Intel's Rocket Lake CPU rumors are starting to pick up some heat since the company officially announced the lineup last week. Intel stated that its 11th Generation Core Desktop Processor family, codenamed Rocket Lake, will be arriving in the first quarter of 2021 with PCIe Gen 4.0 support.No other details were mentioned but while we wait for those to arrive around CES '21, rumors from tech insiders such as ITCooker and MebiuW give us a glimpse of what to expect of Intel's first major architectural upgrade on the mainstream desktop platform since Skylake.

Intel Rocket Lake Mainstream Desktop CPU Rumors: Major Architectural Change, Big Uplift To Gaming Performance, Maxing Out at 8 Cores and 16 Threads With Up To 5 GHz All Core OC

Both sources have posted reliable information in the past and ITCooker was one of the first leakers to get his hands on the AMD Ryzen 4000G processors and provided details in the form of specs and even raw benchmarks of the said processors. This time, ITCooker is providing details for Intel's 11th gen Rocket Lake CPUs. The latest details also comes a few days after ITCooker posted a screenshot of a setup running a Rocket Lake engineering sample and demonstrated its PCIe 4.0 capabilities on a Z490 motherboard.

The following is a quick list of all the rumored information that ITCooker has mentioned before we go in detail:

Supports PCI-e Gen 4.0 ProtocolAVX512 can achieve greater performance (But it runs really hot even under 8 cores and leads to higher power consumption)Both L1 cache & L2 cache sizes have increased. 10th generation core is L1 32KB / L2 256KB while 11th generation core is L1 48KB / L2 512KB.Summary: Although the 11th generation Core is 14nm, there is a real change in performance.Architecture has improved gaming performance. It is a lot stronger than the 10th generation Core, but it is still a long way from AMD in Cinebench R20 and R15 (Multi-threading) because core count is still only 8 cores while AMD has up to 16 cores.It is very easy to run overclock all cores to 5 GHz.Drop-in compatibility with Z490 motherboards with PCIe 4.0 support on boards that have the necessary hardware integration. Z490 VRMs are sufficient to overclock the 11th generation.

Intel 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" Desktop CPUs - Architecture, Performance & Platform Rumors

The leaker once again reiterates that Intel's Rocket Lake CPUs will fully support the PCIe Gen 4.0 protocol which is something that AMD has been offering on its X570 (Ryzen 3rd Gen) platform since late 2019. According to the leaker, while the 11th Gen Rocket Lake lineup is still based on the 14nm process node, there is a major architectural upgrade, the biggest we have seen since Skylake back in 2015. The architecture is specifically tuned for gaming and will give Intel a bigger win in games vs regular workloads. The user states that the multi-core performance crown will still be held by AMD given its faster SMT architecture in addition to more cores per tier while the Intel 11th Gen lineup is going to max out at 8 cores and 16 threads.

Some of the changes as mentioned before are the Cypress core architecture which is Sunny Cove with a little DNA of Willow Cove ported to 14nm. The CPU is said to feature 48 KB of L1 (50% over Skylake) and 512 KB L2 (2x over Skylake) sizes.

An interesting point is that the AVX-512 performance has seen a big upgrade in Rocket Lake CPUs and Intel might release performance benchmarks tuned around AVX-512 workloads where they'll give AMD a big beating. However, while AVX-512 nets higher performance, it also causes the CPUs to run hotter and consume more power which would require high-end power delivery on existing motherboards to support. With that said, the existing Z490 is said to be sufficient enough to offer support for 11th Gen CPUs while next-gen 500-series motherboards would offer even better and swifter compatibility.

Intel Mainstream CPU Generations Comparison: