A new leak, in the form of a photo, landed on X recently and it seems to confirm that Intel will drop its longstanding ‘Core i’ series branding for the rumored ‘Core Ultra’. Alongside Intel’s new branding, the leak also sheds light on the yet-to-be-confirmed flagship Z890 chipset.
The leak comes from HXL on X, and the photograph shows a Gigabyte Aorus motherboard labeled Z890 Aorus Pro ICE, indicating the new chipset and CPU series. This leaker is well known for bringing CPU rumors to the table, including a slew of AMD benchmarks ahead of its imminent launch.
Intel set to drop ‘i’ series branding, suggests leak
So, with these new rumors, we can expect new Core Ultra Arrow Lake chips to land on the Z890 chipset. Intel did confirm last month that the Core Ultra naming scheme is here for good, replacing the Core i series moniker. The Core Ultra branding was first introduced with Meteor Lake processors aimed at lightweight devices. The current 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs still use the Core i branding but are expected to transition to Core Ultra in future generations.
Most people had already guessed the next-gen chipset would use the Z890 moniker, so there are no real surprises there. A previously leaked Intel Arrow Lake chipset diagram suggested that the Z890 chipset offers performance enhancements over the previous Z790 chipset, including integrated Thunderbolt 4 support and additional PCIe 5 lanes for faster storage solutions. Additionally, there have been Arrow Lake Core Ultra 200 series leaks suggesting that the new CPUs are expected to use a new triple-digit numbering system, with the top model being the Core Ultra 9 285K.
To summarise, these changes mark a big shift in Intel’s branding and technology. The recent leak on X seems to further confirm Intel’s new Core Ultra branding, specifically with Core Ultra Arrow Lake chips arriving on the Z890 chipset.
