Intel to Showcase Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs and Z590 Platform at CES 2021
WCCFTech reported with reference to its informants that Intel will unveil its full family of 11th Gen Rocket Lake desktop processors alongside the Z590 platform at CES 2021 in January. based on Z590 on the same day, January 11, and the processors themselves will appear in stores later – starting in March.
Intel’s Rocket Lake platform will reportedly be comprised of 11th Gen Core I desktop processors and associated 500-series motherboards. There are rumours that there are two nondisclosure dates regarding the processors themselves. The first embargo will end on March 1 – apparently, on this day, various resources will start publishing tests. However, the arrival of processors at retail should not be expected before March 19 – at this time the date of expiration of the second embargo is set.
The Z590 motherboards will offer new design and functionality while maintaining compatibility with existing 10th Gen Intel Comet Lake desktop processors. Reportedly, Intel plans to keep both families of chips on sale, and the old ones will become cheaper: for example, the price of the Core i7-10700K can be reduced to $ 299, which will make it a direct competitor to AMD Ryzen 5 5600X. The 10-core solution of the previous generation Core i9-10900K will also remain the flagship in terms of the number of cores.
It is claimed that 400 series motherboards (for example, based on the Z490 chipsets) with an LGA 1200 pad will also be compatible with the new Rocket Lake-S processors. When promoting new Z590 products, motherboard manufacturers will place a special emphasis on PCI Express 4.0 support.
Key Features of Intel Rocket Lake Desktop Processors:
- increased performance thanks to the new Cypress Cove architecture;
- up to 8 cores and 16 threads (double-digit increase in the number of instructions executed per clock cycle, IPC, compared to Skylake);
- new integrated Xe graphics (50% faster performance than Gen9);
- support for DDR4 3200 MHz memory;
- Integrated PCIe 4.0 controller (will work on Z490 and Z590 motherboards);
- improved support for displays (HDMI 2.0b, DP1.4a, HBR3);
- additional 4 PCIe lanes – 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes in total;
- improved video block (12-bit AV1 video, HEVC, E2E compression);
- CPU Attached Storage – connects Intel Optane drives;
- new features and overclocking capabilities;
- hardware rendering of sound via USB;
- built-in support for CNVi and Wireless-AX;
- built-in support for USB 3.2 2×2 (20 Gb / s);
- Ethernet 2.5 Gbps;
- Intel Thunderbolt 4 port (USB 4 compatible).The architecture of the Rocket Lake processors is called Cypress Cove – it is reportedly a hybrid of Sunny Cove and Willow Cove designs, but will offer integrated Xe Gen 12 graphics. The flagship will be an 8-core Intel Core i9-11900K.
