At the recent CES 2021 event, Intel officially announced its 11th Gen Core Rocket Lake-S CPU series during the press briefing. Official announcement slides were leaked as well, which showed almost 14% IPC boost with this new CPU lineup.
Intel’s 11th gen desktop processor lineup will feature both Rocket Lake-S and Comet Lake-S “refresh” CPUs. The Intel 11th generation lineup includes 13 Rocket Lake/RKL and a total of 13 Comet Lake refresh desktop CPUs. Rocket Lake lineup features the core i9, i7 & i5 variants, while the Comet Lake refresh desktop CPUs will come in Core i3, Pentium & Celeron variants.
Now, we have some preliminary info on the expected pricing of these new 11th gen core processors, courtesy of 2Compute, a Belgium retailer, coming via Tom’s Hardware, and @momomo_us.
But before continuing, you should bear in mind that these prices shouldn’t be taken as a base guideline to make any purchasing decision, since the price in most of the European countries tends to be on a higher side, as compared to US and other countries.
More importantly this is also unreleased hardware we are talking about, since these CPUs haven’t hit the retail shelves yet. So please exercise some caution here. With that being said, assuming this Belgium retailer 2Compute’s pricing closely reflects Intel’s official MSRP, then we could be looking at a price difference of up to $30.
Tom’s hardware did an apples-to-apples comparison using 2Compute’s previous Comet Lake-S pricing as a base reference. Only the top K-series models were compared to get an idea on the expected pricing of these new 11th gen SKUs.
According to the retailer’s listing, the previous gen Core i9-10900K, Core i7-10700K and Core i5-10600K are selling for $555, $398 and $282, respectively.
Therefore, currently the flagship Rocket Lake processors the Core i9-11900K and Core i7-11700K are costing up to 8.8% and 14.3% more, whereas the Core i5-11600K has a 3.9% higher price tag.
So basically the Core i9-11900K carries a 499.70 EUR price tag without VAT and around 605 EUR with 21% VAT included. This means that the 10900K Comet Lake-S processor is 8-9% more expensive.
The Comet Lake refresh chips also see a similar price trend, but you should only go for these lower-end chips if you don’t want to use any i5 or above processor SKU. For comparison, the Belgium retailer is selling the Comet Lake Core i3-10300 and Core i3-10100 for $161 and $134, respectively.
So right now according to the listing, the new Comet lake “refresh” equivalent chips are apparently 6.8% and 4.5% more expensive, the Core i3-10305 and the Core i3-10105, respectively.
Overall, it appears that Rocket Lake-S may cost up to 15% more than the previous gen Comet Lake-S lineup. But again, there is no hard and fast rule to this, because the price listing keeps on changing, and they differ from other retailers as well.
But you should also note that even though Intel touts IPC gains of up to 19%, and full support for the PCIe 4.0 gen interface, the Rocket Lake-S platform is the last to use the aging LGA 1200 socket, so obviously your upgrade options are going to be limited, should you plan to buy a new INTEL CPU in near future.
So the LGA 1200 socket will be considered as obsolete and short-lived by many gamers once the next-gen LGA 1700 socket platform arrives with the new Alder Lake-S CPU lineup.
Twitter user @harukaze5719 also shared some pricing info of these CPUs by few other retailers, and judging from the listing, the prices seem to be random. Some retailers are listing these new CPUs at a lower price than the current Comet Lake-S SKUs, whereas other retailers have listed them at a higher price tag.
Rocket Lake-S desktop platform should also hopefully be the last CPU architecture to be based on an advanced 14nm process node. Comet Lake-S was also fabbed on this aging process node, which has held Intel back in terms of IPC uplift and efficiency gains over AMD’s Ryzen lineup.
RKL processor family will release in first quarter of 2021, and is expected to share the same socket and motherboard compatibility as the current 10th Gen Comet Lake processors, thus providing an upgrade path even for those rocking the flagship Core i9-10900K Comet lake CPU.
Rocket Lake-S will be housed on the 500-series motherboards. Although the Rocket Lake-S lineup will be the last to feature the LGA1200 socket/Z490 chipset, Intel is planning a full range of chipsets, including workstation W580, high-end gaming Z590, H570, and budget-oriented B560 and H510 series. The current 400-series motherboard chipsets will also support these upcoming SKUs after a BIOS update.
Intel has also broadened the DMI interface, which connects the processor to the platform controller hub (PCH), from x4 to x8.
John Bonini (VP and GM of Client Computing Group Desktop, Workstation, and Gaming at Intel) has also confirmed that the 11th Gen Core series processors codenamed Rocket Lake will be Intel’s first lineup to support the PCI-Express gen 4.0 interface, a feature which has been seemingly missing in Intel’s client Desktop CPU platform for quite some time.
Rocket Lake will deliver desktop users up to eight cores and sixteen threads on the high-end, which means two cores and four threads less than the current Comet Lake processor lineup. But the reduction in core count could also mean that Intel plans to rely on increased single-threaded performance, thus boosting overall system performance through single-threaded gains.
Single-threaded performance will help Intel to compete more in the CPU market segment, even if AMD can deliver higher core count SKUs. Not all applications or tasks are highly multi-threaded in nature, which makes the single-threaded performance all the more important.
Stay tuned for more tech news!
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Some minor correction in the article, see below para. I will edit it later to avoid any confusion. I meant to say that some retailers are listing the 10900K as more expensive, unlike as pointed out by Tom’s hardware above.
This info is actually for some other retail listing, because according to Tom’s article, and the data extracted by them at that time of listing, these new Rocket Lake chips were costing up to 8.8% and 14.3% more !
“” So basically the Core i9-11900K carries a 499.70 EUR price tag without VAT and around 605 EUR with 21% VAT included. This means that the 10900K Comet Lake-S processor is 8-9% more expensive. “” —– applies to some other retail listing, not TW.
So will it cost more or less ? But I’m betting the price to be on a lower side though, since they max out at 8 cores, so how can Intel a 10 core CPU for LESS ??
8 more powerful cores and in many games a single core’s performance is often what bottlenecks the performance no matter how many cores you have above around 6-8 depending on title
Why not ? if they want to target a lot of gamers with these new CPUs, then can sell it for slightly higher price as well, because new hardware sells, and that Intel is aware of.
But it makes less sense to sell them expensive, since the comet lake has 2 Cores more than the flagship rocket lake processor. 10 vs 8 cores.
All prices seem to be random for now.
Some minor clarification in the article, see below para. I will edit/correct it later to avoid any confusion.
I meant to say that some retailers are listing the 10900K as more expensive, unlike as pointed out by Tom’s hardware above.
This info/para is actually for some other retail listing, because according to Tom’s article, and the data extracted by them at that time of listing, these new Rocket Lake chips were costing up to 8.8% and 14.3% more !
“” So basically the Core i9-11900K carries a 499.70 EUR price tag without VAT and around 605 EUR with 21% VAT included. This means that the 10900K Comet Lake-S processor is 8-9% more expensive. “” —– applies to some other retail listing, not Tom’s hardware.
Are K and KF processors both same or different ?? what’s the main use of F series ?
Basically the main difference between these K, F-series and KF-series desktop processors, and their respective non-K counterparts is the lack of an integrated GPU or iGPU.
Time will tell however if the iGPU is physically removed or just disabled. Clock speeds, cache, and TDP are identical between the F-series and standard K series processors though.
F means that that processor lacks integrated graphics or iGPU. Like mentioned above, the primary difference between the K and KF series of processors is the lack of or iGPU in the KF series processors to provide a slightly lower cost than the K series processors.
Though both the K and KF chips offer the same clock speed, TDP, and processor count. The F series Intel processors are identical to the non-K series of processors, which both have a locked multiplier and, on a few occasions, even lower clock speeds.
Moreover, the F series range of processors is basically the multiplier locked version of the KF processors.
Also, lacking an iGPU, these processors will need a dedicated GPU to run. Though the multiplier seems locked, it is possible to lock all cores at a high frequency and play around with the BCLK settings for a performance gain.
Much appreciated for this explanation! thanks .
This will be short-lived and replaced by alder lake who could become intel’s first real response to the later ryzens. Rocket lake really wreaks of desperation and gives the impression to be half-baked just to rush something through the door.
Pcie4 + more cpu handled lanes are welcome
Couldn’t agree more though, honestly speaking.
More milking from Intel partners it appears like. I’m pretty sure these wont even be in STOCK to purchase, let alone if they are selling at a lower price tag, or higher. Ridiculous VAT in Europe though.
Nick, some images are illegible!