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Intel 13th Gen will continue using the LGA 1700 CPU socket, which is the same socket that Alder Lake used. The new Raptor Lake chips will also support current Z690 and new Z790 motherboards, so changing your mobo is not a necessity if you’re planning to upgrade your CPU.
This doesn’t mean that 13th Gen processors will fall behind in performance. Intel’s new chips have made notable gains in clock speed, core count, and cache size. The Raptor Lake platform has been built for modern-day high-end tasks.
Intel’s decision to keep LGA 1700 socket compatibility is not outrageous. This socket shows a superior design to any other socket available on the market. Thanks to the 1700 protruding pins making contact with the pads of the processor, this type of socket is perfectly suited for overclocking, gaming, and high-requirement tasks.
Having a new generation processor with backward compatibilities, such as the Raptor Lake, facilitates access to a wider array of technologies both old and new. You won’t need to upgrade all your components in order to take advantage of Intel’s new chips, or any other additional tech, like DDR5. Thus the immense entry costs end up falling by the wayside, a premise that Intel is vying to achieve. The question is for how long.
How long will LGA 1700 be supported?
Despite compatibility, current technology will eventually become obsolete. Intel 13th Gen chips may be the last to support LGA 1700, and we might see the socket’s fall from grace in the last quarter of 2023 with the entry of Meteor Lake, Intel’s 14th Gen CPUs.
Rumors speculate that 14th Gen chips will introduce an LGA socket with 2551 pins instead of the current 1700. This is almost a 30% increase over the current LGA socket. The reason for this is suspected to be the still unannounced PCIe 6 and the latest storage technologies.
Of course, there are no official announcements yet from Intel, and we still need to wait a bit for more information on that. For now, however, all eyes are glued on Intel’s 13th Gen chip, with power increases of main importance, in the wait for Team Blue to announce Meteor Lake’s eventual release.
