Not to be outdone by AMD, Intel will launch new CPUs for desktop PCs in Q1 2021.
The upcoming 11th-generation Core processors have been codenamed Rocket Lake, and will arrive with support for PCIe 4.0, according to Intel Vice President John Bonini. “It’ll be another fantastic processor for gaming, and we’re excited to disclose more details in the near future,” he wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
We all knew Rocket Lake was coming. However, Intel dropped the announcement a day before AMD plans to introduce its Zen 3 architecture, which is poised to give AMD's desktop CPUs a performance boost.
AMD could begin selling the Zen 3 architecture in new Ryzen 5000-series chips as soon as this month. The company's processors have also been supporting PCIe 4.0 since last year.
As a result, Intel may be facing an uphill battle in the desktop CPU space even when Rocket Lake launches. Currently, you can find 11th-generation Core "Tiger Lake" processors, but they're only for laptops.
We’ll have to wait and see what Rocket Lake will bring to the table, and how much the chips will cost. But the new silicon could end up using Intel’s 10nm manufacturing technology, a step up from the 14nm node the company has long relied on to churn out its desktop CPUs. That said, it's possible Rocket Lake will remain stuck on 14nm.
In the meantime, Bonini is trying to remind the public about Intel’s long history of supporting PC gaming. “Gaming is in Intel’s DNA,” he wrote. “From the Intel Pentium processors in the 90s, to Core 2 Duos in the mid-2000s, to the current mainstream 10th Gen Intel Core S-Series desktop processors, Intel has proudly provided enthusiast gamers the hardware to enable bleeding-edge PC gaming performance.”
Bonini also noted how Intel's existing 10th-generation Core processors, including the Core i9-10900K and Core i9-10980HK, can offer high-level gaming performance with 5.3GHz clock speeds.
Still, we recommend you check out AMD’s processors too. Stay tuned for our coverage of tomorrow’s Zen 3 event. In the meantime, we’ve rated some of AMD’s existing CPUs as the best gaming processors you can currently buy for their high performance and competitive pricing.