Intel’s desktop CPU roadmap for the next four quarters has surfaced, courtesy of HXL. The leak confirms the existence of a Raptor Lake Refresh set to launch in the third quarter of 2023. In the content creation or HEDT space, Sapphire Rapids is planned for an early 2023 release. Like the 4th Gen Xeon-SP, it leverages a chiplet design to bump the core count to 56, taking the fight to AMD’s Threadripper 5000 lineup.
A Raptor Lake-S Refresh is disappointing as Raptor Lake itself was a refresh of sorts. Luckily for Intel, it holds a commanding lead over AMD in gaming workloads with strong multi-threaded capabilities for content creation. Zen 4 3D V-Cache may spoil the former, but nothing too drastic.
On the server side, Emerald Rapids-SP, another refresh (of Sapphire Rapids-SP), is set to launch in the last quarter of 2023, less than a year after SPR. The 13th Gen Raptor Lake refresh will increase clock speeds and aggressive pricing. You can expect a stalemate in the desktop CPU market towards the end of 2023, with intermittent price cuts from both parties.
