Intel's Rocket Lake chips are still months away, but leaked gaming benchmarks may have revealed for the first time what these 11th generation CPUs are capable of.

Noted leaker TUM_APISAK found a system running on a Core i9-11900K. Presumably the top-of-the-line model in the upcoming Rocket Lake series, it passed the famously demanding Ashes of the Singularity (AotS) benchmark.Twitter user Evan Stenger (@TheMalacor), in a separate benchmark He replied to the entry, indicating that a system with AMD's nearly equivalent Ryzen 9 5950X scored lower in the same test.

Specifically, both systems were paired with Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards, and when the benchmark was run with the "Crazy 1080p" setting, the Intel-based system scored 63 frames per second and the AMD-based system scored 57fps The 6fps difference is not dramatically noticeable, but it does give Rocket Lake about a 10% advantage. If you are planning a high-end gaming rig, this difference should not be overlooked.

Gaming performance has been a major focus for both CPU manufacturers over the past few generations, and the battle was particularly fierce last year.

Intel's 10th generation Comet Lake chips have impressively established themselves as the best CPUs for gaming before AMD's Ryzen 5000 series offered cheaper and more competitive performance. If this benchmark leak is any indication, Intel is likely to continue its speed advantage in the next generation.

However, there are a few caveats to consider. First, the Core i9-11900K listed in the AotS benchmark results is likely an early engineering sample and does not necessarily match the final product. Second, the conditions under which the benchmarks were run are unknown, and it is possible to fudge or completely falsify the results.

Therefore, this leak should be approached with the usual healthy skepticism. It is worth noting, however, that the apparent Core i9-11900K is only a few frames faster than the current model Core i9-10900K results. In any case, we will see how well Rocket Lake performs in gaming when this chip family is released in 2021.