Intel leaks suggest innovative battery boosting laptop chips and a new 14th-gen top dog CPU are on schedule

Date:
Mon, 19 Feb 2024 17:54:32 +0000

Description:
Intels incoming laptop chips are expected to be seriously power-efficient and great news for battery life.

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Its been a busy old time for Intel leaks, and another couple have just popped up. One is for Team Blues incoming Lunar Lake laptop CPUs which are set to be great news for battery life, and another has arrived pertaining to the
rumored refresh for the Raptor Lake Refresh flagship (try saying that quickly).

Lets start with the notebook world, and the spillage from leaker HXL on X (formerly Twitter), as flagged by Toms Hardware . This shows a Lunar Lake sample processor running in Windows. Lunar Lake A1https://t.co/REwqArpOUo pic.twitter.com/xKQKJZVIOI February 17, 2024 See more

Specifically, what we see in the above tweet is a screen grab of Task Manager with details of the Lunar Lake chip in the PC though as ever with leaks, we must beware of the possibility its a fake.

At any rate, the leaker informs us that this is an A1 sample of Lunar Lake, meaning its an early version, and not representative of the final silicon
well see from these laptop chips.

It shows us a CPU with eight cores (and eight threads, so no hyper-threading) running at a boost speed of 2.8GHz. Apparently this is a configuration of
four performance cores and four efficiency cores (though the latter dont have hyper-threading anyway, the former normally would have).

The processor also has an NPU (as with Meteor Lake) for AI acceleration, and we get a glimpse of the cache loadouts, where theres a bit of a wrinkle too. The L3 cache is smaller than the L2 cache, and normally, this would be the other way around. Well come back to discuss that, and the other spec details here, in a moment.

Before that, though, the second piece of leakage is that Intels rumored Core i9-14900KS, the special edition of the current Raptor Lake Refresh flagship, the 14900K , has been spotted at a French online retailer (via VideoCardz ).

Another leaker on X, @momomo_us, highlighted the listing for the flagship variant thatll hit 6.2GHz, with the CPU having a price of 750 attached (including sales tax). BX8071514900KSCM8071504820506 pic.twitter.com/kzU1Fx7bWh February 18, 2024 See more

That converts to just over $800 in the US or 640, AU$1,240 but dont go panicking about a possible 35% price hike above the MSRP of the existing flagship. For starters, the French retailer may have used a placeholder price (more than likely), and even then, this wont translate directly to pricing in other regions (especially not the US).

If we look at US pricing, we can expect the 14900KS to be about 20% more expensive, if the 13900KS versus 13900K was anything to go by (and it should be). That said, Intel may add a little bit more of a premium but not to the tune of 35%. Analysis: Its all about the timing

Regarding the Lunar Lake CPU sighting, the boost speed of 2.8GHz looks very low, but we can put that down to the chip being an early sample. As to the oddities with the cache, well, that could be a misreading of the amounts by Task Manager in Windows which again wouldnt be surprising with early working silicon. The original leaker (on Zhihu.com, a Chinese Q&A community forum) believes the stated cache levels are correct, mind you, but wed heap on a whole load of seasoning with that.

Regarding the lack of hyper-threading, its possible that this sample
processor has had the feature disabled here. Although alternatively, this could suggest that Lunar Lake will follow in the rumored footsteps of Arrow Lake , which is supposedly dropping hyper-threading. We shall see.

Lunar Lake is expected to debut later this year, perhaps alongside Arrow
Lake, or very close to the latter and the sighting of sample silicon
suggests rumors about a 2024 launch may be on the money. Intel has hinted
that these CPUs will turn up early in 2025 at the latest , with these power-efficient, battery life extending processors aiming to revolutionize premium thin-and-light laptops. Lunar Lake promises to have some interesting tricks up its sleeve , too.

The listing of the Core i9-14900KS doesnt really mean anything pricing-wise, as we discussed before, but what it does represent is an indication that this CPU is close to launch. Typically, retailers only jump the gun like this when the release of a product is nearing.

Weve heard several rumors about the 14900KS recently, including a photo , a spilled benchmark , and word from the grapevine that it launches in the
middle of March . This latest nugget on the supercharged flagship is just a little more weight heaped on to the likelihood of us seeing this CPU arrive next month. You might also like We've chosen all the best student laptops
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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/laptops/intel-leaks-suggest-innovative-bat tery-boosting-laptop-chips-and-a-new-14th-gen-top-dog-cpu-are-on-schedule


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