This year, during the very first digital CES, Intel is announcing a new process processor in several product families. There are new updates for the budget families Pentium Silver and Celeron, new vPro and Evo vPro systems from the 11th generation, emerging eight-core Tiger Lake processors, new high-end Tiger Lake quad-core intended for games and new data on upcoming products like Rocket Lake. Here we focus mostly on the new CPU announcements.
Intel is putting a lot of emphasis on the Chromebook market, with the first 11th generation CPUs launching in space later this quarter. When Chromebooks first appeared, they were usually powered by ARM CPUs, but we’ve seen over the last few years that a number of x86 devices have been launched. Chromebooks were especially popular at the age of COVID-19; PC reports for the third quarter of 2019 showed a growth of 1.9 times within a single year. AMD was also very interested in the late market, so we’ll see how things develop this year. We might see a low resentment between the two companies in this space if the Chromebook market stays red-hot.
Tiger Lake goes strong
As for Tiger Lake, Intel has introduced a new Tiger Lake gaming platform (H35) and teased emerging Tiger Lake eight-core processors. There are three new TGL quad-core chips – the Core i7-11375H “Special Edition”, the Core i7-11370H and the Core i5-11300H. All of these are 35W chips:
Note: Intel has stopped delivering base frequencies to its processors on the 15 W TDPs it previously reported. Instead, it now reports the minimum frequency of the CPU when running in cTDP Down mode (28W) and cTDP Up mode (35W). It’s a consumer – friendly change that disguises basic information about the minimum operating frequencies customers can expect. Without knowing whether a laptop is designed to function in some TDP series, the consumer has no way of comparing the expected performance. The end user deserves to be aware of the expected minimum CPU clock in all cases.
One of the problems with cell phones is the extent to which they obscure information about their own actual clock speeds, and often market chips based solely on boost watches. This is not a trend that the computer industry should copy.
With that said, these CPUs offer the benefits you would expect from a higher TDP – higher boost clocks and probably more sustained turbos, delivering higher overall frequencies. They will not make a huge difference, but probably better experiences under load.
Meanwhile, Intel is not yet ready to name its eight-core Tiger Lake processor, but it is prepared to confirm the chip’s existence. This CPU offers up to eight core points with Willow Cove performance, with full support for PCIe 4.0 and 20 lanes of support. Since GPUs currently do not benefit from an x16 PCIe 4.0 connection – PCIe 3.0 can import any modern card, it will be interesting to see if we see businesses using some of these lanes to make multiple x4 connections for M.2 storage storage enables. in mobile, as opposed to using it only for GPUs. Unfortunately, we’re probably seeing a lot more GPU-focused use of lanes instead of M.2, but one can hope.
Presumably, the eight-core TGL CPU will fall in a TDP range between 35W – 65W. Intel’s tenth generation Core i9-10980HP has a base frequency of 2.43 GHz, but a TDP range of 45 W – 65 W, so the upcoming TGL CPU can fit anywhere in this space. With top frequencies up to 5 GHz, we recommend that it is not a low-power chip.
This eight-core CPU will represent the most advanced variant with the highest power of an Intel architecture you can buy in 2021, although it is by no means the fastest. Rocket Lake, which we discuss below, is based on Cypress Cove, or Sunny Cove, or the CPU within Ice Lake – not Tiger Lake.
Rocket Lake arrives
Finally, we have the upcoming arrival of Rocket Lake, which Intel also confirmed will arrive in Q1 2021. The Core i9-11900K is capable of having 5.3GHz turbo and a 4.8GHz all-core turbo, and it comes with support for DDR4 -3200, higher than DDR4-2933. It is usually possible to use Intel CPUs with higher RAM frequencies than this, but Intel chips do not benefit from higher RAM clocks to the same extent as AMD chips do.
Rocket Lake will be backward compatible with the Intel 400 Series, and Comet Lake S-processors will be compatible with 500 Series motherboards, except Celeron processors with just 2 MB of cache. That particular 10th generation CPU is not compatible. This will not affect many people, as anyone with a Celeron on the tenth generation motherboard will need many upgrade rooms in the Comet Lake family to make a new chip worthwhile without swapping motherboard platforms.
Intel predicts a 1.19x IPC improvement for Rocket Lake, which will be in line with our own expectations, and points to the full benefit of Ice Lake’s Sunny Cove successfully supported with Rocket Lake’s 14nm process. There will be some new features to improve the bandwidth of the chips, add AV1 decoding and improved integrated graphics performance compared to previous generation CPUs. Intel also believes it could link or exceed AMD’s gaming performance with this following chip:
The 5900X should be a fair comparison to the 11900K in games – the 5000 series does not show the same gap in high-end CPU gaming perfection as the 3000 series. Image by Intel, all benchmarks are recommended with salt.
It is possible that the company may indeed pick it up. AMD’s Zen 3 architecture is faster than Intel’s current 14nm processors across the board, with the possible exception of a few well-tuned AVX-512 workloads, but gaming is probably where AMD’s leadership position is weakest. Intel may not be able to put it out with 12-16 core CPUs in absolute performance, but a strong single-wire perfection could put the company back in the game. We will see in a few months how accurately the above benchmarks, provided by Intel, compare to independent verified results.
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