Intel Rocket Lake-S, new samples show good performance improvements

11th generation Intel Rocket Lake-S processors will likely make their debut in late March, but that doesn't mean rumors won't keep popping up until then. Recently, the well-known leaker @Tum_Apisak has identified the Core i5-11400 and the Core i7-11700 in the Geekbench 5 database.

Recall that the Rocket Lake-S CPUs will be built on the production node at 14nm and will exploit Intel's Cypress Cove microarchitecture, which is basically a backport of the 10nm Sunny Cove cores found in Ice Lake processors. Rocket Lake-S will also feature an integrated Xe-LP-based GPU and will natively support DDR4-3200 memory modules and PCI Express 4.0 interface. The processors will continue to use the LGA1200 socket, but it will likely be the last generation of chips to use it before the Santa Clara company switches to the LGA1700 with Alder Lake-S.

Processor Core / Thread Base / Boost Clock (GHz) L3 Cache (MB) Core i7-11700 8/16 2.5 / 2.5? 16 Core i7-10700 8/16 2.9 / 4.8 16 Core i5-11400 6/12 2.6 / 4.4 12 Core i5-10400 6/12 2.9 / 4.3 12 The Core i5-11400 will offer 6 cores, 12 threads and 12MB of L3 cache and apparently it should have a base clock of 2.6GHz and a boost clock of 4.4GHz. The Core i7-11700, on the other hand, has 8 cores, 16 threads and a 16MB L3 cache. The processor appears to have a base clock of 2.5GHz and a boost clock of 2.5GHz, but the latter could be an error (or a limitation of the engineering sample).

The Core i5-11400 achieved single and multi-core scores of 1,247 and 6,197 respectively in Geekbench 5. According to statistics, the Core i5-10400 provides a single-core and multi-core score of 1,115 points and 5,676, respectively. Therefore, the Core i5-11400 offers up to 11.8% higher single-core performance and up to 9.2% better multi-core performance than the current Core i5-10400. The Core i7-11700 scores are lower than the Core i5-11400, so the test was not particularly affected by the lower clock speed. This is not unusual because non-definitive components don't always work well with all benchmark software. As evidenced by the Core i7-11700's slow boost clock speed, something (perhaps cooling system or firmware) held back the processor's performance during testing.

Although Intel has allowed motherboard manufacturers to show their new motherboards equipped with the Z590 chipset, the Santa Clara giant has not yet provided detailed specifications regarding the Rocket Lake-S line, but has repeatedly stated that the chips will hit the market by the first quarter of this year.

Intel Core i7-10700K with 3.8GHz base clock, LGA1200 socket and 125W of TDP is available on Amazon at a reduced price!