Intel today announced the availability of its 11th-generation “Rocket Lake” Core S-series processors for desktop PCs. The big news this time around is a new microarchitecture, codenamed “Cypress Cove,” which replaces the old Skylake core that Intel has used since 2015.

“11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors are designed to transform hardware and software efficiency and increase raw gaming performance,” the Intel announcement notes​. “The new architecture adds Intel UHD graphics featuring the Intel Xe graphics architecture for rich media and intelligent graphics capabilities. That matters because games and most applications continue to depend on high-frequency cores to drive high frame rates and low latency.”

The new chipsets are built on Intel’s well-worn 14-nanometer manufacturing process, but the firm claims 8 to 19 percent performance improvements over the previous-generation Core desktop chips and a 3 to 11 percent improvement over the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. The graphics are up to 50 percent faster than previous-gen chipsets.

The most impressive chipset in this family is the Intel Core i9-11900K, which runs at up to 5.3 gigahertz and features eight processor cores, 16 threads, and 16 megabytes of Intel Smart Cache. This chip is unlocked and can be paired with fast DDR4-3200 RAM for the best gameplay experience, Intel says.

You can learn more about this chipset from the Intel website.

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