Intel 8c/16t Rocket Lake score appears on Geekbench

A seemingly legitimate score for an engineering sample of an unreleased Intel CPU has appeared on the Geekbench database, and all signs are that it’s a Rocket Lake 11th Gen Core desktop CPU with an 8c/16t design and a peak boost speed of 5GHz.

The result, tipped to us by Leakbench, shows a single-core score of 1,507 and a multi-core score of 7,603 in Geekbench 5.2.0:

The name ‘Intel 0000’ is typically used by engineering samples, and the Model and Motherboard names indicate that Intel is the manufacturer, strongly suggesting that it’s an internal test motherboard. They include Rocket Lake in the title, so it's pretty likely that's the family of the CPU being tested.

Rocket Lake refers to the 11th Gen Core processors expected to usurp the 10th Gen Core Comet Lake CPUs (which include the Core i9-10900K) As we know from Intel’s recent earning report in which it confirmed 10nm desktop CPUs will start with Alder Lake, Rocket Lake will be manufactured on the 14nm process. Moving into rumour territory, the latest understanding on the rumour mill is that Rocket Lake will drop back down to a maximum offering of eight cores and 16 threads (8c/16t) as it switches to an architecture that is said to be a hybrid of Sunny Cove and Willow Cove from Ice Lake and Tiger Lake respectively.

If the rumours are true, the new Geekbench score may well be from an engineering sample of the flagship offering, and the 5GHz boost frequency will certainly please Intel fans worried about potential IPC loss from the new design. While an 8c/16t Rocket Lake CPU on Geekbench was already seen a month ago, the maximum frequency there was 4.3GHz and it was a chip with an iGPU. There’s no iGPU information on the new score, maybe suggesting that Intel will have Rocket Lake CPUs both with and without iGPUs and may be able to hit higher frequencies on those without them.

Yep, that’s a whole load of speculation with a side of ifs and maybes, but sometimes it’s fun to speculate about what’s to come. How do you think Rocket Lake will shape up, and when’s your best guess for a launch date now that we know Alder Lake is due in the second half of 2021 and 7nm has been pushed back to late 2022 at the earliest?