Intel Socket LGA1851 for Meteor Lake Desktop Appears, Might Be i5 Only

Jul 29, 2023

There's been a lot of mystery surrounding Intel's upcoming 14th generation Meteor Lake CPUs. Reports have varied from being on schedule later this year to replace Raptor Lake to being mobile-only or cancelled entirely. The primary source of the confusion was that all the leaks pointed to a low-power part, so it couldn't possibly be a desktop CPU. New information indicates it might arrive on the desktop, but only as a midrange part.

Intel has posted a photo of an interposer for a new socket bearing the markings of Meteor Lake-S, meaning it's a desktop part. It has been long-rumored that socket LGA-1851 would replace Intel's 12th and 13th generation socket LGA-1700, and that's exactly what Intel is showing off with this latest discovery from @momomo_us on Twitter. Intel is offering companies an "LGA1851-MTL-S Interposer for the Gen5 VR Test Tool" to test voltage regulation for its upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs. However, another Twitter account (via Videocardz) claims MTL-S, or Meteor Lake desktop, will only be offered as an i5 CPU with a TDP of 65W. The rest of the desktop lineup on this socket will be Arrow Lake, due in 2024. A Raptor Lake refresh is still in the cards for later this year to keep Intel's desktop lineup competitive with AMD's V-Cache CPUs.

If this pans out, it's an interesting twist in the saga of Meteor Lake. Every leak has shown it to offer reduced core counts compared with the high-end Raptor Lake, leading to rumors it was a mobile CPU. It seems true Intel is prioritizing efficiency with Meteor Lake, which was theorized when it was leaked it might feature low-power efficiency cores, aka LP-E cores. However, that could also make for a suitable i5 midrange CPU.

According to these leaks, there will still be a Raptor Lake refresh later this year, which will be the last hurrah for DDR4 memory for Intel. It's long been reported it will be DDR5 only with Meteor Lake onward, and we're okay with that, as prices have become more reasonable and the performance benefits are worth the upgrade. However, it'll be interesting to see Intel jostling three different generations of CPUs simultaneously, which it has never done before.

We'll also happily eat some crow if Intel can deliver Meteor Lake on time, as its CEO has said it would. We've expressed skepticism since this platform has already been delayed by years, so it'll be interesting to see if it will arrive this year. There has been a surge of new info about it lately, indicating it's in the early stages of coming to market soon. This week, we got confirmation that it will use an all-new L4 cache, like an inverse V-Cache. We also saw the first Meteor Lake benchmark earlier this month, which didn't amount to much but at least proved it exists.