Review: Intel tries its best, but the Core i9-11900K fails to shine
(Windows Phone Central)

Intel`s last hurrah on 14nm doesn`t push the needle in any meaningful way. Intel had a clearly defined tick-tock strategy: with every generation, we got a fabrication enhancement (tick) followed by a refresh of the microarchitecture to leverage the full gains of that node (tock). This has worked reliably all the way from 65nm to 14nm, and solidified Intel`s position as the leading chip manufacturer in the world. Then came 10nm. Intel just couldn`t find a way to scale its 10nm node effectively, so it instead fell back to 14nm and focused on architectural changes to deliver performance gains with every new launch. What was meant to be a stop-gap measure ended up being a six-year undertaking that`s continuing to this day — last year`s Core i9-10900K was meant to be the last of the 14nm design, but Intel has continued to use the node in 2021 with Rocket Lake. Although Rocket Lake is built on 14nm, it uses the Sunny Cove microarchitecture; initially designed for 10nm, the cores have ...