Intel Officially Unveils 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs

[Random_Person1234]

Summary

Intel has officially unveiled the specs and prices of Intel's 11th Gen CPUs.

Core i9 specs and pricing (11900K reportedly offers about the same performance as 11700K).

Spoiler

Core i7 specs and pricing (AnandTech review of 11700K):

Spoiler

Core i5 specs and pricing:

Spoiler

Core i3/Pentium Comet Lake Refresh specs and pricing:

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Note that these prices are in Intel 1000-unit pricing which Intel does for OEMs. The final retail prices are likely to be $10-$25 more, as seen by Newegg:

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The retail availability date of these CPUs will be March 30.

Edit: It appears that these CPUs are/were on preorder on Newegg and B&H. 11900K and 11700 are sold out. It also appears Newegg has raised prices on some CPUs, I have edited the photo above. The 11900K is now listed for $613 but sold out, the 11700 is in the same situation but $369.

 

Quotes

Quote

In the myriad of news and early reviews, Intel is today officially launching its 11th Generation Core family of desktop processors, also known as Rocket Lake, built on Intel’s most advanced 14nm process node technology. This new product family will form the basis of Intel’s premium desktop portfolio for most of 2021, if not longer, and features processors with up to eight cores. Highlights include the new microarchitecture, Cypress Cove, and the Xe-LP graphics design, both of which are redesigns of Intel’s 10nm mobile products. These parts also include Intel’s first PCIe 4.0 offering on the desktop, new AVX-512 for desktop, better memory support, support for resizable BAR, new overclocking features, and enhanced multimedia acceleration.

Quote

For this generation, Intel has decided to only produce one size of silicon, and segment its offering, with the new family only being used for Core i5 and up.

 

My thoughts

Seriously, Intel? You want us to pay $570 for a 8c/16t CPU in 2021 when the 12c/24t 5900X is priced at just $550. Sure, the 11900K may have more availability than the 5900X, but (assuming the report about its performance is correct) the 11900K will be roughly equal to the 11700K performance. The 11700K is around the 5800X performance according to the AnandTech review. And since both the 5800X and 5600X are readily available now at MSRP (at least in the US), Intel can't even win this generation on availability alone. If you want to go with Intel, I would recommend just waiting for Alder Lake later this year. What I'm most interested in is how AMD responds to the i5-11400 and 11500.

 

Sources

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16523/intel-core-11th-gen-rocket-lake-core-i9-core-i7-core-i5

[Hyrogenes]

Im honestly gonna get a 11600k in a few months. seems like a great cpu but im a little worried about the new gen's oc potential. My 9600k is at 5.2ghz all cores. Would it even be that large of an upgrade to be worth a new mobo and chip?

[RussEfarmer]

Very curious to see how far an AVX-512 workload blows the 125W TDP out of the water.

[tishous]

11 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

(11900K reportedly offers about the same performance as 11700K).

$130 more for 100mhz higher clocks and $90 more than the 5800x... Intel do realize they aren't the top dog anymore, right? All they had to do was price it at least kind of close to the 5800x and have stock and they would beat AMD. Disappointing.

 

The i5-11400(f) looks promising though. Excited to see this become the new go-to CPU for budget/price to performance builds.

[JLO64]

Honestly, as a guy whose going to be stuck with an iGPU for a while I'm seriously eyeing the i5-11500 since that chip has the new UHD 750 graphics vs the i5-11400's UHD 730. Either way, it's gonna be a nice upgrade from my current cpu (i5 6500).

[curiousmind34]

2 minutes ago, Hyrogenes said:

Im honestly gonna get a 11600k in a few months. seems like a great cpu but im a little worried about the new gen's oc potential. My 9600k is at 5.2ghz all cores. Would it even be that large of an upgrade to be worth a new mobo and chip?

If your mobo can handle it, get a 9900k instead and keep the mobo, it will cost almost the same as 11600k+new mobo.

[Random_Person1234]

6 minutes ago, Hyrogenes said:

Im honestly gonna get a 11600k in a few months. seems like a great cpu but im a little worried about the new gen's oc potential. My 9600k is at 5.2ghz all cores. Would it even be that large of an upgrade to be worth a new mobo?

If you want to upgrade, I would just get a 5600X. Z590 boards are pretty expensive currently (cheapest full ATX on Newegg is $160) and 11th gen guzzles a lot of power (11700K peaks at around 225W on AVX2 according to AnandTech).

Edit: Or get a 9900K, which seem to be going on sale pretty frequently lately.

[curiousmind34]

3 minutes ago, JLO64 said:

Honestly, as a guy whose going to be stuck with an iGPU for a while I'm seriously eyeing the i5-11500 since that chip has the new UHD 750 graphics vs the i5-11400's UHD 730. Either way, it's gonna be a nice upgrade from my current cpu (i5 6500).

[Random_Person1234]

Just now, curiousmind34 said:

AnandTech lists it as a 730, so now I'm confused.

[curiousmind34]

Just now, Random_Person1234 said:

AnandTech lists it as a 730, so now I'm confused.

Yeah, I'm confused

[JLO64]

2 minutes ago, curiousmind34 said:

I just checked Gamers Nexus' video where he has the official Intel PowerPoint and there it's listed as UHD 730

 

https://youtu.be/-pZQz2sp5yY?t=363

 

[curiousmind34]

Just now, JLO64 said:

I just checked Gamers Nexus' video where he has the official Intel PowerPoint and there it's listed as UHD 730

 

https://youtu.be/-pZQz2sp5yY?t=363

 

So newegg must have an error then. 

[porina]

I'm tempted to get the 11700F. Drop it in place of my current 10600k which I got "free", and can resell to offset.

 

Note: I do stuff that does use AVX-512, so this is a no brainer for me. Other use cases may vary.

[JLO64]

8 minutes ago, porina said:

Note: I do stuff that does use AVX-512, so this is a no brainer for me. Other use cases may vary.

Just out of curiosity, what are you doing that uses AVX-512?  I'm aware of the insane performance uplift it has (and I agree that you should upgrade, especially since you can use the same mobo) but I'm not aware of many applications that can utilize it other than some simulation software.

[IkeaGnome]

36 minutes ago, RussEfarmer said:

Very curious to see how far an AVX-512 workload blows the 125W TDP out of the water.

Very badly. It's competitive in AVX2 though. I'm wondering if they'll be like the 5800x. Binned super hot from factory leaving a lot of room for undervolt and taming of temperatures. Prices don't look that good for 11th gen, but if they're tamable and competitive after taming, and in stock they'll still do well.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16535/intel-core-i7-11700k-review-blasting-off-with-rocket-lake

[JediFragger]

1 hour ago, Hyrogenes said:

My 9600k is at 5.2ghz all cores.

I'd honestly run that til it wouldn't run games anymore (or was bottlenecking you heavily). Fast AF for gaming, my 8600k was cracking B|

[TVwazhere]

So, someone explain this to me like I'm 5

 

We got the i9 and i7

And as afar as I can tell, this is the justification for the price:

Quote

seem to indicate that Intel will artificially limit the RAM controllers on CPUs other than the flagship i9-11900K in order to justify the higher price for enthusiasts looking to buy the best consumer Rocket Lake SKU

https://www.techspot.com/news/88930-intel-rocket-lake-core-i9-11900k-i7-11700k.html

But then we see this and

Am I missing something? is DDR4 overclocking just not possible on the i7's and is capped at 2933 or 3200? It appears they all have AVX-512 capabilities now so it's not that. Memory overclocking on intel isn't as important as it is for Ryzen (unless, that's also changing) but from the Author's provided source I just.... dont get it. 

[Craftyawesome]

11 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

So, someone explain this to me like I'm 5

 

We got the i9 and i7

And as afar as I cant ell, this is the justification for the price:

But then we see this and

Am I missing something? is DDR4 overclocking just not possible on the i7's and is capped at 2933 or 3200? It appears they all have AVX-512 capabilities now so it's not that. Memory overclocking on intel isn't as important as it is for Ryzen (unless, that's also changing) but from the Author's provided source I just.... dont get it. 

It seems to be gear 1 vs gear 2. Gear 2 is a bit slower, but you can set gear 1 manually.

 

[CommanderAlex]

14 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

So, someone explain this to me like I'm 5

 

We got the i9 and i7

And as afar as I cant ell, this is the justification for the price:

But then we see this and

~Snipped Photo~

Am I missing something? is DDR4 overclocking just not possible on the i7's and is capped at 2933 or 3200? It appears they all have AVX-512 capabilities now so it's not that. Memory overclocking on intel isn't as important as it is for Ryzen (unless, that's also changing) but from the Author's provided source I just.... dont get it. 

That's a good point that your brought up if indeed true for what the frequencies are with the i7 SKUs...I guess some people will think, "i9 is better than i7, I'll buy i9 then". Also, all for an infinitesimal frequency uplift of 100 MHz, except for single core boost. 

 

1 hour ago, Random_Person1234 said:

Seriously, Intel? You want us to pay $570 for a 8c/16t CPU in 2021 when the 12c/24t 5900X is priced at just $550.

Hell, an i7-9800X I purchased in Feb. 2019 was $600, Intel can do better than a $30 price cut. 

[RejZoR]

These chips would be super interesting if one could stick them in existing motherboards. Since that's not the case, I don't quite get why one would go out of their way to buy an inferior platform and inferior CPU for it. When you can just grab Ryzen 5000 which is the shit currently.

 

I think more users would go with Intel if they could do this. I don't know what Intel was thinking here. But they just can't help themselves with stupid pin counts, where AMD could miraculously have entire AM4 generation on same socket and still deliver massive gains without adding a single god damn socket pin.

[WhitetailAni]

Based on what I read:
11900K = 11700K

Except the 11900K can go 100 MHz faster and costs more

But the 11700K also has a higher base clock

Uhh...

Is there going to be a Core i11-111100K or something with 12 cores?

[TVwazhere]

13 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

It seems to be gear 1 vs gear 2. Gear 2 is a bit slower, but you can set gear 1 manually.

The fact they called it gear, and made the second one slower, really urks me as someone who drives a manual transmission car. 

Gear 2 should have been the faster one

 

*Edit* Also, if both gear 1 and gear 2can be used by the i7, and it has very little impact anyways, are you just paying $130 to have Gear 1 enabled by default on your motherboard because it detects a i9? So it's like a 3800x vs 3700x...

Edited March 16, 2021 by TVwazhere

[Random_Person1234]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

These chips would be super interesting if one could stick them in existing motherboards. Since that's not the case, I don't quite get why one would go out of their way to buy an inferior platform and inferior CPU for it. When you can just grab Ryzen 5000 which is the shit currently.

 

I think more users would go with Intel if they could do this. I don't know what Intel was thinking here. But they just can't help themselves with stupid pin counts, where AMD could miraculously have entire AM4 generation on same socket and still deliver massive gains without adding a single god damn socket pin.

You could stick these CPUs in 400 series motherboards with a BIOS update.

[Random_Person1234]

5 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Based on what I read:
11900K = 11700K

Except the 11900K can go 100 MHz faster and costs more

But the 11700K also has a higher base clock

Uhh...

Is there going to be a Core i11-111100K or something with 12 cores?

Intel can't go any higher than 8c/16t on this backported architecture.

[RejZoR]

@TVwazhere

I think those advertised RAM speeds are just officially supported clocks. Pretty much no one runs RAM at those speeds except on workstation where stability maters above everything. I mean, even Ryzen 5800X that I have officially supports only up to 3200MHz RAM. I'm running it at 3600MHz. Same with Intel really. You can be assured they can and do run at much higher clocks. Always have, always will.

 

However, I did hear about some shenanigans regarding this on lower tier CPU's, possibly those that are not unlocked. Not sure if it was for Rocket Lake. Like for example Core i3 and Core i5 only being able to run at officiall ysupported clocks, the rest could run at higher. This would sound very Intel-ish and plausible.