Intel's 11th generation Rocket Lake desktop processors will be released in March, an MSI representative posted on the Korean Danawa forum.

As spotted (translated) by Twitter user @harukaze5719, this new CPU is "slated for release at the end of March" and could be a strong competitor to AMD's Ryzen 5000 processor.

This confirms earlier rumors that Rocket Lake will be released in March, less than a year after the announcement of the 10th generation CPU, Comet Lake. The forum post was edited but also confirmed that Rocket Lake is backward compatible with older H410, B460, and Z490 motherboard chipsets.

The post indicates that older chipsets require a firmware update to work with the newer chips, but the Z490 is set to be the first to have that update available. In any case, backward compatibility means that Rocket Lake will use the same LGA1200 socket as Comet Lake. This will be useful for those who want to upgrade their processor but do not want to purchase a new motherboard at the same time.

The success of the Ryzen 5000 family may have prompted Intel to introduce Rocket Lake early. In one leaked benchmark, the 11th generation Intel Core i9-11900K has a slight edge in gaming over the high-end Ryzen 9 5950X. [This is because unlike AMD, Intel has not yet moved to more efficient 10nm or 7nm designs. However, Rocket Lake is said to bring many other improvements over Comet Lake, including PCIe 4.0 support, Thunderbolt 4 compatibility, and Xe graphics support.

PCIe 4.0 is a particularly welcome feature, as 10th generation motherboards supported the faster connection, but Comet Lake CPUs themselves did not.

Expect to hear more about Intel's next-generation processors at CES 2021, which will essentially be a virtual event thanks to the coronavirus outbreak; Tom'sGuide will bring you the best news from this major technology show, and we'll be sure to keep you up to date on the latest news as it happens.