Intel's Rocket Lake Blasts Off With Fewer Cores, Higher Pricing

Centauri

Centauri

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"As a result, Rocket Lake's flagship $539 Core i9-11900K comes to market with eight cores while the previous-gen Core i9 family came with 10 cores and AMD's leading chips stretch up to 16. Surprisingly, Intel has actually hiked its recommended pricing on its highest-end chips despite this seeming deficiency, signaling that it thinks its eight-core chips have the chops to take on AMD's competing models."

https://www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/intel-11th-gen-rocket-lake-s-specifications-pricing

Not sure this is the smartest time to maintain a 'margins over all-else' mindset, but I'm sure AMD is happy. 😅

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The article sums it up pretty well. Intel did what it had to for a shot at getting the gaming performance crown back.

Shooting for less cores at max clocks gives them a chance. They loose any HEDT cred they had left, which probably isn't a big loss as AMD has had that performance crown for a few gens now. Sounds like a reasonable decision to me.
 
The pricing on the K-series chips is kinda high but the regular processors seem like good deals. The 11400 costs $182 and the 11700 costs $323. If the performance on those two is anywhere close to the 5600X and the 5800X they will be winners. I just don't know if Anandtech's review of the 11700K paints an accurate picture for gaming performance or if they had weird results. We have to wait and see
 
XacTactX said:
The pricing on the K-series chips is kinda high but the regular processors seem like good deals. The 11400 costs $182 and the 11700 costs $323. If the performance on those two is anywhere close to the 5600X and the 5800X they will be winners. I just don't know if Anandtech's review of the 11700K paints an accurate picture for gaming performance or if they had weird results. We have to wait and see
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A little nuanced pricing though is that the 11400 doesn't have the same IGP as the 11500 and above. You're into the mid $200s before you get the full 32EU Xe GPU.
 
XacTactX said:
The pricing on the K-series chips is kinda high but the regular processors seem like good deals. The 11400 costs $182 and the 11700 costs $323. If the performance on those two is anywhere close to the 5600X and the 5800X they will be winners.
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For most people, who will probably get these via OEMs like Dell, it'll probably depend on how fast the processor can go while honoring TDP. It's likely to be around the all-core turbo, which isn't bad. But given the power curve we've seen so far, if it's closer to the base clock, which for those two chips is around 2500MHz, well, that's not gonna feel so fast.
 
1_rick said:
For most people, who will probably get these via OEMs like Dell, it'll probably depend on how fast the processor can go while honoring TDP. It's likely to be around the all-core turbo, which isn't bad. But given the power curve we've seen so far, if it's closer to the base clock, which for those two chips is around 2500MHz, well, that's not gonna feel so fast.
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This comment made me curious so I decided to benchmark my Dell XPS 8940 and Intel 10400 to see how much power limits were affecting my PC. I left the default power limit of 120 watts because I wanted to see the stock behavior of the CPU / motherboard. It's holding around 3.86 GHz after 45 minutes. I'm also gonna try raising the power limit to see if it can hold stable at 4.0 GHz. The 10400 has an all-core turbo of 4.0 GHz so I'm hoping it will stay put

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XacTactX said:
The pricing on the K-series chips is kinda high but the regular processors seem like good deals. The 11400 costs $182 and the 11700 costs $323. If the performance on those two is anywhere close to the 5600X and the 5800X they will be winners. I just don't know if Anandtech's review of the 11700K paints an accurate picture for gaming performance or if they had weird results. We have to wait and see
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they updated that review with new results from a different motherboard which has a newer bios version. The gaming performance is now as good or better than Comet Lake/10 series. And the multicore/multi-threading performance is also a teensy bit better. Which was already a fairly impressive bit better than 10 series. And I think they said peak power was down about 10 watts.
 
chameleoneel said:
they updated that review with new results from a different motherboard which has a newer bios version. The gaming performance is now as good or better than Comet Lake/10 series. And the multicore/multi-threading performance is also a teensy bit better. Which was already a fairly impressive bit better than 10 series. And I think they said peak power was down about 10 watts.
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Dislike Anand. They engaged in race-to-be-first clickbait but shrouded it in lots of data to make it seem like it wasn't. The false / premature results of the first "review" got regurgitated far and wide.

I'm not a fan of Rocket Lake or it's particular price-performance offering, not with 10900k @ $329 and 5600X @ $279 right now, but it's unfortunate that the business model has changed for these sites.
 
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kirbyrj said:
A little nuanced pricing though is that the 11400 doesn't have the same IGP as the 11500 and above. You're into the mid $200s before you get the full 32EU Xe GPU.
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I thought the 11500 was going to be $192.
 
chameleoneel said:
they updated that review with new results from a different motherboard which has a newer bios version. The gaming performance is now as good or better than Comet Lake/10 series. And the multicore/multi-threading performance is also a teensy bit better. Which was already a fairly impressive bit better than 10 series. And I think they said peak power was down about 10 watts.
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The needle barely moved on gaming performance with the new results. It is still slower in as many games as it is faster.

What are you talking about?
 
kirbyrj said:
It might be the 11600 that has the bigger IGP. I'd have to look again.
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The information I had was 11400 has 24EUs and the 11500 and up have 32EUs. That would be 33% more powerful and 50% more powerful. However, with prices being what they are in Canada, I'd likely try to get the 11400 because I want something "more significant" than Comet Lake. Apart from iGPU, there's still the PCIe4 on Rocket Lake and I wouldn't pay the price for a Ryzen 3600 anyway.
EDIT: To all those who'd want to complain about my choice, I want to build a gaming machine to replace my i5-4570. And I'm willing to wait months for a RTX 3050 Ti to come out. I plan to use my GTX 1050 Ti while I wait.
 
Centauri said:
The needle barely moved on gaming performance with the new results. It is still slower in as many games as it is faster.

What are you talking about?
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Centauri said:
The needle barely moved on gaming performance with the new results. It is still slower in as many games as it is faster.

What are you talking about?
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Well it isn't a simple thing to look at. Because the wins/losses actually change a lot, based on resolution**. Which is a bit strange, actually! But if you loosely average it all out. Its pretty much a wash. 11 series is more or less as fast as 10 series in gaming (faster here, equal there, a little less over there). And takes a solid lead in productivity.

** an easy to look at example is Far Cry 5. Where the 11700k results on updated bios wins by 10 frames at 1080p ultra, and 6 frames at 1440p low. but loses by 4 frames at 4K low.
 
P.S. Either Newegg has a bit of a markup on the pre-order price or Anandtech's pricing list is based on oem, bare CPUs. Not retail packaging?
 
I wonder if the i9-11900 is going to be the sleeper part (relative to other Intel parts) since it's a 65W part.
 
Axman said:
I wonder if the i9-11900 is going to be the sleeper part (relative to other Intel parts) since it's a 65W part.
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I don't think it makes sense to get an 11900 non-k over the 11700k. Stock performance between the two would be hairsplitting. And the 11700k stock performance might even be better, considering its stock turbo is based on 125w. (albeit a few simple tweaks in the bios can get a non-k turboing all day). However, the 9 series have the extra thermal velocity turbo feature, which might mean the non-k 9 series actual turbo for longer, at stock. I guess an in-depth review would have to reveal that.


But even considering the relatively larger delta in frequency, I think the 11700 non-k is the real value sleeper part. Since there is no 10 core this round.
 
chameleoneel said:
P.S. Either Newegg has a bit of a markup on the pre-order price or Anandtech's pricing list is based on oem, bare CPUs. Not retail packaging?
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Newegg sometimes lists items for $5-15 more, but they usually have more stock. That said, are you sure you're looking at newegg's listing and not a "marketplace seller"?
 
chameleoneel said:
P.S. Either Newegg has a bit of a markup on the pre-order price or Anandtech's pricing list is based on oem, bare CPUs. Not retail packaging?
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Intel's prices are based on 1000 lot units so retail usually doesn't come close but the 11900K price is pretty absurd imo.
 
Why is the 11900K being compared against the 5800x? Looks like the 11700K/KF more closely spec'd at $50+ cheaper than the 5800x
 
sfsuphysics said:
Why is the 11900K being compared against the 5800x? Looks like the 11700K/KF more closely spec'd at $50+ cheaper than the 5800x
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We don't actually know what the 11900K compares to yet. So far, the 5800X>11700k. So if the 11900k is somewhat better than the 700, then it might actually be a match for the 5800X in performance, though not in price nor efficiency.

Price wise, it seems the 11900K would compete with the 5900X, but no way are 8 RKL cores competing against 12 Zen3 cores unless that 11900K really pulls something out of the hat.
 
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XacTactX said:
This comment made me curious so I decided to benchmark my Dell XPS 8940 and Intel 10400
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I posted it a while ago but my work PC is an Optiplex 5060 with an i7-8700. The bios scrupulously limits the CPU very closely to 65W, and at that power level, stress tests will settle in with an all-core speed a bin or two below the all core turbo. I just turned it on again and ran prime95 torture test and after about a minute it settled in at 3.8GHz, bouncing around a bit. The all-core turbo is 4.3Ghz.
 
NightReaver said:
We don't actually know what the 11900K compares to yet. So far, the 5800X>11700k. So if the 11900k is somewhat better than the 700, then it might actually be a match for the 5800X in performance, though not in price nor efficiency.

Price wise, it seems the 11900K would compete with the 5900X, but no way are 8 RKL cores competing against 10 Zen3 cores unless that 11900K really pulls something out of the hat.
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And the 5900x is a 12 core. Ryzen goes from 8 to 12. No 10 core parts, so far.
 
Nobu said:
Newegg sometimes lists items for $5-15 more, but they usually have more stock. That said, are you sure you're looking at newegg's listing and not a "marketplace seller"?
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Newegg has a pre-order banner on their site.
 
chameleoneel said:
P.S. Either Newegg has a bit of a markup on the pre-order price or Anandtech's pricing list is based on oem, bare CPUs. Not retail packaging?
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Well, their order page in Canada seems a bit odd. The 11500 is in their banner ad but on their main page. The 10500 is somewhat mysterious as well in the sense that it's not available from all retailers.
 
The 11700K was $419 and in stock for pre-order at Newegg. Only the 11900 k was out of stock. I didn't catch what that price was before it went OOS though.
 
Domingo said:
It won't stick. I bought a 5800x from them last week that has a $649.99 price on the box. Actual price was $409 after a $20 discount. The 5950x boxes had price tags that were something like $1200.
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Ah, just more shady microcenter "savings" then.

*Edit* I'm guessing when someone shows up, they go "Oh, actually it's marked down to this". I'm sure a few proceed to think man, what a great deal I got!
 
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