Intel Core i9-11900K CPU leak could disappoint gamers

Intel CPU
(Image credit: Intel)

Performance benchmarks have appeared for Intel’s Core i9-11900K, the incoming Rocket Lake flagship CPU, having been tested on a Z590 motherboard with a Gigabyte Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card.

The CPU was tested against AMD Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 7 5800X processors by  Chinese media outlet 二斤自制 on Bilibili and YouTube

It's important to note here that both the Intel Core i9-11900K and the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G do not represent finished products and are both still in development. There are no official launch dates for either of these processors at the time of writing, and as with all benchmark leaks, we should remain cautious and not take the results as gospel.

The Core 19-11900K will feature 8-cores, 16-threads, and a maximum boost clock of 5.2GHz as its final specification according to previous leaks. The chip will also feature Thermal Velocity Boost which should deliver a 100 MHz jump in the max clock frequency, leading to a single-core boost clock of 5.3 GHz. If true, this would give it the crown for the fastest result ever seen in Geekbench.

These predicted speeds are backed up thanks to some leaked benchmarks by Twitter User HXL, revealing the Intel Core i9-11900K has faster performance than both rival AMD CPUs in both single and multi-core benchmark applications.

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Ryzen gaming comparison

This all seems like a clear win for Intel until we hit potential gaming performance. Despite its projected record-breaking clock speeds, the Intel Core i9-11900K can barely compete against the Ryzen 7 5800X in some gaming tests. Another Twitter user Harukaze compiled a graph with average FPS results at 1080p.

intel i9-11900k gaming benchmarks

(Image credit: Twitter/@harukaze5719)

We obviously need to be very careful about taking these results as anything like concrete, though, and that’s certainly the case with the gaming benchmarks which are provided here as well. It should also be mentioned that the Intel Core i9-11900K is incredibly overpowered to be used as a gaming-only CPU, with less expensive processors being more suited to a build that will purely be used for PC gaming.

Still, this is another interesting glimpse into the potential performance of the Rocket Lake flagship, coming on top of several other recent leaks. We won't know for sure how these currently unreleased CPUs perform until they actually hit the shelves, which is currently rumored to be around March 2021.

Via WCCFTech

Jess Weatherbed

Jess is a former TechRadar Computing writer, where she covered all aspects of Mac and PC hardware, including PC gaming and peripherals. She has been interviewed as an industry expert for the BBC, and while her educational background was in prosthetics and model-making, her true love is in tech and she has built numerous desktop computers over the last 10 years for gaming and content creation. Jess is now a journalist at The Verge.