11th Gen Intel Core “Rocket Lake” to launch in Q1 2021

AMD is set to announce their next-gen processors later today, and Intel decided that they wanted to pre-emptively capture some mindshare. They have just announced the 11th Gen Intel Core desktop processors “Rocket Lake” well ahead of their launch date, which is set to happen in Q1 2021.

Not much else is revealed about the 11th Gen Intel Core desktop processors aside from the launch date and the fact that they will support PCIe 4.0 connectivity. Intel does talk a lot about gaming in the same blog post, and we can safely presume that Intel is going to focus on gaming performance with Rocket Lake. Given that both NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards support PCIe 4.0 now, the timing of this announcement is pretty apt.

Previous rumors have hinted that Rocket Lake will still be manufactured on Intel’s well-refined 14nm process node, although it will offer the latest Willow Cove core architecture that was just introduced with the 11th Gen Intel Core “Tiger Lake” mobile processors. With everything from the 6th Gen Intel Core to the latest 10th Gen Intel Core desktop processors featuring the same Skylake microarchitecture, this will be a welcome change to the desktop segment. It is also rumored to work with the LGA1200 socket, which will make it a drop-in upgrade for 10th Gen Intel Core users.

Well, we will have to wait and see what’s to come in Q1 2021, although Intel has hinted that they will be sharing more details soon.

Pokdepinion: If Rocket Lake can hit the high clocks that we see on the current 10th Gen parts, while also having an IPC advantage with Willow Cove, we might have a pretty interesting processor next year.