Intel Rocket Lake-S SKUs and specifications leak: Core i9-11900K to offer 8C/16T, 5.3 GHz single-core and 4.8 GHz all-core boosts with 16 MB L3 cache

Back in July, Intel announced that the next generation mainstream desktop CPU platform codenamed Rocket Lake will launch in Q1 2021. A few months later, Intel briefly touched upon a few high-level specifications of Rocket Lake-S, wherein it was confirmed that the flagship SKUs will top out at eight cores and 16 threads. Now, we are getting to know some SKU information including base and boost clocks.

The info comes via @harukaze5719 on Twitter, who has shared a chart detailing all the SKUs. In this, we see the Core i9-11900K offering eight cores and 16 threads with a 3.5 GHz base clock (from @davidbepo), 5.3 GHz single-core Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB), 4.8 GHz all-core boost, and a 16 MB cache. The Rocket Lake flagship not only seems to have lower core counts but also lower cache at 16 MB compared to its Comet Lake counterpart, the Core i9-10900K, which sports 10 cores/20 threads and a 20 MB L3 cache.

Intel's earlier announcement did indicate that Rocket Lake-S will have PL1 of 125 W and a PL2 of 250 W, and this is being confirmed with these leaks as well. We've seen from a recent MSI leak that Rocket Lake-S would support the AVX512 instruction set. This can potentially make the chip run hotter than its Comet Lake predecessor. Overall, the focus this time around seems to be on additional single-core performance and boosted clocks than multi-core gains.

The best benefits seem to be realized with the lower-end SKUs particularly the Core i5-11400 and Core i5-11600K, which seem to have 100 MHz single-core and 200 MHz all-core uplifts compared to their Comet Lake counterparts.

One peculiar spec that is noticeable in this leak is that the Core i7-11700K seems to be clocked lower than the Core i7-10700K. It is not quite clear if that is indeed the case or if there's some incorrect info in the leak, so it still helps to take all this information with a pinch of salt. Moreover, @davidbepo alluded to an error in one of the frequencies in the Rocket Lake specs by about 100 MHz, though he hasn't specified where the error could be.

Rocket Lake-S will be based on the Cypress Cove architecture that combines Ice Lake cores with a Tiger Lake iGPU on a 14 nm process. While these leaked specs don't seem to be radically different from what Comet Lake offered, Intel does claim double-digit percentage IPC improvements. We will have to wait till launch day to know exactly how the new architecture helps achieve such gains.

The pricing, however, is likely to be similar to that of Comet Lake.

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