When Intel's 13th Gen Raptor Lake And HEDT Sapphire Rapids CPUs Might Launch
Specifically, Mr. Official posted an image full of Chinese text. When translated—as fellow leaker @harukaze5719 has done—the image makes various predictions about the Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs, their associated W790 chipset, Intel's 13th-generation desktop CPUs, and the Z790/H770/B760 chipsets that will support them. (He also talks about AMD's upcoming hardware, but it's nothing we don't already know.)
Notably, ECSM_Official says that while Intel might prefer if motherboard vendors stuck to DDR5 models for the new chipsets, there will apparently be at least three motherboard manufacturers shipping 700-series motherboards with DDR4 memory slots. We don't know if that includes Z790 models or is limited to the lower-end boards, but we'd bet on the former. Of course, you can also stick Raptor Lake processors in compatible Z690 boards, too.
Meanwhile, the Xeon W-3400 and W-2400 series CPUs, codenamed Sapphire Rapids, will purportedly be coming along with the W790 chipset at roughly (or perhaps exactly) the same time as the desktop Raptor Lake parts. These are higher-end processors that use a big LGA 4677 socket and multi-chip module design to come with up to 56 cores and 112 PCIe 5.0 lanes.
ESCM_Official admits that this information is hearsay or possibly speculation, and says that the accuracy is not guaranteed, but it all sounds plausible to us. An October release date could position Raptor Lake as a direct response to AMD's Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000-series processors, which are expected to launch in the same time frame. Along with new GeForce, Radeon, and Arc cards, it looks like this Christmas could be a great time for an upgrade.
