Upcoming Intel Meteor Lake CPUs are expected to offer higher performance than current generation Core processors, but rumoured specs suggest team blue may be scaling things down a touch. In fact, 14th Gen chips may feature fewer cores than equivalent Raptor Lake models.
The flagship Intel Meteor Lake processor will only pack 22 cores according to ECSM_Official, comprised of six performance cores and 16 efficiency cores. This would leave a prospective Core i9 14900K two cores short of the current best gaming CPU, the Core i9 13900K.
However, any power lost by the axing of performance cores may be partially explained by the improved included architectures powering 14th Gen Intel Core processors. While it remains to be seen whether they can make up the difference, we do at the very least know that these CPUs are the first to be built using the more advanced Intel 4 process.
Since Intel Meteor Lake chips will use the new LGA-1851 socket, you can expect to trade in the best gaming motherboard of today for a newer but hopefully not much more expensive model.