Intel Rocket Lake release date just tipped by MSI

Intel Rocket Lake release engagement just tipped by MSI

(Epitome credit: Intel)

Intel's 11th-gen Rocket Lake desktop processors will release in March, according to a mail by an MSI representative on the Due south Korean Danawa forums.

Every bit spotted (and translated) by Twitter user @harukaze5719, the new CPUs are "scheduled to exist released at the end of March," and could exist compelling rivals to AMD's Ryzen 5000 processors.

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This backs upwardly a previous rumor that Rocket Lake would release in March, well nether a twelvemonth after the 10th-gen Comet Lake CPU launch. The forum post, since edited, also confirmed that Rocket Lake volition exist backwards compatible with the older H410, B460 and Z490 motherboard chipsets, presumably alongside whatever newer versions; Intel always releases several new chipsets to mark a new CPU generation.

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The postal service does indicate that older chipsets volition need a firmware update to work with the new chips, though, with the Z490 set to get its updates bachelor first. In any case, backwards compatibility means that Rocket Lake will use the aforementioned LGA1200 socket that Comet Lake introduced. That'll come in handy for people looking for a processor upgrade only don't want to splash out on a new motherboard at the same time.

It's possible that the success of the Ryzen 5000 family pushed Intel to launch Rocket Lake sooner rather than afterward, hence an earlier than expected release window. Information technology's already shaping upwards to be quite the showdown, with one leaked criterion handing the apparent 11th-gen Intel Core i9-11900K a pocket-size advantage over the high-terminate Ryzen 9 5950X in gaming.

This would be in spite of Rocket Lake's reported use of an aging 14-nanometer manufacturing process, as unlike AMD, Intel has still to make the leap to more efficient 10nm or 7nm designs. However, Rocket Lake is besides said to bring numerous other improvements over Comet Lake, including PCIe 4.0 support, Thunderbolt 4 compatibility and Xe graphics support.

PCIe iv.0 would be a particularly welcome characteristic, equally although 10th-gen motherboards supported the faster connexion, the Comet Lake CPUs themselves didn't ꟷ perchance this suggests Intel was thinking about backwards compatibility for future processors from the commencement.

We're expecting to hear more about Intel'south next-gen processors at CES 2021, which thanks to the coronavirus pandemic volition basically be a virtual consequence. Check back with Tom'southward Guide for all the all-time news from the major tech showcase.

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Paper Shotgun, but earlier that was Audio Editor at Tom's Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes dissonance. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote computing and gaming news for TG, usually relating to how difficult it is to notice graphics carte stock.