Intel’s 11th generation chips are here with faster speeds, but fewer cores

Intel’s next-generation desktop chips are finally here: after a brief preview at CES, the company is fully unveiling its 11th Generation Core desktop chips (better known by its codename, Rocket Lake-S).

Leading the pack is Intel’s new main chip, the Core i9-11900K, with eight cores, 16 threads, increased clock speeds of up to 5.3 GHz, support for 3,200 MHz DDR4 RAM, a total of 20 PCIe 4.0 tracks and backward compatibility with Intel 400 Series Chipsets.

Intel fans with eagle eyes may notice that the new chip is, on paper, actually a downgrade from last year’s top model, the Core i9-10900K, which offered 10 cores and 20 threads (and a similarly increased clock speed) 5.3 GHz).

That’s because Intel is launching a new desktop core architecture for the first time in more than half a decade with its 11th generation Rocket Lake-S chips, called Cypress Cove. Cypress Cove finally replaces the Skylake microarchitecture, which the company has been using since its 6th generation chips in 2015.

But the design of Cypress Cove is not really a whole new microarchitecture – in fact, it is Intel’s Willow Cove chip designs and technologies that the company has been using on its 11nm Tiger Lake 11nm chips, which Intel is stepping back from. for your 14 nm production process.

Since these designs were made for 10 nm chips, however, Intel is limited in the number of cores it can fit when increasing them to a size of 14 nm; therefore, the reduction in the basic count year after year. But Intel still says the new chips will offer better performance (at least in some cases) than 10th Generation, with the core architecture allowing up to 19 percent IPC (instructions per cycle) than the previous generation.

Intel’s argument here is effectively that pure core counting alone is not enough – frequency speed and performance are also important and, thanks to the maturity of the 14 nm production process, Intel is much good at getting every last drop of performance out of these chips.

And Intel’s benchmarks (obviously) support this argument: face to face with last year’s Core i9-10900K, the i9-11900K offered between 8 to 14 percent better performance in games like Gears 5, Grade 2019, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Total War: Three Kingdoms. Intel also claims that its superior chip surpasses AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X processor for these titles, albeit by slightly lower margins (between 3 and 11 percent better, according to Intel’s benchmarks).

That said, Intel’s tests were all running at 1080p, so we will have to be on the lookout for more comprehensive benchmarking in the future across a wider range of titles – and particularly in 4K resolution.

The new architecture also brings other improvements, with integrated graphics up to 50% better compared to Gen9, thanks to the company’s new Xe graphics, with a third more EUs than its Gen9 graphics.

Given that these are desktop chips that will almost certainly be combined with a discrete, state-of-the-art video card, this is not the most innovative improvement, however. And while Intel offers several F-series models of the new chips without GPUs, the overall design is still the same on these models. This means that Intel will not offer any niche model that does not require integrated GPUs to try to fit in more cores, at least for now.

The new chips also have other improvements. The 11th generation chips add a resizable BAR, for an increased frame rate on compatible Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. There is integrated support for USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 at 20 Gbps, as well as for Intel’s own Thunderbolt 4, along with DDR4-3200 RAM. And Intel added four additional PCIe Gen 4 lanes, for a total of 20.

As is traditional for the launch of a major new chip, Intel is also introducing its 500 series motherboards along with the new processors, but Rocket Lake-S CPUs will also be compatible with previous versions of the series motherboards. 400.

In addition, there are some new overclocking options with the new chips for users looking to extract even more power. Specifically, Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility software is being updated with a new UI and some updated features along with the 11th generation chips.

The new 11th generation Intel desktop processors are available today.