After calling out AMD for reusing its old architectures in lower-end processors, Intel may have decided to do the same. Team Blue’s 14th Gen lineup refreshes the 13th Gen Raptor Lake family. Everything is identical except the core clocks (+100 to 200MHz). Some SKUs like the Core i7-14700K offer more E-cores, but they rarely make a difference in gaming workloads. Intel has allegedly decided to remaster its 14nm+++ debacle with a second Raptor Lake refresh, utilizing the 7nm-class 10nm ESF node for a fourth go.
According to RedGamingTech, this lineup is codenamed Bartlett Lake-S and will power the lower-end processors of the 15th Gen Arrow Lake family. Intel (and AMD) have been doing something similar in the notebook CPU space for some time now. The Core Ultra lineup leverages the Meteor Lake design with the Intel 4 process node, while the Core (non-Ultra) stack features a refresh of Raptor Lake for the lower-end segments.
This strategy reduces the strain on the 4nm fabs while maintaining ample margins in the low and midrange markets. Bartlett Lake is the implementation of the same in the desktop space. It’ll power the Core i3 and i5 SKUs using the Raptor Lake architecture with nominal core or frequency increments to keep performance in line with the higher-end variants.
The 15th Gen Arrow Lake processors will be fabbed on the 20A node, so wafer supply and yields will be tight. By complementing them with a low-cost refresh, Intel will ensure its margins stay where they should. This will also make the LGA1700 platform more relevant, giving the chipmaker some positive press to go along with it.
