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: Borderlands 3
As a big Borderlands fan, having to sit and wait six months for the EPIC Store exclusive to expire before we saw it on Steam felt like a long time to wait. The fourth title of the franchise, if you exclude the TellTale style-games, BL3 expands the universe beyond Pandora and its orbit, with the set of heroes (plus those from previous games) now cruising the galaxy looking for vaults and the treasures within. Popular Characters like Tiny Tina, Claptrap, Lilith, Dr. Zed, Zer0, Tannis, and others all make appearances as the game continues its cel-shaded design but with the graphical fidelity turned up. Borderlands 1 gave me my first ever taste of proper in-game second order PhysX, and it’s a high standard that continues to this day.
BL3 works best with online access, so it is filed under our online games section. BL3 is also one of our biggest downloads, requiring 100+ GB. As BL3 supports resolution scaling, we are using the following settings:
- 360p Very Low, 1440p Very Low, 4K Very Low, 1080p Badass
BL3 has its own in-game benchmark, which recreates a set of on-rails scenes with a variety of activity going on in each, such as shootouts, explosions, and wildlife. The benchmark outputs its own results files, including frame times, which can be parsed for our averages/percentile data.
| 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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With the 9900K sitting at 5.0 GHz, the fact that the 11700K only does single core 5.0 GHz shouldn't matter if the IPC gains on the core help push the needle. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do much in Borderlands.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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jacropolis - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
The 10700K is regularly $279 at Micro Center and isn't a bad buy for that price at all.Jadi - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
350 Dollar you want a 10700k and comparing it with a 5800X?Why?
The 5800X don t have a gpu, and the 10700ks was under 320 euros allways!
Now the 10700K not KS cost 316 euros!
Hot a 14nm Chip this is the advantage its only 60 c and a 5800X comes easy over 85 c and more.
More expansiv a 5800X cost 440 euros! A 5600X cost 350 euros, more then the 10700k!
Slower its a K CPU and can boost it up. When you OC the 5800X you have less fps.
Why you think it needs more power? Becouse the 40 sec boost? That is all and under AVX512 is it the only cpu that have it.
Games and other stuff its the same power, And 5800X dosen t stop at 105 Watt it goes like 118 watts. Thats are very close too 125 watts and more is only a limit time!
Spunjji - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
@Jadi - that last bit of your post makes no sense. The 10700K and 11700K objectively require more power than the 5800X to do the same amount of work; the 5800X only hits 118 Watts under the same conditions that the other two approach 200 Watts. If you're comparing power draw during gaming, the 5800X uses less power than those two - roughly 25W less than the 10700K.Comparing temperatures is daft too. 85 degrees is way under the CPU's junction temperature, so it's not a problem to runa cPU at that temp - and it's objectively easier to keep an AMD CPU at that temperature than to keep an Intel chip at 60 degrees, because your cooler isn't dissipating as much heat.
TrueJessNarmo - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
10700k is $320 on amazon and 9900k is $250 at microcenter.At this point 5900x is best for serious users and 9900k/10700k is for gamers. 5600x and 5800x are overpriced for what it is, but 5900x is a sweet deal at $550
rfxcasey - Wednesday, March 17, 2021 - link
I got my 10700K for 330 dollars new, I've seen them go for as low as 300.Makste - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
With gaming it's not the power consumption that's the problem here, it is the gaming performance in these benchmarks against comet lake obviously due to a higher latency.Zen 3's efforts have been put into perspective here, those engineers did quite a commendable job.
Bfree4me - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
Agreed! The Zen architecture is top shelf. But it took far too long. My last AMD Cpu was an Athlon 1800 because at that time AMD was the value leader and Intel was the performance king for a price. At the time came where I needed performance over value.So I have been Intel since then. Time to start looking towards Zen 🤔
Timoo - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
If I may be so free: "Took way too long": I agree.I just keep in mind that it took them way too long, because Intel managed to create some very shady deals with retailers, effectively pushing AMD out of the market and to the brink of bankruptcy. So, for years AMD has been struggling to stay alive.
Agreed, buying ATi didn't help either. But without those shady deals they might have pulled it off. From 2006 to -say- 2015 AMD was only struggling to stay alive. I believe they had some huge cash injection at the time, together with getting one of the best CPU designers in the world (what's his name?) back in the house.
So, in my opinion, AMD is forgiven for their 10-year "heart-attack".
GeoffreyA - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
I also believe it was because the K10, or Phenom, while being faster than the Athlon 64, was not aggressive enough. It had already been designed before Core 2 Duo came out, and by then, Intel was ahead of them. Who knows, they might have narrowed the gap if they had persisted with the K10 design, widening everything till it matched/surpassed Nehalem, but they shot too far, going for Bulldozer, which was supposed to turn the tables round but sank them further in the ditch.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
And yet AMD was having trouble supplying enough chips to the limited market they did have. Much like today. OEMs are not going to sign up with a company that cant consistently supply CPUs.Dont forget the billiosn they poured into making GF and pissing off TSMC in the process.