Intel Core i5 Rocket Lake-S CPU fails to match AMD in leaked benchmarks

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The Intel Core i5-11400 has debuted on Geekbench, giving us a glimpse of Intel’s upcoming Rocket Lake-S CPU lineup beyond the heavily-leaked Intel Core i9-11900K.

According to the Geekbench listing, spotted by Videocardz, the Core i5-11400 features 6 cores and 12 threads and will be based on the 14nm Cypress Cove architecture, which Intel claims will deliver double-digit IPC gains over its previous-generation Skylake platform. 

In terms of clock speeds, the Intel Core i5-11400 features a 2GHz base clock and a 4.4GHz boost clock. By comparison, its predecessor - the Core i5-10400 - boasts a higher base clock of 2.9GHz, but a lower boost clock of 4.3GHz

When it comes to performance, Geekbench 5 benchmarks show that the Rocket Lake-S CPU is on roughly 9% faster than its predecessor. 

The desktop processor racked up a single-core score of 1248 and a multi-core score of 6197. What's more, Videocardz speculates that we’re likely looking at an ES2 engineering sample, which should offer similar if not the same performance as retail units.

These scores show a 12% jump over the Core i5-10400 in single-core performance, and a multi-core boost of 9%, despite its lower base clock speed. 

The CPU also comes close to rivalling the Core i7-8700K in the performance stakes, though fails to match AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X. In Geekbench 5, the Zen 3 processor manages around 30% higher performance on both single-core and multi-core metrics compared to Intel’s incoming Rocket-Lake S chip. 

The Rocket Lake-S desktop CPUs are expected to start shipping in March this year, following the arrival of Intel’s 500-series boards this month. 

Carly Page

Carly Page is a Freelance journalist, copywriter and editor specialising in Consumer/B2B technology. She has written for a range of titles including Computer Shopper, Expert Reviews, IT Pro, the Metro, PC Pro, TechRadar and Tes.