Is Intel ignoring the sub-$100 CPU market? Leaked 14th gen specs indicate so

Intel might be ignoring the sub-$100 CPU market as per the latest leaks of the 14th gen Core CPU lineup. The Core i3 has been Team Blue's primary offering for users on a tight budget. While the chip has been periodically updated with higher core counts, faster operating speeds, and higher IPCs, it seems like Intel isn't interested in making the i3 a lucrative choice for gamers.

The upcoming 14th gen CPU lineup will be a very minor improvement over the last. The processors will be a simple process refinement of the 13th-generation Raptor Lake chips. Intel is relying on voltage shoving and resultant higher power draws to extract more performance out of the underlying silicon.

Despite this, some mid-range chips have been reported to bundle higher core counts. Recently, the Core i7 14700K was rumored to boast up to 20 cores, up from 16 on the last-gen 13700K. That said, this isn't nearly the case with the i3.

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Leaked specs of the new 14th gen Core i3 14100F

Leaked specs of the upcoming 14th gen non-K lineup (Image via Chi11eddog/Twitter)

The upcoming 14th gen Core i3 will be available in two SKUs: the 14100 and the 14100F, as per Twitter leaker chi11eddog. The processors will feature four performance cores and no efficient ones, which locks the total core count to just 4. In contrast, the next higher chip in the lineup, the Core i5 14400F, will boast 10 cores, six of them being high-performance P cores and the remaining being efficient E cores.

The upcoming 14100 and the 14100F will feature 12 MB of L3 cache and will boost up to 4.7 GHz, which will be the highest of any budget i3 processors ever launched.

	Core i3 14100/F	Core i5 14400/F
Performance cores	4	6
Efficient cores	0	4
Thread count	8	16
L3 cache	12 MB	20 MB
Boost clock	4.7 GHz	4.7 GHz

All of this begs the question: Why doesn't the Core i3 bundle a few E cores that will help with the overall performance? The answer is manifold. For starters, the i3 is mainly bought by budget users for basic computational workloads. The list includes light gaming, word processing, content consumption, and more. A dramatically higher core count won't significantly help in this case.

Moreover, adding extra cores will require more cooling and skyrocket the price. Since budget users won't have much work for a chip with high multi-core performance, this would add extra expenditure.

With four performance cores, the i3 14100 and the 14100F will inherit all the IPC improvements of the 14th gen Raptor Lake Refresh lineup. Thus, while a few extra efficient cores would have been a nice-to-have and helped market the chip better, slimming sales and lower computational horsepower requirements at the entry-level justifies the low core count of the upcoming i3.