Intel Rocket Lake (14nm) Review: Core i9-11900K, Core i7-11700K, and Core i5-11600K
by Dr. Ian Cutress on March 30, 2021 10:03 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- LGA1200
- 11th Gen
- Rocket Lake
- Z590
- B560
- Core i9-11900K
Conclusion
For anyone buying a new system today, the market is a little bleak. Anyone wanting a new GPU has to actively pay attention to stock levels, or drive to a local store for when a delivery arrives. The casual buyers then either look to pre-built systems (which are also flying off the shelves), or just hang on to what they have for another year.
But there is another way. I find that users fall in to two camps.
The first camp is the ‘upgrade everything at once’ attitude. These users sell their old systems and buy, mostly, all anew. Depending on budget and savings, this is probably a good/average system, and it means you get a good run of what’s available at that time. It’s a multi-year upgrade cycle where you might get something good for that generation, and hopefully everything is balanced.
The other camp is the ‘upgrade one piece at a time’. This means that if it’s time to upgrade a storage drive, or a memory kit, or a GPU, or a CPU, you get the best you can afford at that time. So you might end up with an older CPU but a top end GPU, good storage, good power supply, and then next time around, it’s all about CPU and motherboard upgrades. This attitude has the potential for more bottlenecks, but it means you often get the best of a generation, and each piece holds its resale value more.
In a time where we have limited GPUs available, I can very much see users going all out on the CPU/memory side of the equation, perhaps spending a bit extra on the CPU, while they wait for the graphics market to come back into play. After all, who really wants to pay $1300 for an RTX 3070 right now?
Performance and Analysis
In our Core i7-11700K review, our conclusions there are very much broadly applicable here. Intel’s Rocket Lake as a backported processor design has worked, but has critical issues with efficiency and peak power draw. Compared to the previous generation, clock-for-clock performance gains for math workloads are 16-22% or 6-18% for other workloads, however the loss of two cores really does restrict how much of a halo product it can be in light of what AMD is offering.
Rocket Lake makes good in offering PCIe 4.0, and enabling new features like Gear ratios for the memory controller, as well as pushing for more support for 2.5 gigabit Ethernet, however it becomes a tough sell. At the time we reviewed the Core i7-11700K, we didn’t know the pricing, and it was looking like AMD’s stock levels were pretty bad, subsequently making Intel the default choice. Since then, Intel's pricing hasn't turned out too bad for its performance compared to AMD (except for the Core i9), however AMD’s stock is a lot more bountiful.
For anyone looking at the financials for Intel, the new processor is 25% bigger than before, but not being sold for as big a margin as you might expect. In some discussions in the industry, it looks like retailers are getting roughly 20%/80% stock for Core i9 to Core i7, indicating that Intel is going to be very focused on that Core i7 market around $400-$450. In that space, AMD and Intel both have well-performing products, however AMD gets an overall small lead and is much more efficient.
However, with the GPU market being so terrible, users could jump an extra $100 and get 50% more AMD cores. When AMD is in stock, Intel’s Rocket Lake is more about the platform than the processor. If I said that that the Rocket Lake LGA1200 platform had no upgrade potential, for users buying in today, an obvious response might be that neither does AM4, and you’d be correct. However, for any user buying a Core i7-11700K on an LGA1200 today, compared to a Ryzen 7 5800X customer on AM4, the latter still has the opportunity to go to 16 cores if needed. Rocket Lake comes across with a lot of dead-ends in that regard, especially as the next generation is meant to be on a new socket, and with supposedly new memory.
Rocket Lake: Failed Experiment, or Good Attempt?
For Intel, Rocket Lake is a dual purpose design. On the one hand, it provides Intel with something to put into its desktop processor roadmap while the manufacturing side of the business is still getting sorted. On the other hand it gives Intel a good marker in the sand for what it means to backport a processor.
Rocket Lake, in the context of backporting, has been a ‘good attempt’ – good enough to at least launch into the market. It does offer performance gains in several key areas, and does bring AVX-512 to the consumer market, albeit at the expense of power. However in a lot of use cases that people are enabling today, which aren’t AVX-512 enabled, there’s more performance to be had with older processors, or the competition. Rocket Lake also gets you PCIe 4.0, however users might feel that is a small add-in when AMD has PCIe 4.0, lower power, and better general performance for the same price.
Intel’s future is going to be full of processor cores built for multiple process nodes. What makes Rocket Lake different is that when the core was designed for 10nm, it was solely designed for 10nm, and no thought was ever given to a 14nm version. The results in this review show that this sort of backporting doesn’t really work, not to the same level of die size, performance, and profit margin needed to move forward. It was a laudable experiment, but in the future, Intel will need to co-design with multiple process nodes in mind.
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Qasar - Thursday, April 1, 2021 - link
" calling out Intel shills when I see them " ahh so you are calling out your self then ?the point you are making, is more like your own OPINION then any thing else. while YOU may not see the point in getting a cheap vid card so you can at least use the over all better cpu ( zen 3) then this dud, others may be fine with it. a few people i work with, are currently waiting for zen 3 to be in stock, and will upgrade to it, they have seen the reviews of rocket lake, and have no issues waiting, cause they know they will still be getting the better cpu.
" then there is zero value in any AMD CPU currently. " again YOUR opinion.
vanish1 - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
Youre cherry picking words from my overall statement, nice try Intel shill. IF YOU ARE BUILDING A NEW PC RIGHT NOW THERE IS ZERO VALUE IN AMD CPUS. Some people actually care about spending their money frugally, not having to spend hundreds of dollars on a GPU they dont want just to make their CPU work.Beyond that, if E-peen matters so much to you and money is no object then why waste your cash in the first place on E-waste GPU, isnt it even more baller to buy a GPU when its most expensive? If you care so much about having the BEST cpu that does the BEST in every benchmark, how dare you grace its presence with such a lowly dGPU like a rx550 or gtx970? Hmmm conflict of interest, picks and chooses what part of the GPU crisis to support instead of skipping it completely.
Sorry you two, some of us live in the real world where money matters more than E-peen and video gaming addictions.
Qasar - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
and you are trying to make an argument that so far, only YOU seem to be making, on here, and on other sites. YOU are the intel shill here, not me, nice try, if i was an intel shill would i be calling rocket lake a dud, or the better cpu being Zen 3 ? " IF YOU ARE BUILDING A NEW PC RIGHT NOW THERE IS ZERO VALUE IN AMD CPUS " and its YOUR opinion, plain and simple, while YOU see no value in them, i'd guess others see A LOT more value in them, then rocket lake." not having to spend hundreds of dollars on a GPU they dont want just to make their CPU work. " ahh so now, 50 bucks is hundreds if dollars ? and its doubtful someone buying the top, lets say 2 rocket lake cpus, is going to then use the IGP to play games on, that are recent, come on, get real.
with the way you keep crying about a 50 buck gpu being ewaste, you must have a comp that is quite old, so you can flex you own epeen, and not contribute e waste your self.
the fact that you are now, resorting to insults and name calling, proves nothing more then the fact you are probable just a child, have a good day, and i hope your old comp doesnt die on you, so you have to contribute to e waste yourself.
BushLin - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
vanish1: OMG ewaste! OMG be frugal with money...Also vanish1: advocates buying 200w CPU on 6 year old 14nm process and a new motherboard which won't support future 10nm/7nm CPUs. Delivering about half the performance per watt of current AMD CPUs and needs custom water cooling or datacentre loud fans just to do that.
You're either an Intel shareholder, somehow trying to justify to yourself your bad purchase or just... you know, dumb.
vanish1 - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
@qasar go home bud, you lost the argument days ago.@bushlin ahhh you, the shill, continues to spread FUD. You know nanometer size isnt a 1:1 standard across the industry right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROS008Av4E4 Linus is asking you sit down now please.
Beyond that, most people actually use their computer for longer than a product cycle and could really care less what cpu upgrade path exists, if you genuinely think 5 years from now a 6 or 8 core processor will be out of date then you need to seriously need to get your head checked. PC industry standards move independently of each category. You think SK Hynix cares about Intel and AMDs CPU upgrade paths when theyre ready to push DDR5 onto the world? (the answer is no).
11600k + mobo + money in my pocket = winning
5600x + mobo - overpriced dGPU to make it work = losing
BushLin - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
" You know nanometer size isnt a 1:1 standard across the industry right?"Yes, obviously since I talked about *future* 10nm/7nm CPUs which only applies to Intel's metric as TSMC are knocking out 7nm Zen3 and 5nm Apple SoCs.
"11600k + mobo + money in my pocket = winning"
You have an office PC for a couple of years, by the time GPU shortages end you've got a terrible value for money, inefficient platform to slot a GPU into; by then, the same money you spent today would buy you a 5nm/3nm CPU with better IPC, DDR5 and even bigger gulf in performance per watt compared to your space heater, factory overclocked build.
Qasar - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
sounds more like you lost the argument as i have suggested counter point to you BS claims about ewaste and such. bottom line is, from what it sounds like you only prefer the intel cpus, cause of the iGPU, which is fine but there ARE other options, its just you sound to cheap to consider them. a discrete vid card, can and could be used in pretty much any comp, so its not a waste as you claim.11600k + mobo + money in my pocket = winning
5600x + mobo - overpriced dGPU to make it work = losing
this is YOUR opinion nothing more.
29a - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
I just bought a brand new AMD processor.vanish1 - Monday, April 5, 2021 - link
https://youtu.be/KPgmeNstLa8?t=722Where the clip starts the first guy has a Ryzen system sitting unused, using his phone instead.
The next one after, same situation no GPU, but Intel build, and look its running.
step back fade away J for the win at the buzzer.....swooshhhhhh
vanish1 - Monday, April 5, 2021 - link
Seriously; outside of work, do not support the GPU industry currently in any form, shape, or manner.