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: Gears Tactics
Remembering the original Gears of War brings back a number of memories – some good, and some involving online gameplay. The latest iteration of the franchise was launched as I was putting this benchmark suite together, and Gears Tactics is a high-fidelity turn-based strategy game with an extensive single player mode. As with a lot of turn-based games, there is ample opportunity to crank up the visual effects, and here the developers have put a lot of effort into creating effects, a number of which seem to be CPU limited.
Gears Tactics has an in-game benchmark, roughly 2.5 minutes of AI gameplay starting from the same position but using a random seed for actions. Much like the racing games, this usually leads to some variation in the run-to-run data, so for this benchmark we are taking the geometric mean of the results. One of the biggest things that Gears Tactics can do is on the resolution scaling, supporting 8K, and so we are testing the following settings:
- 720p Low, 4K Low, 8K Low, 1080p Ultra
For results, the game showcases a mountain of data when the benchmark is finished, such as how much the benchmark was CPU limited and where, however none of that is ever exported into a file we can use. It’s just a screenshot which we have to read manually.
If anyone from the Gears Tactics team wants to chat about building a benchmark platform that would not only help me but also every other member of the tech press build our benchmark testing platform to help our readers decide what is the best hardware to use on your games, please reach out to ian@anandtech.com. Some of the suggestions I want to give you will take less than half a day and it’s easily free advertising to use the benchmark over the next couple of years (or more).
As with the other benchmarks, we do as many runs until 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination has passed. For this benchmark, we manually read each of the screenshots for each quality/setting/run combination. The benchmark does also give 95th percentiles and frame averages, so we can use both of these data points.
| 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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Gears is the one test where at our 1080p Maximum settings it shines ahead of the pack. Although at high resolution, low quality, although all five CPUs are essentially equal, it still sits behind AMD's Ryzen APU.
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.