Rocket Lake Core i9-11900K Is A Strong Rival For Ryzen 7 5800X

Update 12/03/2020 6:00 pm PT: Hardware detective Tum_Apisak just unearthed two Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS) entries for the Intel Core i9-11900K. The processor purportedly sports a 3.5 GHz base clock, which could be the mysterious octa-core chip that appeared earlier today.

Original Story:

A new octa-core Rocket Lake processor has graced Geekbench 5's benchmarking grounds. The submission (via Tum_Apisak) looks promising as the unidentified chip appears to be a serious opponent for the Ryzen 7 5800X (codenamed Vermeer)

Unlike Comet Lake, Rocket Lake will go back to Intel's past practices of maxing out at eight cores. Therefore, the chip from the Geekbench 5 submission is more than likely to be an 11th Generation Core i9, although it remains to be seen whether it's the unlocked "K" model or one of those locked non-K or T-series parts. In either case, the Rocket Lake processor comes armed with Cypress Cove cores, and Intel has gone as far as promising a two-digit instruction per cycle (IPC) uplift.

Although the multi-core performance wasn't up to par, a previous octa-core Rocket Lake processor bested the Core i9-10900K by up to 18% in single-core performance. It would appear that the Cypress Cove microarchitecture could be a major gamechanger, just like AMD's Zen 3 microarchitecture. We've already confirmed AMD's IPC claims, while Intel's numbers still need to be verified.

Intel 11th Generation Rocket Lake Benchmarks

The Rocket Lake processor reportedly features eight cores, 16 threads, and 16MB of L3 cache, identical to the previous Core i9-9900K. This has been the maximum configuration pre-Comet Lake days. According to Geekbench 5, the Rocket Lake chip finished the benchmark run with a 3.41 GHz base clock and 4.98 GHz boost clock. These could be early specifications for an engineering sample, so treat the values with caution.

In addition to the core difference, the Core i9-10900K has an 8.5% faster base clock than the Rocket Lake processor. Assuming that the Rocket Lake's maximum boost clock is 4.98 GHz, the Core i9-10900K's boost clock is around 6.4% faster. If we pitch the Rocket Lake processor against the Core i7-10700K, the latter flaunts an 11.4% and 2.4% better base and boost clock speeds, respectively.

At least for the moment, Rocket Lake doesn't seem to have high clock speeds as the boost in performance will come from the new Cypress Cove cores.

The Rocket Lake processor's single-core score was up to 16.9% higher than the average single-core for the Core i9-10900K. The difference between the Rocket Lake chip and the Ryzen 7 5800X was less than 1%, suggesting that both processors' single-core performance might be in the same alley if benchmarked under the same system with equal specifications.

As per Geekbench 5's data, the Core i9-10900K's average multi-core score was around 12.6% higher than the Rocket Lake. Nonetheless, the margins are less if we compare the octa-core Rocket Lake against other rivals with a similar eight-core, 16-thread configuration, like the Ryzen 7 5800X and Core i7-10700K. The Rocket Lake lost to the Ryzen 7 5800X as the Zen 3's average multi-core score was 6% better. However, Rocket Lake did outperform the Core i7-10700K by up to 8.8%.

Barring any misfortunes, Intel aims to unleash Rocket Lake in the first quarter of next year. If the whispers are accurate, we could be looking at a potential late March launch, which, of course,  will likely be accompanied by a new legion of Intel 500-series motherboards.