Intel Core Ultra 9 185 Desktop Sample Surfaces: Meteor Lake Desktop Lives
Though officially Intel moved over to mobile, desktop aspiration wasn't forgotten. Official early engineering copies of these killed chips have surfaced. Amazingly, they function.
The Core Ultra 9 185 Desktop Sample (Q46W)
One sample, identified as "Q46W," likely an early ES2 stage of the Core Ultra 9 185, has been imaged and benchmarked. This chip replicates the core layout of its mobile variant, the Core Ultra 9 185H. It features:
- 6 Performance-cores (P-cores)
- 8 Efficient-cores (E-cores)
This totals 14 cores. Interestingly, unlike most high-end Intel chips, the P-cores in this sample do not support Hyper-Threading. This is uncommon and similar to future Core Ultra 200S CPUs for the new LGA 1851 socket.
Compatibility Quirks
This Meteor Lake desktop sample uses the LGA 1851 socket, an alternate to LGA 1700. While socket compatible, it will not boot on upcoming 800-series motherboards. Reports indicate specific, possibly engineering-grade, motherboards are required to boot. This is presumably due to a lack of formal BIOS support from Intel.
Performance Glimpse (Without Hyper-Threading)
Despite being unreleased, the chip functions. Screenshots verify its operation. Here's a look at specs and benchmark scores:
- Base Clock: 2.8 GHz
- Boost Clock: Up to 4.5 GHz (Below the 5.1 GHz mobile variant)
- TDP (PL1): 65W
- Max Turbo Power (PL2): 135W
- CPU-Z Single-Core: Around 732 points (Similar to mobile 185H)
- CPU-Z Multi-Core: Around 5750 points (Much lower than mobile 185H's ~8160 points)
The lower multi-core score is expected. The mobile 185H benefits from Hyper-Threading on P-cores and has two more low-power E-cores. This gives it a multi-threaded advantage.
A Look Back at Meteor Lake
The appearance of these chips is notable. Intel reportedly shelved desktop Meteor Lake plans in early 2023. Meteor Lake was significant as Intel's first multi-tile consumer design, combining Compute, Graphics, SoC, and I/O tiles. It also enabled substantial integrated graphics performance gains via Xe-LPG architecture.
These desktop samples will not reach retail. However, they offer an intriguing glimpse of what might have been. They serve as evidence Intel produced working silicon for LGA 1851 before redirection.
Reported news from IT Home.
