The flagship Core Ultra 9 variants of Intel’s Meteor Lake CPU family are expected to be absent from the December 14 launch, despite the fact that the family is ready for release. Rather, it will save those until later in 2024—possibly at CES a few weeks from now. The number of SKUs in the Ultra 9 portfolio is unclear. It appears that Intel will instead launch its Core Ultra 7 and 5 CPUs, which is contrary to the company’s usual procedure and suggests an unanticipated delay.
As everyone is aware, when new architectures are released, Intel, AMD, and Nvidia usually follow a top-down launch strategy, releasing a flagship model first in order to make headlines with performance that breaks records. Less intriguing midrange models follow that a few months later, but by December, midrange may be all that Intel has to offer. Golden Pig Upgrade, a trustworthy Chinese Intel hardware snooper who has a history of accurate Intel rumors, claims that Intel will not have its Core Ultra 9 chips ready for the December launch.
According to Videocardz’s translation, one reason for the delay might be that these are mobile CPUs only, meaning that notebooks from partners like Asus, MSI, Lenovo, etc. will be the first to use them. It’s possible that things are just not ready yet, or that the corporations wish to save them for a major announcement at CES in early January.
We find it incomprehensible that any of these businesses would wish to skip the busiest holiday buying season. However, we can appreciate that aspect of the launch strategy given CES is recognized for being the venue for the announcement of brand-new premium gaming laptops. That still doesn’t explain, though, why Intel decided to launch Meteor Lake on December 14 if it didn’t have everything lined up.
Since there is just one Core Ultra 9 SKU that we are aware of, the 185H, it is still unknown what the Meteor Lake range will look like. Six P-cores, eight E-cores, and two low-power cores make up this flagship model. Golden Pig reports that the 155H and 125H Meteor Lake CPUs—likely the Core 7 and Core 5 models—will be available at launch. These will be compared to AMD’s 7840HS APU with RDNA 3 graphics and its current 13900H mobile CPU.
The largest Intel launch in decades is Meteor Lake. According to the corporation, over the next ten years, the design of its tiles will serve as the basis for all of its goods. According to reports, as manufacturing ramps up into 2024, Intel plans to produce 365,000 Meteor Lake CPUs using its Intel 4 technology.