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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Makaveli - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
lol the only one looking like a fanboy is you.DigitalFreak - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Why so butthurt? You wouldn't be on here whining if the benchmarks were in Intel's favor. Never understood the fanboi mentality.arashi - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Because now his website won't get the views he thought they'd get.Spunjji - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Nice projection there.MarcusMo - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
”Using a processor that isn't suppose to be sold is sketchy”The operative word you’re missing is “yet”. The batch of processors this one is from is Intel release silicon intended for end customer hands. And there are more out there. This article represents exactly the kind of performance that at least some day one customers should expect. Now maybe there will be updates to the software stack that will improve performance over time, but that doesn’t make this review any less valid.
Slash3 - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Appreciate the statement, Ryan.Pre-release content is nothing new for AnandTech, and it's interesting to see how passionately some people feel about the topic. Might be something worth exploring in a future article, as I'd wager that there are a lot of readers who weren't around to see things like the original Sandy Bridge pre-review which Ian referenced in another reply.
CiccioB - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
I think the criticism on this review is quite justified.You are reviewing a device that is not ready to be sold yet.
Yes, you could buy it at retail but just because, like you, some other "smart guy" made the wrong (would say fraudolent) move to not respect a date.
What we have here is a "preview" of the CPU performances that may (or not, but you don't know now) change when the CPU will really available for the rest of the mortals on the globe.
I would like to think that you will do a new review of the CPU once the motherboards will be updated and make evidence if, how and by how much something has changed since this preview with what are early samples that results being compatible with the device.
However, while you were at it, you could also try PCI4 connected memory storage to see how good Intel implementation of the technology is.
MFinn3333 - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
"You are reviewing a device that is not ready to be sold yet." How is it Ian or Ryan's fault that Intel released a CPU in this condition? If Intel isn't doing any QA on their end for proper use out of the box then the problem is on their end.And yes, they did release it in that condition because unless they intend to recall all the packages and open them up and replace the CPU inside, it is the product that people are going to be getting and using when they open it up and slapping it in their computer. I used to work retail and getting new product on major releases is usually about 3-4 weeks ahead.
Following your logic then they shouldn't do a review unless they are willing to also update all of the AMD CPU's as well to include their performance and bug fixes which would turn bench-marking into a never ending nightmare because of updates.
Intel whiffed this release, get over it.
CiccioB - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
You have misses that Intel has not released the product yet and the samples you can find on the market come from a seller that broke the NDA and start selling them before the official release time.They are actually are in beta support with BIOS, microcode, drivers and such on not final motherboards as well.
Once you understand that you'll understand why this is a preview or a beta test, not a full review of the product.
Qasar - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
um THE HAVE RELEASED THEM. the store just started selling them early, that is the stores fault. you are grasping at straws.