Gigabyte BIOS lets some LGA 1700 boards accept Intel’s next chips

Gigabyte first said, in a press release in early October, that the new BIOS covers its entire lineup of B760 and H610 motherboards, in both their DDR4 and DDR5 versions. Owners will be able to flash the update and fit the new CPUs without swapping their boards.

The first announcement left out several other LGA 1700 families, including Z690, Z790 and B660. Gigabyte has since extended the support to Z790 boards as well, so owners of Intel’s enthusiast chipset are now covered too. There’s still no official word on Z690 or B660. If you have one of those boards, check Gigabyte’s support page for your exact model before planning an upgrade.

Gigabyte hasn’t named the processors, their specs or prices. A BIOS update on its own also doesn’t guarantee every chip will work on every board, so wait for the final compatibility list.

The early 2027 timing matches long-running reports of Raptor Lake Next, a third refresh of Intel’s Raptor Lake design. That architecture first appeared in the 13th-gen Core desktop chips and continued in the 14th-gen lineup. The LGA 1700 socket itself goes back even further, to Alder Lake in 2021.

A refresh means Intel reuses an existing chip design and adjusts things like core counts, clock speeds and cache, instead of building a new architecture. That keeps costs down and lets the chips run on boards people already own. The trade-off is that you shouldn’t expect the kind of performance jump a truly new generation brings.

Fresh evidence keeps piling up. An internal Intel audio driver labeled RPL-NEXT has surfaced as a locked test build, and shipping records show desktop processors moving through Intel’s assembly operations in Vietnam. Intel still hasn’t formally announced the range.

Earlier leaks suggest the chips may use Intel’s Core 200 branding across Core 3, Core 5 and Core 7 models.

The shipping records list four part numbers with clock speeds and cache sizes. Combined with earlier leaks, they suggest this lineup:

• A 16-core chip with eight Performance and eight Efficient cores, 24 threads, a 3.5GHz clock and 30MB of L3 cache. It looks like a successor to the Core i5-14600K, with two more Performance cores, and an earlier leak rated it at 125W.
• A 20-core, 65W chip with eight Performance and 12 Efficient cores, a 2.1GHz base clock and 33MB of cache, the same cache as today’s Core i7-14700K.
• Two 65W chips at 2.6GHz with 24MB of cache, aimed at the Core i5-14400 class. One leak describes a 10-core Core 5 with six Performance and four Efficient cores.

An entry-level four-core Core 3 with only Performance cores has also been rumored. There’s no sign of a successor to the Core i9-14900K, which suggests Intel is aiming at the middle of the market rather than the top.

The real draw is memory. DDR5 prices remain painfully high, which has pushed up the cost of building or upgrading a PC. If you have a DDR4 B760 or H610 board, these chips could give you more cores without buying new RAM or a new motherboard.

Intel seems to be leaning into that. In an August interview, Robert Hallock, a vice president who runs Intel’s enthusiast channel business, called LGA 1700 “still a good socket” and said lots of people still want DDR4. He added that Intel would keep offering it and expected pricing to settle back to normal over time.

If you already own a fast 13th- or 14th-gen chip, these will likely be sidegrades rather than upgrades. If you’re on an older or cheaper LGA 1700 processor, they could keep your PC useful for several more years. It’s a cheaper path than replacing the processor, board and memory all at once.

Don’t buy anything yet. Note your motherboard model, check whether it’s a B760, H610 or Z790 board, and keep an eye on Gigabyte’s BIOS downloads. When Intel announces the chips, compare their prices with a full platform upgrade before deciding.

If you own a board from another maker, watch for similar BIOS announcements. Gigabyte moved first, but the chips use the same socket everyone else supports.