But there could be a silver lining.
The launch of Intel’s upcoming 14th Gen Raptor Lake refresh series is drawing closer and that means the leakers are coming out to play. Some leaks are more official than others. Just a few days ago, MSI drew attention with a slide revealing the upcoming i7 14700K/KF will receive four additional e-cores.
Now we have an indication of 14th Gen pricing, and sadly, it looks like a price rise is coming — relative to the current 13th Gen pricing anyway. The leak comes via @momomo_us, who revealed probable pricing for the 14th Gen K models.
pic.twitter.com/Rw6ueS0G1VAugust 27, 2023
As you can see in the pic above, all of the upcoming enthusiast tier chips are set to receive a roughly 15% price increase over their 13th Gen predecessors. That’s certainly not what gamers will be wanting to hear, but there could be a silver lining.
As the new chips differ little from current 13th Gen chips — apart from that i7 e-core count increase and higher clock speeds, it’ll be well worth keeping an eye out for 13th Gen bargains. A clock speed increase won’t make more than a few percent of difference, and if you’re a gamer, you really won’t notice it. A decent 12th Gen CPU is hardly a slouch either, and as they move towards EOL status, there should be some flash sales, especially as we move into the Black Friday sales period.
So, with a small performance increase gen-on-gen on top of a price hike, and an increase in peak power consumption, Intel will have a tough time convincing 12th and 13th Gen owners to upgrade. Of course, if you’re coming from an older generation CPU, then 14th Gen options will obviously be the best (and last) of the LGA1700 generation.
It should also be said that pricing can and does change in the weeks before a new launch, so take these prices with a grain of salt. We don’t yet know pricing for non-K models, which will follow later. Expect chips like the i5 14600 and i7 14700 to be popular.
We won’t have long to wait. All the indicators point towards an imminent launch. We should get details at Intel’s Innovation event on September 19th, though Raptor Lake refresh will have to share the stage with Intel’s bigger fish: Meteor Lake, which is shaping up nicely, though absent from desktops.
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