Intel Meteor Lake draws attention with clock speed leak as hype around next-gen CPUs builds

Intel’s Meteor Lake processors have been the subject of a new leak showing they can achieve impressive boost speeds.

As always with leaks, keep in mind that this information comes with heavy baggage. We are not sure if it is authentic and the source – Bilibili in China – is not always the most reliable.

That said, the leaker, ‘Golden Pig Upgrade’ is a regular on the scene and has been right about things in the past.

The rumor was spotted by HXL and shared on Twitter (via Tom’s hardware), and it claims the Meteor Lake Core Ultra 7 (not Core i7 – Intel is supposedly changing the naming scheme, as you may recall) with a boost to 5 GHz (on one core).

The Core Ultra 9 will exceed 5GHz, we’re told. Hold on, you might be thinking, doesn’t that sound a little tame compared to the boost speeds we’re already seeing with Intel’s current processors for laptops? (Remember, Meteor Lakes are mobile CPUs, and Intel is targeting the desktop market, trying to put a stamp on our best processors with Raptor Lake Refresh).

Well, you’re right – indeed, we’ve seen speeds of 5.4 GHz with Raptor Lake mobile. So let’s see why this is impressive, and why the apparent achievement leads Golden Pig Upgrade to say their faith has returned in Meteor Lake.

Analysis: a technical tour de force in every respect

The thing about Raptor Lake reaching 5.4 GHz is that it’s a very different kettle of silicon than Meteor Lake, so to speak.

Meteor Lake laptop chips are produced with a completely different design, using the Intel 4 process and a 3D stacked compute tile. That all sounds like gobbledegook, yes, but the bottom line is that with this design it’s harder to bump up the clock speeds without running into thermal issues and overheating, so with that in mind boost levels need to be tempered.

These leaked speeds are important because the rumor mill was expecting speeds below 5GHz – perhaps significantly below that – and we’re now being told that the Core i7 and i9 equivalents will be over 5GHz. Perhaps the top chip even hits 5.2 GHz or so, which isn’t far off what we’ve got with Raptor Lake – and given the design constraints mentioned, well, that’s why it’s impressive. Of course, if this leak happens, these could be excellent CPUs for the best gaming laptops.

Keep in mind that clock speeds aren’t everything either, and we have architectural advancements that mean Meteor Lake processors will naturally be faster than Raptor Lake.

So the hype is building nicely around Meteor Lake, and Intel is helping it along with recent CEO comments. Pat Gelsinger reminded us that the 14th Gen CPUs will have AI acceleration, and that, “We see this AI PC heralding a new class of applications, major application upgrades, and ISV excitement.” This will, we’re told, “like (Intel’s) Centrino moment for introducing Wi-Fi to the PC two decades ago,” promised Gelsinger.

Meteor Lake chips will arrive later this year, with the grapevine insisting the most likely release date is October or November. (Raptor Lake Refresh desktop CPUs should arrive in October).