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 | ||||
95th Percentile |
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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JimmyTheFish - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
*11700KDamn this stupid naming scheme.
EasterEEL - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
I'm still struggling to find a 5800X at a sensible price and now waiting to see how the USB connectivity issues with 500 series motherboards is resolved.Cooe - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
...R7 5800X was literally on sale at MSRP all day yesterday on Amazon. Probably still is tbh.Freeb!rd - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
A quick search shows it available at Newegg & B&H both at MSRP; wait, my bad B&H added 99cents to $449.99.Kallan007 - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
I don't think you are even trying; Amazon has AMD Ryzen 7 5800X in stock at Price: $449.99 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0815XFSGK?tag=nismain-2...Gich - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Almost always available on AMD own shop.Marlin1975 - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
https://smile.amazon.com/AMD-Ryzen-5800X-16-Thread...Selling at MSRP, not some marked up price all day long.
Cooe - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Stop lying. The R7 5800X is EVERYWHERE at MSRP.Qasar - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
no its not, 2 comp stores here, are still sold out of zen 3Bfree4me - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
MicroCenter had it priced at $285 just last week.