It seems like everyone and their mother has their hands on Intel’s desktop processor roadmaps, as two more leaks have revealed the company’s release schedule for the coming year.
First up, WccfTech claims to have exclusively acquired Intel’s latest desktop roadmap that covers 2018 through the Q3 2019 timeline – and there’s quite a lot to break down here.
While we reported recently that Intel 9th generation processors wouldn’t release until next year, WccfTech says the roadmap leaked prior to this was vastly outdated, and we should expect Coffee Lake-S Refresh processors within the next few months.
These new Coffee Lake-S Refresh CPUs will supposedly include 8-, 6-, 4- and 2-core chips – potentially squashing the rumor that dual-core processors were going away – with a maximum TDP of 95W. The leaked roadmap also confirms that these new chips will be compatible with both Intel’s upcoming Z390 chipset as well as its older 300-series chipsets.
High core counts are in our future
In another twist, it seems like we’ll soon get more high-end desktop CPUs than we bargained for. The Basin Falls X-series will purportedly roll out before Coffee Lake-S Refresh, bringing us 18-, 16-, 14-, 12, 10-, 8- and even 6-core processors.
Before the end of the year, we’ll apparently also see Basin Falls Refresh processors, but there aren’t really any more details on what this series will entail other than it will socket into X299 motherboards. Intel will supposedly have yet another series of Glacier Falls chips release in the third quarter of 2019, though, there’s even less information on this rumored line of silicon.
Intel previously revealed 28-core processor is a curious omission from all of the series above, but apparently it has been sectioned off as into a separate Skylake-X A-series classification of its own.
Despite all the different series names, almost all the CPUs rumored above fall under the Skylake-X architecture with the exception of Glacier Falls that is said to introduce Cascade Lake-X.
On the other hand
As if WccfTech’s roadmap didn’t reveal enough information, HKEPC also got its hands on another release schedule that may break down Intel’s plans going into next June.
Intel 9th generation processors could come as soon as this October – though this doesn’t quite line up with WccfTech's ‘latest’ roadmap. What does match between these two roadmaps is that in the same month Intel will supposedly introduce Intel Core X-series chips, including a 18-core 165W, under the Basin Falls Refresh banner.
Is it all real?
It’s tough to judge the validity of either of these leaked roadmaps. While they match the style and format of Intel slideshows we’ve seen before, we’ll always take leaked documents with a grain (or two) of salt, as they can be easily doctored or even fabricated completely.
That said, we’re holding out just a little bit of hope they’re real as they finally shed light on Intel’s largely absent plans in the face of AMD Ryzen 2nd Generation and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2nd Generation processors.
- We really could use some new graphics cards to go with these processors
