Intel’s new Core i9-11900K flagship processor will arrive in early 2021

Intel’s new flagship Core i9-11900K processor will arrive in the first quarter of 2021. The chipmaker today unveiled the latest preview for its first 11th Gen (Rocket Lake-S) computer chips at CES. With the flagship Core i9-11900K, the new chips are claimed to bring up to 19 percent higher IPC (instructions per cycle), up to 50 percent better integrated graphics and better AI performance.

And while Intel isn’t quite ready to unveil the full 11th Gen Rocket Lake S-Series yet, it has previewed the flagship Core i9 model: an eight-core, 16-wire chipset with increased clock speeds to a whopping 5.3 GHz. The processor also includes support for DDR4 RAM at 3,200 MHz, a total of 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes, and even backward compatibility with Intel’s 400 series chipsets. Unfortunately, there is still no word on the price or a release date for the new model.

However, despite the 11th Gen moniker, the new Rocket Lake S-chips are still technically 14nm chips – they do not use the 10nm process. However, they include Intel’s Cypress Cove core, which brings improvements from the 10 nm core designs to the 14 nm manufacturing process, enabling faster speeds coupled with Intel’s faster Xe integrated graphics.

According to Intel, the drop in core count compared to last year’s Core i9-10900K (which had 10 cores and 20 wires) is due to the shift (the 10nm chips are currently only designed for up to eight cores), although it promises that overall performance on the new 11th Gen model will continue to improve.

There is no official release date for the upcoming Rocket Lake-S chips yet, but Intel promises that it will be released in the first quarter of 2021.

Update January 11, 16:47 ET: Additional details for Intel’s Cypress Cove cores added.