Meteor Lake generation Core Ultra 7 will have 5.0 GHz turbo, Core Ultra 9 will probably be even higher
Not long ago, we wrote here about the clock speeds expected from Intel’s first 4nm processors, the mobile Meteor Lake. There were widespread concerns that this new technology would again suffer from clock speed regression, as seen with Intel’s early 10nm process. Recently, however, things are starting to look positive, and so Meteor Lake could end up doing very well, with these processors running above the 5.0 GHz threshold.
In our last update on how Meteor Lake is shaping up, we reported that according to Chinese leakers, engineering samples of Meteor Lake processor have reached a boost clock speed of 4.8 GHz. That wasn’t the last word though. Now, Golden Pig Upgrade reported on Bilibili that Intel has managed to bump the clock to 5.0 GHz for the newer samples, which already have better specs. But the uplift could still be even more than 200 MHz versus last time.
According to the Golden Pig Upgrade, the boost frequency is currently set at 5.0 GHz for the CPU sample which represents only the second-tier SKU, which should end up released as Core Ultra 7 (previously it would have been Core i7). But according to this leaker, Intel will also release a Core Ultra 9 model, which should have even higher clock speeds, so we are likely to see at least 5.1 GHz in production. Of course, it’s not impossible that Intel was too eager with the Ultra 7 and will end up forced to give the Ultra 9 the same boost clock – but we consider that the less likely scenario.
If we go by the 28W P-series into which Meteor Lake is said to be released, then in the latest 13th generation of Core processors, the fastest CPU in it is the Core i7-1370P, which has a boost of 5.2GHz.
Speaking about the 45W laptop processor line-up, in there Intel is now at 5.2GHz with the Core i7-13800H and at 5.4GHz clock speed with the top model Core i9-13900HK / Core i9-13905H. But Meteor Lake could very well be limited to the P series only. Though that’s not much of excuse if we’re talking pure clock speed potential of the process node, indeed it’s entirely possible that Meteor Lake-H isn’t supposed to come to the desktop, where the 7nm process has gotten to 5.8–6.0 GHz, precisely because of this, that there is still a clock gap between 4nm a 7nm node.
If Meteor Lake can handle the 5.0–5.2 GHz peak clock speed range (for single-threaded boosts) in the top models, then it should hopefully have no problems with single-threaded performance. Intel will only need to increase the IPC of the core by single digit percentages for the CPU to show a performance improvement over the previous generation. If the IPC increase is more significant, it will turn into an interesting leap. In the end, the main problem of Meteor Lake may turn out to be not the clocks but Intel’s decision to not add more cores to these CPUs, which mostly confines them to the low-power mobile segments.
Of course, it’s possible that later in 2024, AMD’s competing Zen 5 (and Apple’s M3 as well) will achieve more significant cross-generational improvements thanks to advances in both IPC and clock speeds, and thus Intel’s win won’t last long. How good those competing processors will be, however, is not yet clear. Either way, it’s starting to look like Intel’s 4nm production could be a success this time around and won’t kill the prospects a good CPU microarchitecture like it was the case with the first generations of Intel’s 10nm process.
Sources: Bilibili, VideoCards
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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