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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dihartnell - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Traditionally Big.Little designs don't work that way. They either are running the big 8 cores or they are running the little eight cores but not at the same time. The type of workload determines which is run when. Personally don't think it makes a lot of sense In desktop.Jasonovich - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
And whats the point of the little chip big chip design, when TMSC will very shortly produce in mass the 5nm and in 2023 the production will move to 3nm.Alderlake is based on the worse case scenario and has been introduced to buy Intel time until it resolves the shortfalls of their 10nm production.
lmcd - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
You're really confused if you think Atom doesn't help Intel here. Tremont performance per watt and performance per die area is really quite excellent. Also worth remembering that nearly every Atom you've ever seen has had mediocre memory and cooling paired with it. I don't expect Intel to "win" off of this move but it'll help for as long as Intel doesn't have chiplet ready.The_Assimilator - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Even if it does - and Intel's current record on 10nm suggests it won't - by that time AMD will have had over a year of Zen 3 reining unopposed, and Zen 4 well on the way.The_Assimilator - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
*reigningm53 - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
291W is for AVX512 workload. The rest of the CPUs here won't match it's performance on AVX512 workloads no matter how much power you give them.But if you are not interested in AVX512 workloads then don't look at the AVX512 power consumption.
scineram - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Already beaten in DigiCortex.RaistlinZ - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Ouch. :(terroradagio - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
It is incredible bad form and bad taste to release a review before anyone else and before Intel has provided the new microcode update to resolve the early issues. All because Anandtech wants to get out early.And your defense by way of saying well we got it at retail and therefore this doesn't matter is a joke. Terrible publication.
Makaveli - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
lol that power consumption really bothering you ?