-cores less than the Intel Core i9-13900K.

However, there is one problem Intel can’t tackle with the Alder Lake, Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake hybrid architecture and that’s power draw. Intel’s high-performance cores are the cause for this.

P-cores simply need too much power, which is why the Raptor Lake i9 and i7 have such high power consumption.

Because of this, Intel might give up on the idea of high-core count CPUs. That’s what leakers are pointing at too.

Intel might focus their 14th generation of processors on gaming efficiency by lowering the core count.

So, the i9 might not even be an option and the flagship CPU will be the i7-14700K with 16 cores or less.

Cache

It’s no secret that CPU cache is a huge factor when it comes to in-game performance. That is one of the reasons why the Ryzen 7000X3D Series has some of the fastest gaming CPUs in the world.

That is probably why we’re seeing rumors about Intel adding L4 cache to its processors.

In previous Intel chips, the iGPU and the CPU shared the L3 cache memory, so it’s possible that this new level of cache will be only for the CPU or maybe even the iGPU, leaving L3 for the CPU.

New Socket And DDR5

Unfortunately, Intel will supposedly abandon the LGA 1700 socket that Alder Lake and Raptor Lake used and go with the new LGA 1851 socket. In other words, users will not be able to reuse their LGA 1700 motherboards (B660, Z690, Z790, or B760, etc.)

Even though Intel had the advantage over Ryzen 7000 because of its DDR4 support with Raptor Lake, Meteor Lake will support only DDR5 memory. But DDR5 should come down in price and improve in speed in 2023, so it’s probably the best decision for Meteor Lake.

Meteor Lake’s Z890 socket will also introduce PCIe Gen5 M.2 slots. Supposedly, Z890 will have x24 Gen4 lanes compared to x20 Gen4 on Z790. Wi-Fi 7 is also mentioned in this leak which is also an upgrade over Wi-Fi 6E.

Most interestingly is the mention of the support of Windows 12 considering that Windows 11 was recently released and that Microsoft will probably run this OS for years to come.

The socket shape and size on the new LGA 1851 seem to be identical to the LGA1700, which means that current CPU coolers will be compatible with future Z890, B860, H870, and other motherboards.

There is a slight change in the IHS though, but that shouldn’t really change the end-user experience.

Price

We’re still far from Intel’s Meteor Lake launch day, so there is no reliable information regarding the price of the next-gen CPUs.

However, Intel’s pricing has been pretty consistent throughout history, so we can guess what the price points will look like.

Here are our estimates:

• Intel Core i9-14900K – $589
• Intel Core i9-14900KF – $564
• Intel Core i7-14700K – $409
• Intel Core i7-14700KF – $384
• Intel Core i5-14600K – $319
• Intel Core i5-14600KF – $294

Simply put, we believe that the pricing for these six SKUs will remain the same with Meteor Lake.

Benchmarks

No benchmarks or performance data is available now for 14^th-Gen CPUs. But, as soon as such information is available, we’ll ensure to keep you up to date with this article and show you how they will fare in the CPU tier list.