GoKawiilWe learned a lot about Intel’s upcoming plans for desktop CPUs at Computex 2026. In classic Intel fashion, we’ve already heard a lot about the company’s next-gen CPUs, codenamed Nova Lake, even while the recent Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs are still warm from the oven. But on the ground in Taipei, we heard not only more about Nova Lake and the Z990 platform it’s arriving on, but also how Intel intends to handle the rollout and how it will fill the gaps in its lineup with “Raptor Lake Next,” which is supposedly slated to launch next year.
Trade shows are the best opportunity to learn details about unreleased products before they show up in a press deck, and simultaneously the worst venue to do so. With jet-lagged representatives and reporters, thousands of people whizzing past, and the threat of Jensen Huang showing up to sign components and shut down a floor on a moment’s notice, it’s easy for things to get lost in the shuffle. So, we’re going to work through everything we learned about Intel’s upcoming plans in stages, starting with details that are confirmed, and working toward more speculative murmurs.
Intel has a fairly aggressive consumer roadmap, which the company itself would tell you – and the company told us as much at Computex, as a matter of fact. Both Nish Neelalojanan, senior director of client product management, and the recently joined Alex Katouzian, executive VP and GM of client, played up Intel’s roadmap to Tom’s Hardware, and for good reason.
Latest Videos From Watch full video here:
Chronologically, Intel’s plans look something like this: We’ll see the first Nova Lake SKUs roll out at CES 2027. A few months later, we’ll see a refresh on the LGA 1700 socket with “Raptor Lake Next” CPUs, and come Computex next year, Intel will launch a 52-core flagship Nova Lake SKU. None of that is confirmed by Intel, and we have varying degrees of confidence in each step of the roadmap, so take it as speculation for now. We’ll dig more into the details we have and what’s simply rumored below.
What about AMD?
Before Intel, we should at least look at why we’re not talking about AMD’s next-gen desktop plans. Basically, we don’t have a ton of information on Zen 6 CPUs yet, and even less information about Olympic Ridge, the desktop consumer lineup of Zen 6 chips. Computex didn’t change that fact.
At Computex, AMD revealed the Ryzen 7 7700X3D, relaunched the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and brought the RX 9070 GRE to the rest of the world. Unlike previous years, AMD didn’t hold a keynote, where we might’ve seen a more concrete tease of Olympic Ridge; AMD has already teased Zen 6 broadly several times. Bigger Zen 6 news is likely at the company’s Advancing AI event next month.
Although AMD hasn’t said when Olympic Ridge will launch, we originally expected it in late 2026. Now, 2027 is very likely. AMD has shifted the Zen 6 conversation toward its EPYC Venice chips, and confirmed production ramp on Venice in May. Although AMD traditionally leads with a consumer launch at the turn of a new microarchitecture, it’s unlikely that Olympic Ridge will launch before Venice. Demand for CPUs is spiking in the data center for agentic AI workloads, after all, and AMD is adjusting accordingly.
Olympic Ridge probably isn’t top of mind right now, from both AMD itself and its partners. AMD laid the groundwork for a unified CPU architecture generations back, and Intel’s approach has been a bit more disparate across client and data center (although that’s been changing with releases like Xeon 6 and Xeon 6+). We don’t know when Olympic Ridge news will arrive, but it almost certainly follows far greater detail about Zen 6 in the context of Venice.
... continue reading