The 11th Gen Intel® Core™ S-series desktop processors (code-named “Rocket Lake-S”) launched worldwide today, led by the flagship Intel® Core™ i9-11900K. Reaching speeds of up to 5.3GHz with Intel® Thermal Velocity Boost1, the Intel Core i9-11900K delivers even more performance to gamers and PC enthusiasts.

Engineered on the new Cypress Cove architecture, 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors are designed to transform hardware and software efficiency and increase raw gaming performance​. The new architecture brings up to 19% gen-over-gen instructions per cycle (IPC) improvement2 for the highest frequency cores and adds Intel® UHD graphics featuring the Intel® Xe graphics architecture for rich media and intelligent graphics capabilities. That matters because games and most applications continue to depend on high-frequency cores to drive high frame rates and low latency.

Designed to Game: With its new 11th Gen desktop processors, Intel continues to push desktop gaming performance to the limits and deliver the most amazing immersive experiences for players everywhere.

At the top of the stack is the 11th Gen Intel Core i9-11900K, featuring unmatched performance with up to 5.3 gigahertz, eight cores, 16 threads and 16 megabytes of Intel® Smart Cache. The unlocked 11th Gen Intel Core desktop processor supports fast memory speeds with DDR4-3200 to help enable smooth gameplay and seamless multitasking on this platform.

Improvements in this generation include:

• Up to 19% gen-over-gen IPC performance improvement.
• Up to 50% better integrated graphics performance with Intel UHD graphics featuring Intel Xe graphics architecture.3
• Intel® Deep Learning Boost and Vector Neural Network Instructions support​ to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) inference — vastly improving performance for deep learning workloads.
• Enhanced overclocking tools and features for flexible overclocking and tuning performance and experience.

Through close collaboration with more than 200 of the top game developers, Intel brings a host of game, engine, middleware and rendering optimizations to applications so they can take advantage of 11th Gen Intel® Core™ S-series processors to deliver exciting gaming experiences.

Superior Tuning and Stability: 11th Gen Intel Core desktop processors introduce new overclocking tools and features for more flexible tuning to achieve unmatched speeds and superior game performance. This generation includes real-time memory overclocking which enables changes to DDR4 frequency in real time, extending memory overclocking support for H570 and B560 chipsets allowing users to experience overclocking, Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) 2  and AVX-512 voltage guard band override, and an all new integrated memory controller with wider timings and Gear 2 support (in addition to Gear 1 support).

Media and Streaming Features for Days: The new 11th Gen Intel Core S-series delivers rich media experiences, from AAA gaming to high-definition streaming with additional features including DDR4-3200 MHz support, 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes, Intel Quick Sync Video, enhanced media​ (10bit AV1/12bit high-efficiency video coding decode and end-to-end  compression), enhanced display (Integrated HDMI 2.0, HBR3), and discrete Thunderbolt™ 4 and Intel Wi-Fi 6E support.

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Intel is introducing its eleventh-generation Core processors for desktops, aka  Rocket Lake-S. The new CPUs have a new architecture for the first time since Skylake in 2015, which means they have to offer a 19 percent higher IPC.

11th Gen Intel Core™S-series desktop processors (code-named “Rocket Lake-S”) push desktop gaming performance to the limits with up to 5.3 GHz with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost delivering the most immersive experiences for players everywhere. Featuring 19% gen-over-gen instructions per cycle improvement for the highest frequency cores and headlined by the Intel Core i9-11900K, these processors bring even more performance to gamers and PC enthusiasts. The Rocket Lake-S processors support PCI-Express 4.0, of which four additional lanes are available so that you can also connect an M.2 SSD directly to the CPU.

The flagship processor is the Core i9-11900K, which comes with the promise of offering better gaming performance than the competition, thanks to IPC improvements of up to 19% and frequencies of up to 5.3 GHz. The Core i9-11900K has 8 cores / 16 threads and will work with a base frequency of 3.50 GHz and a boost of up to 5.30 GHz, for a price of $ 548 EUR

Intel is listing the procs at 125 Watt, not bad at all for a fast 8-core part. However, as comparison a Ryzen 9 5950X with its 16 cores is rated 105 Watts on TDP. Next to that, Intel is using several 'weird' power states. That TDP might be 125 Watt, but the flagship Rocket-Lake-S processor has a secondary PL2 state there is can utilize 250 Watts of power for almost a minute.  But yeah, most of us don't really care too much about TDP, performance is where it's at. The generational increase for RKL brings new benefits to the eco-system as well, AVX512 units, support for 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes, and faster memory. The new Z590 chipset-based motherboards have native USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), and get a doubled up bandwidth link from CPU to the chipset, moving from DMI x4 to DMI x8, but still a PCIe Gen 3.0 x8 link.