Intel Razer Lake CPUs allegedly arrive after Nova Lake — Arrow Lake Refresh reportedly canceled

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Arrow Lake could be the only CPU lineup operating on the LGA1851 socket.

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Arrow Lake might not be out yet, but that hasn't stopped the rumor machine from spinning up new claims on architectures after Arrow Lake. Reputable leaker HXL on X reports that Arrow Lake could be the only architecture to run on the LGA1851 socket with the purported cancellation of Arrow Lake Refresh. Meanwhile, Razer Lake is purportedly arriving after Nova Lake.

According to rumors, Intel was reportedly going to opt for two variants of Arrow Lake for its LGA1851 platform: the vanilla Arrow Lake CPUs arriving soon and a rumored Arrow Lake Refresh, which would succeed the former. This isn't surprising; Intel regularly refreshes CPU architectures to fill the gaps between complete architectural re-designs.

If HXL's information is accurate, LGA1851 could be one of the shortest-lived platforms in Intel's history. With the alleged Arrow Lake refresh being canceled, there is no purported replacement, which means future Arrow Lake owners may have to wait until Nova Lake for a worthy replacement.

Speaking of Nova Lake, HXL claims that Razer Lake will be its successor, representing one of the furthest architecture codenames in Intel's alleged roadmap. Nova Lake is the purported replacement for Lunar Lake, which seemingly features Royal Core CPU cores that will simultaneously focus on achieving high performance and efficiency. Besides the mention, we don't have any more information on Razer Lake. Whether Razer Lake will wield Royal Core or the subsequent Cobra Core is uncertain.

The current rumor goes as follows: if things don't change, Arrow Lake CPUs will be the only chips to debut on the LGA1851 socket, with Arrow Lake Refresh being purportedly canceled. Nova Lake and Razer Lake are Intel's next-generation processors that'll likely command a new socket.

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    Arrow Lake CPUs will be the only chips to debut on the LGA1851 socket, with Arrow Lake Refresh being purportedly canceled.
    This is the weirdest and most concerning part of this whole series of leaks. It's believable that Intel would do this.

    Arrow Lake Refresh was rumored to bump the core count up to 8+32. It may have been planned as a refresh in the sense that Raptor Lake was a refresh of Alder Lake.

    Instead, maybe they will bump clocks up by 100 MHz and that will be the "new" generation that you can buy for LGA1851. Although with chiplets, it's possible for Intel to do something more complicated, like swap in a new iGPU or NPU.
    Reply
  • TheSecondPower
    This could be good news if it means Arrow Lake's replacement is ahead of schedule. Hard to tell because Intel doesn't seem to announce roadmaps anymore, and the last roadmap announced had Arrow Lake on 20A and Lunar Lake as its 18A successor. Today Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake are the same CPU cores and in different target markets, and Lunar Lake comes out tomorrow while Arrow Lake is still a month out. Oh and Intel has said almost nothing official about Arrow Lake except that it'll be mostly made by some other foundry (so TSMC). (And Lunar Lake is officially on TSMC N3B.)

    Intel please return to official roadmaps that actually represent what you intend to launch and stop using rumors.
    Reply
  • DS426
    TheSecondPower said:
    This could be good news if it means Arrow Lake's replacement is ahead of schedule. Hard to tell because Intel doesn't seem to announce roadmaps anymore, and the last roadmap announced had Arrow Lake on 20A and Lunar Lake as its 18A successor. Today Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake are the same CPU cores and in different target markets, and Lunar Lake comes out tomorrow while Arrow Lake is still a month out. Oh and Intel has said almost nothing official about Arrow Lake except that it'll be mostly made by some other foundry (so TSMC). (And Lunar Lake is officially on TSMC N3B.)

    Intel please return to official roadmaps that actually represent what you intend to launch and stop using rumors.
    Intel won't have enough people left to spend time on roadmap illustrations and communications, lol.

    On a more serious note...
    Razor Lake will have Shaving Cream Cores.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Unless they're changing memory channels or CPU provided PCIe lanes I don't really see any technical reason they couldn't extend the socket life. In fact it's possible when MTL-S was canceled they made plans to do just that. LGA1156-LGA1200 were the same socket, whether pin compatible or not, and that spanned PCIe 1-4 and DDR3/4.
    Reply
  • truerock
    I'm thinking this means Thunderbolt 5 will be delayed?
    Reply
  • rtoaht
    How is something “cancelled” when it was never announced? We are publishing rumors and then spreading the next set of rumors that cancels out the previous rumor. Weird!
    Reply
  • stuff and nonesense
    rtoaht said:
    How is something “cancelled” when it was never announced? We are publishing rumors and then spreading the next set of rumors that cancels out the previous rumor. Weird!
    Rumours, hype and misinformation…. Got to get those clicks.
    Reply
  • JRStern
    These all the lakes they got?
    Reply
  • ThomasKinsley
    I'm hoping I can hold out from upgrading for at least 2-3 years. That's when exciting stuff should be coming down the pipeline.
    Reply
  • Mama Changa
    LOL, Nova is not the purported replacement of Lunar Lake. What nonsense. Nova Lake is Arrow Lake's replacement, Panther Lake is Lunar Lake's replacement, but offering higher core options, but optimised for 17-30W range.

    I was almost certainly going to buy Arrow Lake, but not if 1851 is only 1 generation.
    Reply