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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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 ?