With Intel allegedly prepping faster Raptor Lake Refresh chips, how will AMD's Ryzen 7000 and 7000 3D CPUs stack up for gamers?

According to the latest leaks, Intel is prepping a Raptor Lake Refresh lineup before the high-performance Arrow Lake processors drop in the first half of 2024. Team Blue is going through a paradigm shift in its CPU roadmap as the desktop variants of the Meteor Lake lineup now seem to be canceled.

It's worth noting that the Raptor Lake refresher will be similar to the Devil's Canyon lineup that the company introduced back in 2014 as a refresher to the Haswell lineup. As a result, the upcoming flagship might be named 13990KS or be branded as the 14th-gen lineup, like the 6th-gen and 7th-gen Skylake and Kaby Lake lineups.

Intel has been working on improving the maximum performance of the Raptor Lake chips, according to leaks disclosed by YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead. The company is likely to boost the performance of the chips by selecting binned dies, improving the performance per watt by employing DLVR, and shoving more volts into the die.

Disclaimer: The information in this article isn't official and is based on our expectations and speculations.

---

The Raptor Lake refresh is Intel's effort to dethrone the AMD Ryzen 7000 X3D chips

The new 3D V-Cache enabled Ryzen chips have taken away the gaming performance crown from the Core i9 13900K and the 13900KS. As such, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is currently the fastest chip for gaming workloads.

Due to this, Intel needs a solid CPU lineup this fall to remain competitive against AMD's offerings. The Raptor Lake refresher has the same objective. Team Blue is picking up select binned chips from a lineup that performs well and will use them for this new launch. This means that the upcoming processors will be part of a limited edition lineup like the 12900KS and the 13900KS.

---

Intel's chief weapon is DLVR

Rumors suggest that the company will employ Digital Linear Voltage Regulator (DLVR) technology to reduce the power consumption of the operating cores by up to 20%. This extra headroom can then be used to push the boost clocks even higher to deliver superior performance. Currently, the ridiculous power draw of the Raptor Lake chips has been heavily criticized by industry experts.

ASUS has already confirmed that the Raptor Lake chips featured this technology, but Intel shut it down during production. Thus, it only makes sense for the company to launch a lineup with the feature turned on. Interestingly, the company patented this technology in early 2022.

---

More details on the Raptor Lake Refresh

Although we're yet to receive more details on the alleged refresher lineup for the Raptor Lake chip, it will most certainly launch later this year. If Intel utilizes the same LGA1700 socket, users will gain access to DDR4 compatibility and multiple cheap motherboards. This is likely to be another weapon in Intel's arsenal to keep AMD's prices in check.

Over time, more details on what Intel is planning to launch later this year should become clear. For now, things look fairly confusing, to say the least.