Intel Core i7-11700K Review: Blasting Off with Rocket Lake
by Dr. Ian Cutress on March 5, 2021 4:30 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- 14nm
- Xe-LP
- Rocket Lake
- Cypress Cove
- i7-11700K
Gaming Tests: Borderlands 3
As a big Borderlands fan, having to sit and wait six months for the EPIC Store exclusive to expire before we saw it on Steam felt like a long time to wait. The fourth title of the franchise, if you exclude the TellTale style-games, BL3 expands the universe beyond Pandora and its orbit, with the set of heroes (plus those from previous games) now cruising the galaxy looking for vaults and the treasures within. Popular Characters like Tiny Tina, Claptrap, Lilith, Dr. Zed, Zer0, Tannis, and others all make appearances as the game continues its cel-shaded design but with the graphical fidelity turned up. Borderlands 1 gave me my first ever taste of proper in-game second order PhysX, and it’s a high standard that continues to this day.
BL3 works best with online access, so it is filed under our online games section. BL3 is also one of our biggest downloads, requiring 100+ GB. As BL3 supports resolution scaling, we are using the following settings:
- 360p Very Low, 1440p Very Low, 4K Very Low, 1080p Badass
BL3 has its own in-game benchmark, which recreates a set of on-rails scenes with a variety of activity going on in each, such as shootouts, explosions, and wildlife. The benchmark outputs its own results files, including frame times, which can be parsed for our averages/percentile data.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
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| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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With the 9900K sitting at 5.0 GHz, the fact that the 11700K only does single core 5.0 GHz shouldn't matter if the IPC gains on the core help push the needle. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do much in Borderlands.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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Makste - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Well.. if it was for the click bait, hre we are 😁half_mexican - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
This is from anandtech Dr. Ian Cutress"Latest beta BIOS from vendor, was told that they don't know when the next BIOS update will be and this contained everything to date. So unless you've got special information.
Note that this is always the risk of doing reviews even on launch day. At some point you have to lock in a BIOS version for published results. Vendors who send BIOSes 24 hours before embargo lift are told to go away."
terroradagio - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
It has been well discussed that there is a forthcoming update coming. That is why the release and NDA is the way it is.Spunjji - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
I'm sure it will make a huuuuge difference. Especially for all the poor sods who bought Z490 in anticipation of a compatible upgrade. /sOtritus - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
I mean the leaks suggest that z590 motherboards having some problems resulting in performance regressions. So some poor sod who bought into z490 got to enjoy a fast cpu and can upgrade to an even faster one. AMD is obviously the best for non-avx-512 workloads, but where I am I can't find one for a reasonable price, so Intel is the only viable option. Perhaps the real travesty here is the lack of capacity in TSMC's 7nm node preventing us from buying excellent cpus and gpus at reasonable prices.Qasar - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
the question is, how many things actually use these special avx instructions ?? a handful ? unless you know you can use it, no point in them. seems intel creates these, just so it can win a benchmark.IanCutress - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
People forget that Anand posted our Sandy Bridge review several months early.terroradagio - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
So that makes this right? If I were Intel, I'd be revoking your early samples.Ryan Smith - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Yes, this makes this right.AnandTech has always honored NDAs, and continues to honor this one. We adhere to the requirements of every agreement we sign, even when doing so is not in our best financial interests. We do this because we're honest people, and just as pragmatically, we need hardware vendors to be able to trust us.
The flip side to that, however, is that retail hardware always has (and always will be) fair game. This was a processor sold by a major European retailer, tested in a motherboard based on a chipset that has been selling at retail for the past couple of months.
Although Intel may not be happy with that retailer over their lapse, at the end of the day this is final silicon running on final silicon. We have done every bit of due diligence both to ensure the accuracy of our results, and to inform the necessary parties in advance about what we intend to do, in case they wish to raise any issues with us.
So we stand by this review both from a technical perspective and an ethical perspective. All of this material was handled in a fair manner that was entirely above the board and legal in all steps of the process.
terroradagio - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Using a processor that isn't suppose to be sold is sketchy, plain and simple. And you know full well this. It is not to the benefit of anyone who may be interested in this part. You are thinking about yourselves, full tilt. And that is your choice. You have no idea what could happen with this update they are talking about. Will it be magic? Probably not. But will it have fixes for other things in your review? Perhaps. So therefore you are putting out an inaccurate piece for the purpose of getting out early that may very well be inaccurate in parts at the end of the month. And quite clearly from the comments here, feeding many hungry AMD fanboys.I'm not mad at you, just disappointed. Enjoy the attention.