Intel Core i5 11600K + Core i9 11900K Linux Performance Across ~400 Benchmarks

Today's the day that we can finally talk about the performance of Intel's "Rocket Lake" processors under Linux. The past several weeks we have been extensively testing the Core i5 11600K and Core i9 11900K processors under Linux. Here is a look at the very exciting Gen12 Xe Graphics performance out of these new desktop CPUs, the Linux gaming performance, and then over 300 other benchmarks looking at the CPU/system performance of the i5-11600K / i9-11900K processors against the prior generation Comet Lake parts and the AMD Ryzen 5000 series competition.

Earlier this month we covered the basics of the Rocket Lake S 11th Gen CPUs while today the review embargo lifts for providing performance metrics on these new processors. Most significant with Rocket Lake is the back-porting of the Cypress Cove core back to a 14nm-based process. This can deliver up to a 19% IPC improvement but still have a difficult time competing with today's AMD Ryzen 5000 series competition for many workloads.

For those making use of integrated graphics, very excitingly is finally moving past Gen9 graphics to now having Gen12-based Xe Graphics on the desktop. The Gen12 graphics on the Core i5 and higher Rocket Lake parts have us quite excited in finally moving beyond Gen9 era graphics. Also exciting with Rocket Lake is the twenty PCIe 4.0 lanes, DL-BOOST / AVX-512 VNNI support on the desktop, and DDR4-3200 memory support.

Intel provided us with the Core i5 11600K and Core i9 11900K processors used for this launch day coverage. Given the prior overview and other Rocket Lake coverage in recent weeks, those of you interested are likely already familiar with the prominent changes so let's go straight to where we provide our value and that is on the Linux support. For launch day I carried out so far some 47 Gen12 Xe Graphics tests, two dozen Linux gaming dGPU benchmarks, and then over 300 Linux CPU/system benchmarks across Intel Rocket Lake, Comet Lake, and the AMD Ryzen 5000 series. All the highlights are in this article while every individual result in full remains available as always via OpenBenchmarking.org.

As most longtime Linux users know, Intel is normally very spot on in providing timely Linux support for their desktop (and server) platforms well ahead of launch. This normally includes all core functionality working well, the graphics support being well squared away, the compiler support all in-line, and "extras" like even the temperature/power reporting all being wired up. For these new processors, there was one minor exception...