New reports indicate that Intel would anticipate the launch of its Rocket Lake-S processors in 3 months, and that although the company officially announced that these CPUs for desktop computers would be announced in March, now the new rumors support that this announcement has been advanced to January 2021, although it is unknown if it will do so as early as the second week of January during CES 2021 in Las Vegas, or if it will do so at the end of the month.
What is also indicated is that this advancement will come as a form of “Paper Launch,” that is, the same thing that AMD has done with its Ryzen 5000 Series CPUs, launching a product that does not really exist in the market, so the company would limit itself to detail all the information of the CPUs models that will reach the market although it is really unknown when these CPUs will be available for purchase.
Despite this, this is a very good move, since you will not need to have a product for sale to advertise against AMD, and it is expected that Intel CPUs can at least gain in performance when it comes to talking about games in exchange for higher consumption and temperature, but being ahead in this particular performance already serves to have all the marketing on the table until it is possible to nurture the market with its processors.
This advancement is even positive, since it will help to space the launch with respect to the Alder Lake-S, the true new generation of CPUs of the company that would arrive at the end of 2021.
The Intel Rocket Lake-S will release a new microarchitecture dubbed Cypress Cove, a 14nm+++ adaptation of the Sunny Cove microarchitecture that brings Intel Ice Lake portable processors to life in a 10nm manufacturing process. Due to the size, the company will be forced to limit its processors to a maximum of 8 cores and 16 threads.
According to the company, the main advantages are an improvement in the IPC (which we only know is double-digit compared to an Intel Core i9-10900K), the improvement of the integrated graphics by implementing the Intel Xe-LP, the PCI-Express 4.0 interface with up to 20 lines, controller for DDR4 @3200 MHz memory, and the addition of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 @20 Gbps ports.
According to rumors, the Intel Core i7-11700K is expected to cost less than $400 compared to the Core i5s that would cost less than $300. Very cheap but credible prices, since Intel has the disadvantage of multi-core performance, power consumption and temperature, so it should at least offer much more attractive prices as an option.
