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 |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| 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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nandnandnand - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Alder Lake on 10nm will fix everything, and be out before the end of the year.kgardas - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
The power consumption you comment shows while using AVX512 on hand optimized test. Your idea about Alder Lake to solve this is not the correct one as Alder Lake itself will not implement AVX512 ISA at all. IMHO very bad decision by Intel again.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Yeah, some weak ant sized atom cores are what intel needs to fix this problem LOLnandnandnand - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
You don't need more than 8 big cores for gaming. With a real IPC improvement, 8+8 should be able to beat the 5900X.lmcd - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Not likely, but it'll at least beat the 5800X and probably go even on efficiency. The real upside is in the server space and laptop space. I expect Alder Lake to do excellently in both of those segments.nandnandnand - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Alder Lake's Golden Cove cores should have a decent IPC improvement over Rocket Lake, so 8 of those cores should be able to match more than 8 Zen 3 cores. Then throw in the 8 Gracemont Atom cores which will be better than Tremont. 8+8 should top 5900X but not 5950X in multi-threaded, and beat Zen 3 in gaming.There's caveats, perhaps related to DDR5 or schedulers, but I will be surprised if the top Alder Lake chip can't beat the 5900X.
DigitalFreak - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Sorry, but in this case 8 + 8 does not equal 16.nandnandnand - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
5900X is 12 cores, not 16. That's what Alder Lake 8+8 has a chance of beating.SaturnusDK - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
The problem is that Alder Lake has been pushed to second half of 2021 at the earliest so it will not be competing against Zen3 but Zen4.Pneumothorax - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
It might be able to beat the 5900x, but by the time you add in Intel's overpriced motherboards (have you looked at Z590's recently?!) and the premium of DDR5, you're going to be at 5950x+ pricing.