Intel's 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh Is Now Official, What You Need To Know

Intel China has just confirmed what everyone expected: Intel's 14th-generation Core processors are going to include some portion of refreshed Raptor Lake silicon. This confirmation comes as part of an explainer on Bilibili (kind of like the Chinese YouTube) that hopes to illuminate the specifics of Intel's new branding.

If you're lost, let us explain. According to many leaks and rumors, Intel's Meteor Lake processors are efficient and fast, but aren't competitive with its current-generation Raptor Lake silicon for high-power performance. As a result, the company isn't shipping Meteor Lake parts for the desktop. Instead, those disaggregated processors will be limited to certain laptop models. The rest of the market—including desktop, -HX, -S, and -U processors—will be served by a refreshed lineup of Raptor Lake CPUs. This will apparently extend to a full range of models, from Core i3s on up to Core i9s. It looks like actual Meteor Lake processors may be limited exclusively to -H SKUs in the 35 to 45 watt range.

Those processors will also move to "Core Ultra" branding, it seems, which finally explains what "Ultra" means: actual new silicon. There are lots of new features in Meteor Lake beyond just their disaggregated nature that could justify the Ultra branding, but we expect that the powerful integrated graphics and AI accelerators are the main reasons for the rebranding.