Intel has not yet officially announced a 13th generation core processor, but this does not prevent motherboard manufacturers from releasing their products. Motherboard makers, always eager to spur new sales towards the second half of the platform’s life cycle, ahead of their competitors, have already released BIOSes that support Intel’s future chips.
Leading this responsibility is ASRock, which today released a new BIOS wave for 600 series motherboards designed to support Intel’s next generation processors. Looking to the future, the wave of BIOS updates is the majority of the first generation LGA1700 motherboards, including the Z690, H670, B660, and H610 models.
Currently, Intel has not officially announced the Raptor Lake processor. It will be Intel’s next-generation desktop processor. This is an interesting move from ASRock. This means that users currently using ASRock 600 series motherboards can update their firmware now and don’t have to worry about installing the “next generation” later.
ASRock’s EZUpdate utility can install updates using a USB stick with core files installed, along with models with BIOS flashback. However, it is unclear if existing 600 Series boards will be updated at the retail / distribution level prior to the launch of Raptor Lake.
Features and specifications of the current Intel Z690 chipset
But the biggest question is why now. Intel hasn’t announced the 13th Generation Core Series yet, but it will be announced by the end of this year. Officially, Intel is hiding things about future Raptor Lake processors, and there’s still little going beyond unidentified sources and “leakage.”
It’s also worth noting that Intel is likely to announce a new motherboard chipset for 13th generation Core series processors. It’s named Z790, following its previous launch, and will also be installed in the LGA1700 socket. This is very similar to the release of the Z590 chipset, which also has support for 11th and 10th generation Core series processors.
Besides ASRock’s announcement, other motherboard vendors are talking harshly about the next 13th generation Core series processors and Intel. In particular, firmware released a few months ago has a normal toothy problem, not to mention firmware on the release date, so other vendors will follow ASRock when releasing firmware for unreleased processors. It is unclear whether to choose that.
sauce: ASRock
