Intel will release Meteor Lake processors in mid-December. And although it is not yet clear when exactly the first laptops will go on sale, judging by recent data, these very first laptops will be very expensive.

At the last event, Intel showed laptops from both its own brand and Acer models. Apparently, Acer will be one of the first to equip its mobile PCs with new CPUs. And the prices of these mobile PCs are expected to exceed $1,500.

More specifically, prices in the Taiwan market are expected to exceed NT$50,000, which is about $1,560 at current exchange rates. True, this is already taking into account taxes.

The UDN resource also confirms that most laptops with Core Ultra processors will be released in 2024.

Thus, apparently, the Core Ultra models will occupy the upper price segment, while in the middle and lower there will be models from the Raptor Lake Refresh line.

Intel has announced that Meteor Lake processors will be released at the end of December. At the same time, Intel nominally announced these CPUs. We have not yet been told about the parameters and models, but we have been given a more complete overview of the architectures, features and technologies.

Intel says the release of Meteor Lake marks the start of a new era for the company as it moves away from the Intel 7 node and begins deploying its 3D EUV lithography Foveros packaging for the client mobile platform.

Meteor Lake is an extremely important product for Intel, and at the same time it is new in literally everything. This is the new Intel 4 technical process, and the chiplet layout used by the company for the first time in this segment, and a disaggregated configuration, which means the use of chiplets created using different technical processes. Let us remember that the Intel 4 process technology will be used for the processor chiplet, and the GPU is generally produced by TSMC.

Meteor Lake, like the previous several generations of Intel CPUs, contains in the configuration large P-cores, in this case based on the Redwood Cove architecture, and small E-cores on the Crestmont architecture. An unusual feature is the two small cores integrated into the SoC chiplet, which Intel calls a Low Power Island. These new LP E-cores are designed with the idea that light workloads and processes can be offloaded from a more power-hungry compute cluster and moved entirely to a more power-efficient cluster in the SoC. That is, apparently, these two cores will be used only separately for non-resource-intensive tasks, although this remains to be verified. Other important additions include Intel’s first Neural Processing Unit (NPU).

Another interesting feature is that each chiplet, or tile, as Intel itself calls it, has its own power controller, which should make the CPU more energy efficient. There are four tiles in total: CPU, GPU, SoC and I/O tile. However, Intel only produces the CPU tile and the I/O tile. The GPU is produced at TSMC facilities using the N5 process technology, and the SoC tile is produced using the N6 process technology.

The company also says the new CPUs have better instructions executed per clock than the current lineup, but there are no details. Also, Intel has not yet said anything about cache memory sizes.

Let’s remember that Intel says that Meteor Lake processors will be released on December 14. But these are mobile CPUs, so it’s not very clear in what form they will hit the market that day. It is quite possible that it will be possible to buy a laptop with such a processor only at the beginning of 2024.

The unique mobile processor Ryzen 9 7945HX3D will appear in more mobile PCs in the near future.

Insider Golden Pig Upgrade Pack says that this APU will cease to be exclusive to the only Asus model at the end of this year or early next year. Yes, the wait is still quite long, but still the processor is very unusual. At least in the mobile segment, even AMD itself no longer offers anything similar, and Intel has nothing similar in the desktop segment.

Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, let us remind you, is a copy of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, only for the mobile segment. The processor stands out with an additional 64 MB of L3 cache, which gives an impressive performance boost in games. In addition, which is very important in the mobile segment, compared to the regular Ryzen 9 7945HX, the X3D version consumes significantly less energy.

By the way, Minisforum showed a mini-PC based on the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, but it has not yet entered the market.

Insider Golden Pig Upgrade Pack once shared performance leaks of Intel CPUs of different generations and published Intel slides describing the Meteor Lake CPU.