The wait is almost over. If you have been holding out for Intel’s 11th-generation processor lineup, then brace for good news. The Rocket Lake line of desktop CPUs is on the horizon.
Known as Rocket Lake-S, the chip giant had already announced that these processors are set to debut in the first half of the year. And now, we have an official date for when these awaited new chips will hit store shelves.
And surprise, it’s earlier than expected.
A retailer accidentally started listing the products, as a result of which Intel begrudgingly gave up the release date. March 30 is when these new processors will make their debut.
As confirmed:
We now have an official sales date:
"The sales embargo for 11th Gen Desktop processors (Rocket Lake S) is March 30, 2021 at 6 a.m. PT / 9 a.m. ET."
— Andreas Schilling 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@aschilling) March 2, 2021
Long time coming, these.
Intel actually showed off the Rocket Lake-S family back at CES this year. Of particular highlight was the Core i9-11900K with its 8 cores and 16 threads, and a clock speed of 4.8GHz and a mighty impressive turbo boost of 5.3 GHz.
It also supports faster DDR4-3200 memory, and up to 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Using the same LGA 1200 socket as Comet Lake-S, these new processors, unfortunately, require a newer chipset or a firmware update on older ones.
We’ll have to wait until the end of the month to find out the full details of what Intel has in store for us.
When it comes to processors, the chip giant has had a torrid time as of late.
Both Microsoft and Apple readily exploring new options when it comes to hardware. The upcoming Windows 10X offers support for both platforms. The ascent of ARM means that Intel is facing heat not just from AMD, but also companies like Qualcomm and Samsung in the PC space.
