Intel has confirmed that its 11th generation desktop processors, codenamed "Rocket Lake," will take off in Q1 2021. This means that a new Intel gaming CPU will be available by the end of March to compete with the AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors that will be announced this week.

Yes, it is probably no coincidence that the timing of Intel's announcement, tacked on at the end of a Medium blog post by Intel's John Bonini, was published on the eve of AMD's big announcement. Bonini is the head of Intel's Client Group Desktop, Workstation, and Gaming, one of the longest titles in the company.

The Rocket Lake sneak peek also notes that it will be the first Intel desktop platform to support PCI Express 4.0 connectivity: AMD's RX 5000 series graphics cards, and now Nvidia's RTX 30 series GPUs support PCIe 4.0, but there is no significant difference in gaming performance. However, having a platform that supports a new level of storage would be a big plus for Intel's next-generation gaming setup.

The blog post is titled "Intel's Commitment to Gaming, and a Sneak Peek at Intel Technology to Come." Bonini specifically refers to Rocket Lake as a chip that will be "another great processor for gaming."

However, other than announcing a release date for the 11th generation desktop and PCIe 4.0 support, this is all that is written in the sneak peek. Especially considering that the launch of the next generation AMD Zen 3 processor could change the gaming CPU landscape.

Intel Rocket Lake will be another 14nm chip, but it is expected to have a different CPU core architecture at its heart. Whether it is a backport of the 10nm Willow Cove or Sunny Cove design is not entirely clear yet, but it could be a hybrid of the two advanced architectures.

But in any case, the instruction per clock (IPC) should certainly increase compared to current Comet Lake chips. This could be key, as the new Zen 3-based AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPUs are said to have much higher IPCs than the previous generation of Zen 2 processors.

If you recently purchased the Comet Lake lineup or were hoping to pick up an Intel CPU on Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday, Rocket Lake may make you reconsider. That said, the Z490 motherboard platform should be able to support 11th generation Intel chips, and some even incorporate pseudo-PCIe 4.0 support.

However, this announcement may cause some to reconsider purchasing a Core i9 10900K or Core i7 10700K.

The early 2021 release of Rocket Lake processors will also tie in with the launch of 10nm Alder Lake CPUs late next year. These processors could be Intel's first 16-core, 32-thread chips, and could be the more exciting processors to hit the desktop with a revolutionary, controversial, and brave new architectural design.