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: GTA 5
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA to help optimize the title. At this point GTA V is super old, but still super useful as a benchmark – it is a complicated test with many features that modern titles today still struggle with. With rumors of a GTA 6 on the horizon, I hope Rockstar make that benchmark as easy to use as this one is.
GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
We are using the following settings:
- 720p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data. The benchmark can also be called from the command line, making it very easy to use.
There is one funny caveat with GTA. If the CPU is too slow, or has too few cores, the benchmark loads, but it doesn’t have enough time to put items in the correct position. As a result, for example when running our single core Sandy Bridge system, the jet ends up stuck at the middle of an intersection causing a traffic jam. Unfortunately this means the benchmark never ends, but still amusing.
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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.