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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Timoo - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
"You are reviewing a device that is not ready to be sold yet."Sorry?
It came from a European retailer. Therefore it is ready to be sold.
"Not officially launched yet" would be more accurate.
ballsystemlord - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Nice one @Ryan . Keep up the good work.Spunjji - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Well said, Ryan.pentiuman - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
I understand AnandTech has honored their applicable NDA. And that you informed Intel of yourintentions or whatever. And that you didn't break any laws. And you also considered the early release OK because the chip was (what would be sold here in the US) retail. But I think I agree w/ User terroradagio and some others in that, Anandtech shouldn't have released their review early because they happened upon a favorable, early deal - (which itself may have been contrary to an Intel company policy w/ the retailer), not available to any other reviewer or consumer. It's taking advantage of a slip in how the system was supposed to work. You don't want to see it as wrong because it's almost like time doesn't really matter. In the end, you're still buying the product, doing the work, publishing and maintaining the website and revisiting the numbers and updating the motherboard and more and more work. You do all this hard work, and you're highly respected, (and for good reason), so for these good reasons, and more, I think this clouds your decision on this matter. I just feel that all tech sites should respect the same release review date! To not do so reminds me of the less ethical journalism methods used by some photographers, who then sell them legally to the newspapers. But integrity goes deep - more than 1 level.
The benefit Anandtech COULD take is the one that they have apparently become so used to, that it is assumed. The ability to buy the chip before consumers, test it, write their review, and click
the mouse to post it 1 second after the NDA says they could. (My point here is, some reviewers are either not able to buy them early, or not given the chips, don't have the connections to buy them, and have to wait to buy them like any other consumer, to test them, review them and then publish.)
In other words, you are already at an advantage over some reviewers by your early access to the
chip - and have weeks more than them to test it. Publishing it 3 weeks earlier than your standard
NDA (that may not apply), before nearly anyone else, is (in my opinion) an unfair advantage. You
are a well established website and reviewer - so I'm not saying you did it for the views. I just
feel it's not right. I get it - you must have a different ethical view. Thank you for the review otherwise.
Qasar - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
pentiuman, and would you be saying the same thing if another site did this, or were also able to get one of these cpus to test ? or maybe, like others have suggested, some just dont like to see intel in such a disappointing light ?Timoo - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
Why has Anandtech here an advantage?If you wish to write an early review, you can too.
The CPU is simply for sale, apparently.
https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-core-i7-11700...
Timoo - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
*update: not anymore, apparently.Sold out or rebuked by Intel?
Spunjji - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
Every other reviewer out there had the chance to take advantage of this "slip", so it's not unethical.Unethical would be taking advantage of insider contacts to produce an officially-sanctioned "preview" prior to release of a product and formal reviews that provides a misleading picture of the product's performance, like DF did with Nvidia and the RTX 3080.
lmcd - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Any coverage of Rocket Lake is good coverage at this point. "People know it exists so hopefully they'll buy it."movax2 - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
I really don't understand why You attack anadtech. Intel Rocket Lake sucks... not anadtech!!Get it right already!