Intel’s 14th Gen desktop processors are technically identical to their 13th Gen predecessors. The socket, the cores, I/O, and the chipsets are all unchanged. The primary difference is the core clocks, which are 100 to 200MHz higher on the Raptor Lake Refresh. In the case of the Core i7-14700K, the E-core count has been bumped up by 4, bringing the overall count to 20 (8P + 12E). Motherboard vendors have prepared their own refreshes because, well, what else can they do?
Gigabyte has multiple Z790X motherboards in the lab, the X suffix indicating the refreshed design. Benchlife has received a photo of the Z790 Auros Pro X with a clean all-silver-white design and some RGB. This looks very similar to the minimal frills AERO design.
The Gigabyte Aorus Z790 Pro X features an 18-phase VRM, WiFi 7, and a USB-C port with PD functions. It’s likely that the board will be compatible with both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, with increased bandwidth on the latter. Raptor Lake and its refresh will both have naive memory support of 5,600MT/s.
The 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh is slated to be revealed during the Intel Innovation 2023 event. The desktop platform will get only three SKUs at launch, the Core i9-14900K/KF, Core i7-14700K/KF, and Core i5-14600K/KF. The non-K SKUs will launch at CES 2024 in January next year. The 15th Gen Arrow Lake family will succeed the Raptor Lake Refresh.
