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19 percent gen-on-gen IPC versus 10th Gen desktop CPUs sounds great, but the verdict is out on the importance of the “to” hedge, or the impact of a reduced number of cores in the i9 CPUs.
Intel
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Intel shows some pretty modest wins over Ryzen 9 5900X in some of its “RUG” workflow tests, but they rely heavily on AVX-512 optimizations, which many workloads won’t share.
Intel
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The new Intel Z590 cards offer support for PCI Express 4.0, Thunderbolt 4 and enhanced DMI. Z590 cards also support 10th Gen Core processors.
Intel
This week, Intel announced its 11th-generation S-series desktop CPUs, codenamed Rocket Lake-S. These are gaming-oriented processors optimized for high clock speeds and performance, available in 19 SKUs ranging from i5-11400T to 19-11900K.
The new chips, based on Intel’s Cypress Cove architecture, claim a 19 percent increase in instructions per clock cycle — a very well-known figure, given that it’s the same number AMD claimed for gene-on-gen IPC uplift between the Zen 2 and Zen 3 architectures. We’ll be doing some practical benchmarking in the near future to determine how important the ‘to’ hedging of that claim matters.
Meanwhile, we are cautiously optimistic about the “up to 19 percent IPC” and “up to 50 percent iGPU” performance Intel claims. As usual, the really big numbers Intel shows for the new generation of processors don’t have much to do with overall CPU performance – they’re pretty directly tied to finding AVX-512 optimized workloads. But the 19 percent isn’t tied to AVX-512, nor has it come at the expense of lower clock speeds or higher-rated TDP.
Intel is also releasing a new Z590 motherboard chipset. Boards built on Z590 offer 20 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 20Gbps ports, Thunderbolt 4, and enhanced 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 not compatible with H410 or B460 cards and compatibility with Z490 is uncertain at best. If you want a Rocket Lake-S CPU, we highly recommend a new Z590 board.
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This table shows all ten Core i9 and Core i7 Rocket Lake-S CPUs. Note that Core i9 CPUs in this generation have dropped from ten to eight cores.
Intel
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The main change in Core i5 CPUs from the 10th generation to the 11th generation is the onboard graphics card, which gets a significant increase from UHD 630 to UHD 730 or UHD 730.
Intel
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Some 10th Gen Core i3 and Pentium Gold CPU models are also getting a refresh this month, but they’re still 10th Gen, not 11th.
Intel
In another familiar story for Intel, what the new generation does give up is the number of cores, though only at the Core i9 level. The i9-10900K was a 10-core, 125W TDP part with a 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 will of course offer practical benchmark results later this month.
List image by Intel