Intel Meteor Lake is set to arrive next year, but you might need to upgrade your motherboard when it does. Rumours suggest the blue team’s next best gaming CPU lineup will use a new socket, a factor that could make the jump from Alder Lake more expensive.
According to renowned hardware leaker Moore’s Law is Dead, Intel Meteor Lake CPUs may ditch LGA 1700, which suggests Raptor Lake will be the last generation to support the socket. While the new design is supposedly only slightly larger than LGA 1700 in terms of footprint, it’ll potentially include 50% more pins than the current-gen standard.
MLID claims Meteor Lake uses an LGA 2551 socket, but an additional Benchlife leak clarifies that it’s actually LGA 1851 (via Videocardz). The insider info suggests that the 2551-pin version could be a BGA variant, but says it’ll likely not be used for desktop products.
Last month, Intel showed off its Meteor Lake CPU package at a pop-up vision event, giving us a glimpse at its design. A tiled die layout seemingly ditches the need for a separate PCH (Platform Controller Hub), merging it into a quad-die configuration. The new approach should facilitate flexibility, as it’ll allow the company to create new variants easier than before.
As for when Meteor Lake will actually arrive, the next-gen chip could show up later than expected. Rather than going head to head with AMD Zen 4, MLID says the CPU may show up in Q4 2023 as a “reluctant” Zen 5 competitor.
Naturally, this delay will potentially give the red team the edge in next year’s best gaming CPU race, but considering both Ryzen 7000 and Intel Raptor Lake are next on the horizon, we’re perhaps getting ahead of ourselves.