Summary
- Intel's upcoming low-power Meteor Lake CPUs may add to the confusion of its product lineup, particularly in the laptop market, if a recent leak is to be believed.
- The four leaked CPU models in the Meteor Lake line prioritize battery life and are fairly underpowered, with TDP values ranging from 9W to 15W.
- The leaked information suggests that the source has access to prototype silicon and some of the leaked SKUs may not be released commercially depending on Intel's yield rates and customer demand.
An established industry insider has taken to social media to share the names of four low-powered Meteor Lake CPUs from Intel, suggesting that the company's convoluted line of silicon is soon set to become even more confusing. The upcoming processors should power some of the lightest and thinnest laptops that money will be able to buy in 2024.
Meteor Lake is the codename that Intel attached to the first generation of its Core Ultra CPUs. The semiconductor company previously labeled this series as a mobile lineup designed for laptops and other portable consumer electronics. That notwithstanding, Intel is still planning to release the Meteor Lake-S desktop CPUs in 2024, having recently dispelled rumors of their cancelation due to production yield issues.
And while the details about the upcoming product series are still hazy, the names of four of its CPU models have now been shared by Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, a Chinese insider who was the first to report on the existence of the Core Ultra 9 185H. According to them, the Meteor Lake line will include the Core Ultra 5 125U and 134U, as well as the 155U and 164U SKUs belonging to the Core Ultra 7 subseries. Although the Core Ultra moniker implies a certain performance level, the only thing it actually denotes is that the attached CPU belongs to Intel's Meteor Lake generation.
Furthermore, it would appear that the third SKU number in the new naming scheme will serve as the designation of a given CPU's thermal design power (TDP). The XX5U processors will hence operate at 15 watts, while their XX4U counterparts will go as low as 9W. In other words, all four of the newly leaked names will belong to fairly underpowered CPUs that will prioritize battery life over everything else. For reference, the entire 13th generation of the H series Intel Core mobile processors has a TDP of 45W. Devices incorporating those CPUs, including many of 2023's best gaming laptops, are generally rated for around six hours of 4K video playback.
Intel Core i9-12900K + Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition 8GB Bundle
The Intel Core i9-12900K + Intel Arc A750 bundle delivers great performance with a 16-core processor clocking speeds reaching up to 5.2 GHz and a mid-tier gaming graphics card. The Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition features 8 GB of VRAM and supports the new PCI Express 4.0 interface for faster performance. The CPU is overclockable for added power requirements.
Checkbox: control the expandable behavior of the extra info
Apart from revealing the names of several upcoming Intel CPUs, the source of this leak also recently reported that AMD is working on a mobile version of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU. And while their track record is fairly consistent, it also implies that they are getting their information straight from the factory room floor, possibly by having access to prototype silicon. As a result, there's still a plausible chance that some of the newly leaked SKUs won't end up being commercialized, depending on Intel's yield rates and customer demand.