Intel introduced the
11th generation of Core Rocket Lake S chips this Monday at CES 2021 ,
ensuring that the flagship Core i9-11900K processor offers a 19% improvement in
performance over the previous generation, and with gaming performance that
rivals the most powerful AMD Ryzen chip.
The Intel
Core i9-11900K does take a step back. The 10th generation Intel Core
i9-10900K had 10 cores and 20 threads. The new i9-11900K, on the other
hand, only has 8 cores and 16 threads, with turbo speeds of up to 5.3 GHz
(single core) and 4.8 GHz (all cores), slightly less than what the i9-10900K. Also,
it is a 14 nanometer chip.
But there
are also some subtle but significant improvements: a new 8-lane DMI interface
between the processor and the chipset ,
and the CPU PCIe 4.0 lanes for the GPUs and SSD storage have been increased to
20 lanes, matching the capabilities of the PCIe 4.0 that AMD has offered in the
last two generations of Ryzen.
That said,
Intel promises an instruction-per-cycle (IPC) improvement of up to 19% and a
50% improvement in performance for integrated graphics cards thanks to the new
Xe integrated GPU.
Intel said the Core i9-11900K will be available this quarter, but did not reveal the price. Luckily, although it will arrive with the new 500 series motherboards, the i9-11900K will also be compatible with the 400 series.
Intel
Executive Vice President and Head of Client Computing Group Gregory Bryant also
previewed the new generation of Alder Lake hybrid chips. The Alder Lake
will combine the Golden Cove Core and Gracemont Atom nuclei in a hybrid design. Bryant
also said they will debut an "improved" 10nm SuperFin process.
Rocket
Lake ... but at 14 nm
Many of the features
of the Rocket Lake-S are already known since last October, when Intel confirmed
its existence and its new CPU architecture, whose code name was Cypress Cove.
What we
didn't know was whether the new chip would use Intel's latest 10nm process or
whether it would be built on the relatively old 14nm process. Well, now we
know: it's a 14nm chip, which could also explain the lower number of cores, as
Brandt Guttridge, Senior Director of Intel's Desktop Products Group, points
out. According to him, the Cypress Cove CPU was originally designed for
10nm, but ultimately the 14nm technology was opted for.
"Many
of you are probably wondering, 'Why are you going from 10 to 8 cores,'"
Guttridge said. “The answer to that question is found in our intention to
maximize actual performance, which is a combination of frequency and IPC
[instructions per cycle].
So by
looking at the microarchitecture, we brought the 10nm design for the CPU and
graphics into the 14nm fabrication node. With smaller transistors in the
10nm design, while the 14nm has a somewhat larger array, the maximum number of
cores that could fit into Rocket Lake was eight. "
The other
factor influencing Intel's decision was that moving to 14nm allowed the company
to benefit from the SuperFIN transistor that Intel added to the Tiger Lake. Last
year, Ruth Brain, who specializes in interconnections and technological
development, said that the sum total of the improvements in the intranodules of
the 14 nm generations would equal the improvement in the performance of an
intranode from Ice Lake to Tiger Lake, going through SuperFIN.
"That
sacrifice was to have 19% more IPC and a graphical improvement of 50%,"
said Guttridge. "So again, the focus was on maximizing performance
for end users in the real world."
Intel did
not specify whether the Rocket Lake S formally includes DMI 4.0, although
Guttridge confirmed that the interface now multiplies the available lanes by
two, from four to eight. The Direct Media Interface connects the CPU with
the chipset's top jumper to the PCH or bottom jumper.
The Intel Skylake processor, with DMI 3.0, was the first to include a total of four lanes. Guttridge confirmed that the Rocket Lake S offers eight lanes, which doubles the bandwidth, which means that Intel has maintained the transmission speed.
Regarding gaming performance ,
Intel says that the Rocket Lake S should improve performance by 7% in Hitman 3
from IO Interactive, being executed above the integrated benchmark .
Intel also
claimed that the Core i9-11900K performed somewhat better than the AMD Ryzen
5900X in some games such as Total
War: Three Kingdoms , Cyberpunk
2077 , Watch
Dogs: Legion and Assassin's
Creed: Valhalla , all of them at 1080p or higher settings.
But that
was only an introduction to the Core i9-11900K, and not its launch, so we have
no information on its clock-frequency or turbo speeds at various levels. We
also don't know how many EUs are part of the 11900K.
Guttridge
did explain other Intel decisions in choosing the Rocket Lake capabilities that
the company had mentioned earlier. Customers had asked for faster memory,
moving Intel from the DDR4-2933 in the Comet Lake to the DDR4-3200 memory used
in the Rocket Lake S.
Moving
from the 16 lanes of PCI Express 3.0 to the 20 lanes of PCI Express 4.0 has
also allowed for enough lanes for the four-lane PCIe SSD, as well as the 16
lanes used in the latest GPU.
The Rocket
Lake-S also includes support for AV1 (and videos stored in the AVIF file
format), which compresses data 50% more efficiently than the main x254 profile,
reducing the need for bandwidth for those who use it. . The presence of
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 also increases the available USB bandwidth from 10 Gbps to 20
Gbps overall.
The Rocket
Lake-S also includes the always-on Intel Quick Sync Video, which Guttridge
claims works well with the integrated GPU. Previously, only a single GPU
(either integrated or discrete) could work at a time. Now both can,
allowing the discrete GPU to be used for rendering a game, for example, while
the integrated GPU can be used for streaming video .
What
we don't know: chipset details, overclocking
What we don't know
includes what Intel is doing with overclocking
in mind . Guttridge promised that Intel would share
more information about its overclocking capabilities near
launch, as the company wants to "go further to offer customization and
optimization for our users."
There is
also no officials information on the new 500 series motherboards that will
arrive with the Rocket Lake-S, although this chip will be able to be used with older
400 series chipsets (or, at
the very least, theoretically).
Guttridge
recommended that buyers contact motherboard vendors to confirm that "PCI
Express 4.0 compliant" motherboards will have PCI Express 4.0 enabled and
the appropriate BIOS installed. Guttridge said the DMI interface change
won't affect that Rocket Lake-S chip compatibility.
Plate
makers, however, have started talking. We know that there will be at least
three chipsets : Z590,
H570, B560, and H510. Asus said that the ROG Maximos XIII Z590 motherboard
will include a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, one of the only specs we know of
for now.
One
processor Intel was not compared to was Apple's M1 , the ARM chip
that replaces the Core i7 and Core i9 in the MacBook and other computers. Ryan
Shrout of Intel's Competitive Performance team summed it up like this:
"I'd say, you know, Apple has done an excellent job on their
processor."
Still,
Shrout added that Intel can still compete. "The truth is that our
tests show that products with Tiger Lake of 11th can lead in many aspects, be
it productivity, content creation and especially video games," he said.
