Intel Rocket Lake's high pricing feels like a missed opportunity

(Epitome accredit: Intel)

Intel has launched its red-hot 11th Gen Skyrocket Lake CPUs… and efficaciously released them too, as retailers totally over are start to sell the supposedly still-unreleased processors to PC gamers looking for Intel's fashionable gaming silicon. The actual along-sale date is meant to be Border 30, which is when we're allowed to bring on you our full self-sustaining bench mark results too.

Unfortunately, one retail merchant in Europe went knave few weeks back and started selling CPUs to anyone WHO wanted one, apparently heedless of Intel's sales embargo. And from that our colleagues at AnandTech were able to publish the first review of the Congress of Racial Equality i7 11700K.

Since so Gamers Nexus has published its own performance information connected the same CPU, having managed to sound one itself, and with redditors boast of their possess success at bagging even the high-ending Inwardness i9 11900KF, more reviews are certainly approach ahead of the review embargo also.

The pear-shaped eyeglasses for the new Intel Rocket Lake chips birth been discovered, on with staple pricing inside information too. The top-end eight-core, 16-weave Core i9 11900K has a price trail of around $539, while the GPU-little i9 11900F comes in at merely $422. Then the Core i7 11700K, another, slower eight-heart CPU is set at $399.

Frustratingly, that actually puts Garden rocket Lake in a higher place where the 10th Gen Comet Lake chips started. And so the Core i9 10900K started out at $488, so you'rhenium getting two fewer cores for your backported Cypress Cove (née Sunny Cove) Substance architecture and having to fork out an extra $50 for the privilege.

Lower down the stack is often where we see the value proposition popping up for recent Intel launches, and it is at least sticking to the same base pricing for its new Core i5 CPUs. I'm hoping the six-nucleus, 12-thread Center i5 11400F performs arsenic recovered as the 19 percent Rocket Lake IPC uplift promises, because that $157 chipping could beryllium the ultimate budget gambling Processor.

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Intel Rocket Lake specifications and pricing — (Image credit: Intel)

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Intel Rocket Lake family — (Image credit: Intel)

Though how that each actually translates into final retail pricing, even so is still kinda up in the air. Those are fair-and-square the tray prices for the CPUs themselves, and when they impinge on retail the pricing will be different. Oh yea, equally I said sooner, they pretty a good deal cause hit retail now and the pricing is even more frustratingly spikey.

Micro Focus on has the Core i7 11700K available for pre-order now for $520, which makes IT $120 high than its tray price, and Newegg is list the Core i9 11900K for $614, which is $75 above Intel's listing Leontyne Price. Compare that with the Core i9 10850K, an admittedly somewhat slower ten-core, 20-screw thread processor, which is retailing for just $320 today, the pricing for Intel's new chips looks bizarre to say the least.

To Maine this feels like a massive missed chance for Intel, and has me questioning how much information technology really wants to writhe back the gaming mindshare that AMD has dominated in the DIY PC space for the last few years. There was a hazard here to get high volumes of chips out into the channel and undergo them priced at a level which could cause it tough to recommend a Ryzen break off as an alternative.

Intel Rocket Lake CPU exploded diagram showing die under heatspreader — (Image credit: Intel)

But the modish red team chips are as moral for play as Intel's finest, and information technology doesn't calculate like Rocket Lake is really loss to variety that except in few niche cases. With the pricing higher than Comet Lake we'ray going to struggle not to recommend the Ryzen 7 5800X, an eight-core, 16-thread flake, using AMD's latest Loony toons 3 architecture, because it's cheaper and straightaway actually available at just now $449.

And, when you prat find it, the 12-center Ryzen 9 5900X feels like the ace option to anything the 11th Gen seems to offer. Thereupon in mind, why would you earnings more for any eight-core Rocket Lake when AMD's silicon is a hypothesis?

The platform costs besides work many in AMD's favour overly, with X570 and B550 motherboards organism mature products now, with sheltered microcode, reliable pricing, and consistent support. And, y'know, a USB fail fix incoming too.

We can't even so speak to the performance of Intel's new Garden rocket Lake CPUs all the same, maybe they can deliver higher gaming operation with that 19 percent IPC boost. But, as we haven't managed to buy one ourselves, we are perplexed ready and waiting for the review embargo to pass at the end of the month.

And admittedly for our review samples to arrive in the body politic because Brexit has utterly ruined Great Britain trade in routes. Simply that's other rant...

Dave has been play since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Tease happening the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Speed up 2000!). He built his prototypical gaming PC at the tender historic period of 16, and in conclusion ended bug-fixture the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When He dropped information technology out of the windowpane. Atomic number 2 first started writing for Official PlayStation Clip and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format regular, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now helium's back, writing just about the nightmarish nontextual matter card food market, CPUs with much cores than feel, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs to a greater extent capacious than a Cybertruck.