Rumors about the possible cancellation of Intel’s Meteor Lake-S processors have been on the table for some time, and in a way, they were strengthened by the information that we will see a launch this year Restoration of Raptor Lakea minor revision of the Core Gen13, which will theoretically come with higher clock frequencies.

The truth is, right now nothing is confirmed, and that therefore all possibilities are open. However, I don’t think it makes sense to consider a permanent cancellation of Intel Meteor Lake-S for desktops, as that would be tantamount to leaving AMD alone with Zen 5, an architecture arriving sometime in 2024 that will theoretically be its big rival.

The closest thing Intel would have on its roadmap would be Arrow Lake-S, generation, which according to the latest information would be launched between late 2024 and early 2025and that it will use an Intel A20 node. As you can see, the data wouldn’t paint anything good, and that’s why I have so much doubt about the supposed cancellation of Meteor Lake-S.

Everything is still up in the air, but a new rumor leaves very specific and very interesting information about the future of Intel Meteor Lake-S and about the chip giant’s new flagship chipset, known as the Z890 (the successor to the current Z790). The source assures that these new processors will have a total 20 PCIe Gen5 lanes, of which 16 will be for the graphics card and 4 for the SSD drive. It’s an interesting change, but it’s not the only one, as the Z890 chipset will also have 4 more PCIe Gen4 lanes and come with connectivity Wifi 7.

As for the Intel Meteor Lake-S processors, this rumor leaves us with some very interesting information that we didn’t have before, and it gives a little more strength to the non-cancellation idea that I left you with at the beginning of the article. . Intel would theoretically be developing a high-performance version that would have the configuration 8 Redwood Cove cores (high performance) and 16 Crestmont cores (high efficiency).

If what I just told you is confirmed, the top of the line Intel Meteor Lake-S would not be limited to a 22-core configuration, but would have a total of 24 cores and 32 threads, the same amount as the Intel Core i9-13900K. If you are worried about Intel not increasing the maximum number of cores and threads, I can tell you that you can rest easy because this new generation makes up for it with important changes:

• New architecture in high performance and high efficiency cores.
• Higher IPC on both core blocks.
• Switch to Intel node 4 (7nm).
• An increase in operating frequencies, which could be manifested especially in highly efficient cores.

Putting it all together, it’s clear that even if Meteor Lake-S keeps the number of cores and threads at 24 and 32, eventually the increase in performance will be quite significant over the Raptor Lake-S and the improvement in efficiency should also be noticeable.