A recent MSI YouTube video meant to be kept private was accidentally leaked, revealing confidential specifications of Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake Refresh CPU lineup that will vie for a spot in our list of Best CPUs coming soon. The internal video, which reads "NDA, do not share!" has since been taken down, but was up long enough for us to take a screenshot of the video's key takeaways. The video confirmed what we already know about Raptor Lake Refresh, including its minute performance jump over 13th Gen Raptor Lake, and a minor change in core count on the Core i7 model.
MSI's leaked video confirms what we've known already about Raptor Lake Refresh, the new CPU lineup will be codenamed Raptor Lake-S Refresh and will feature no architectural changes compared to Raptor Lake or Alder Lake — relying on the same Intel 7 process. MSI's Average performance estimation confirms that Raptor Lake Refresh chips will only have a 3% faster performance advantage over 13th Gen. There's also lack of any core count upgrades on most chips.
The only exception to this is the i7-14700K which gets a slight core count improvement over its predecessor the i7-13700K. Core count changes go from 8P cores and 8E cores to 8P cores and 12E cores on the 14700K, giving the newer chip four additional E cores over the 14700K. According to MSI, the additional cores give the 14700K 17% more multi-core performance on average.
Raptor Lake Refresh will be the next CPU generation to succeed Intel's current lineup of 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors. It seems Intel's plan was to initially launch Meteor Lake as the successor to Raptor Lake (Raptor Lake Refresh is not listed in Intel's original Meteor Lake slides) and has instead opted to release a refresh of Raptor Lake (which is in and of itself a refresh of Alder Lake) to take its place.
The good news is that Intel's 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh parts will be compatible with current LGA 1700 socket motherboards, and won't require new motherboards to support the new lineup. In fact, it seems very likely that Intel will not release a new motherboard chipset generation this time around, which will make the current generation 700 series chipset motherboards the primary and only platform for Raptor Lake Refresh if true.
With a rumored release date of October for these new chips, we won't have to wait long before Raptor Lake Refresh arrives in reviewers' hands.
