We thought that Intel’s latest 14th gen CPUs would be the last ones to use the Intel LGA1700 socket, but it looks as though this veteran motherboard platform is getting a new lease of life, thanks to a new lineup of CPUs that Intel apparently has in the works. According to the rumor grapevine, a new range of processors, codenamed Intel Bartlett Lake, is on the way, and they will work on old LGA1700 motherboards.
We’re not talking about the Intel Arrow Lake lineup here, which will be Intel’s future best gaming CPU contenders. Arrow Lake is set to use the new forthcoming LGA1851 socket, with a new range of supporting motherboards. Instead, it looks as though Intel is following AMD’s strategy of supporting CPU sockets for longer than two generations, by making new CPUs that will work in LGA1700 motherboards.
According to the rumors, Bartlett Lake CPUs won’t challenge Arrow Lake chips when it comes to performance, and will instead be a cheaper lineup of CPUs aimed at owners of existing Intel motherboards. To us, it looks quite similar to AMD’s strategy of launching new high-end 16-core CPUs for its Socket AM5 platform, while also still issuing new, cheaper eight-core CPUs, such as the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, for its aging Socket AM4 platform.
This latest rumor, which comes from TweakTown, potentially offers great news for anyone who bought an Intel 12th gen or 13th gen CPU, and doesn’t want to also fork out for a new motherboard. If you own a six-core Core i5-12400F, for example, a new Bartlett Lake CPU could potentially be a faster drop-in replacement for a cheap price when it launches.
There’s one fly in the ointment here, though, which is that these Bartlett Lake rumors point to the new CPUs only supporting DDR5 memory, putting the last nail in the coffin for DDR4. That’s going to make Bartlett Lake a non-starter for people looking for a cheap upgrade to put in an LGA1700 motherboard that only takes DDR4 memory.
Even so, if these rumors are true, we welcome Intel giving some new life to its LGA1700 socket. AMD did this for years with its AM4 platform over several generations, and continues to do so. When components are going up and up in price, the ability to buy a new CPU without needing a whole new motherboard as well can be very tempting.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a new CPU, check out our full Intel Core i9-14900K review, as well as our Core i5-14600K review, with both these CPUs also using Intel’s LGA1700 socket.