Intel Rocket Lake-S 11th Gen Desktop CPUs Reportedly Cleared For March 2021 Liftoff

A new report from Videocardz is now alleging that the first Rocket Lake-S processors will arrive in March 2021, which is a little earlier in the year than when Comet Lake-S launched during 2020. Rocket Lake-S processors will allegedly use the LGA-1200 socket that was first introduced with Comet Lake-S and will be pin-compatible with 400-Series motherboards like the Z490. In addition, some Z490 motherboards that were already PCIe 4.0-ready will be able to fully unlock this functionality with a Rocket Lake-S processor onboard.

It may seem hard to believe, but Rocket Lake-S is still using Intel’s aging (but still potent) 14nm process node. But if there's any consolation, it will reportedly be Intel's last desktop processor family to use 14nm, as it will eventually be replaced by 12^th generation Alder Lake-S processors. Despite sticking with the 14nm, Rocket Lake-S will bring some new features to the table including the aforementioned PCIe 4.0 support along with Thunderbolt 4.0, Cypress Cove cores (back ported from Willow Cove cores found in Tiger Lake), higher-speed DDR4 memory, and integrated Gen12 Iris Xe graphics.

When we last left Rocket Lake-S, benchmarks from an 8-core, 16-thread variant leaked onto the internet, showing a base clock of 3.2GHz with a turbo clock of 5GHz. The benchmarks also point to around a 20 percent uplift in performancecompared to Comet Lake-S.

We still have quite a way to go before Rocket Lake-S is actually available, and in the meantime, AMD is already gearing up to launch its next-generation Zen 3-based Ryzen processors. AMD is holding an event on October 8^th (this Thursday) when it will announce its Ryzen 5000 processors.