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19 percent gen-on-gen IPC vs 10th gen desktop CPUs sounds great—but the verdict is out on the importance of the “up to” hedge, or the impact of reduced core count in the i9 CPUs.
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Intel shows some fairly modest wins over Ryzen 9 5900X in some of its “RUG” workflow tests—but they lean heavily on AVX-512 optimizations, which many workloads won’t share.
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The new Intel Z590 boards bring in support for PCI Express 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, and improved DMI. Z590 boards also support 10th gen Core processors.
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This week, Intel announced its 11th generation S-series desktop CPUs, codenamed Rocket Lake-S. These are gaming-oriented processors optimized for high clock rates and performance, coming in 19 SKUs ranging from i5-11400T through 19-11900K.
The new chips, based on Intel’s Cypress Cove architecture, claim up to a 19 percent increase in Instructions per Clock cycle—a very familiar figure, since it’s the same number AMD claimed for gen-on-gen IPC uplift between its Zen 2 and Zen 3 architectures. We’ll do some hands-on benchmarking in the near future to determine how important the “up to” hedge on that claim matters.
In the meantime, we’re cautiously optimistic about the “up to 19 percent IPC” and “up to 50 percent iGPU” performance Intel is claiming. As usual, the really big numbers Intel shows for the new generation of processors don’t have much to do with general-purpose CPU performance—they’re tied pretty directly to finding AVX-512 optimized workloads. But the 19 percent isn’t tied to AVX-512, and it has not come at the price of reduced clock speeds or higher rated TDP, either.
Intel is also releasing a new Z590 motherboard chipset. Boards built on Z590 will offer 20 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 20Gbps ports, Thunderbolt 4, and improved Direct Memory Interface. The new boards will also support 10th gen processors—but those older CPUs don’t have PCIe 4.0 support, so don’t expect a new Z590 board to unlock it.
Rocket Lake-S CPUs are incompatible with H410 or B460 boards, and compatibility with Z490 is uncertain at best. If you want a Rocket Lake-S CPU, we strongly recommend a new Z590 board to go with it.
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This table shows all ten Core i9 and Core i7 Rocket Lake-S CPUs. Note that Core i9 CPUs are down from ten cores to eight in this generation.
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The major change in Core i5 CPUs from 10th gen to 11th is onboard graphics, which get a substantial bump to UHD 630 to UHD 730 or UHD 730.
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Some 10th gen Core i3 and Pentium Gold CPU models also get a refresh this month—but they’re still 10th gen, not 11th.
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In another familiar story for Intel, what the new generation does give up is core count—although only at the Core i9 level. The i9-10900K was a 10 core, 125W TDP part with maximum single-core boost of 5.3GHz; the i9-11900K matches the TDP and frequency but drops to eight cores. Core i7 and Core i5 CPUs remain 8c/16t and 6c/12t, respectively.
Ars has product samples of the i9-11900K and i5-11600K processors on hand, along with a new Z590 chipset based motherboard. We’ll naturally be offering hands-on benchmark results later this month.
Listing image by Intel
