Intel’s Beast Lake monster gaming CPUs were canceled, could rumored Razer Lake chips fill that void?

Razer Lake to follow Nova Lake processors, apparently. (And then Copyright Lake?)

News By Darren Allan published 24 September 2024

Intel has a new Lake in the pipeline – a processor family name, in other words – and this fresh sighting is Razer Lake.

VideoCardz noticed that leaker HXL posted on X to air the new codename that Intel is apparently mulling for its future desktop chips.

Another well-known hardware leaker on X, Bionic Squash, then weighed in to observe that Razer Lake is indeed a correct codename for the family of CPUs that’ll follow Nova Lake.

So, if this is correct, right now we have Arrow Lake desktop CPUs (ARL-S, the ‘S’ referring to desktop) arriving imminently, and as we heard recently, HXL confirms that ARL-S R, meaning the rumored Refresh, has been canceled.

Arrow Lake uses a new CPU socket and we don’t know what else will support that socket, but Nova Lake, due in 2026, will switch to a new socket. After Nova Lake desktop (NVL-S), according to HXL we’ll get Razer Lake (RZL-S) in that same socket.

Take all of this with some caution, of course, as with all the chatter that filters down from the rumor mill. With Nova Lake supposedly coming in 2026, we can theorize Razer Lake could arrive in 2027 or 2028.

Analysis: Razing the online opposition?

This is quite interesting viewed from the perspective of previous Intel CPU rumors, as what we heard before was that Nova Lake was to be followed by Beast Lake. Indeed, Nova Lake was framed as version 1.0 of Intel’s Royal Core project – adopting Rentable Units (giant performance cores that can be split into units, replacing hyper-threading) – and Beast Lake was supposed Royal Core 1.1.

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