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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Geef - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
What, you don't?Hifihedgehog - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
I predicted ~300W peak power about a year or so ago when I first heard they were making the big mistake of bringing AVX-512 to mainstream consumer processors. Why on earth? There was a valid, wise, very, very, very good reason Intel had reserved AVX-512 to just their 14-nm HEDT processors and that had always been the furnace-like heat and nuclear-like power consumption of it. Even with the best logical design improvements from a new microarchitecture, it is still an extremely intensive logical pill of a task to swallow. Now, we see that reason in full, unadulterated display. You bring a massively complex instruction set extension to a higher process node where you have far lengthier physical networks (meaning essentially longer wires, increased resistance, higher power, and maximum heat) and, of course, you are going to have a steaming pile. Remember this review is only looking at the number two product, the Core i7-11700K which has lower clocks and lower power draw. The Core i9-11900K will likely need a 360- or 420-mm AIO just to not thermal throttle like mad. My 5950X with its meager 240mm AIO (Corsair H100i RGB Platinum) that runs at the quiet mode setting is laughing its butt off right about now. When Ian Cutress had to use an obnoxiously loud 170 CFM fan (I have used 100 CFM Deltas and those already annoy most PC enthusiasts) on a massive 4-pound, full copper heatsink to tame the 11700K's 290W, I shudder to think. Will the 11900K be outdoing the FX-9590's record-making peak power draw of 350W (see here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/8316/amds-5-ghz-tur... ? Ian easily could have gotten the 11900K also at retail, but I think he is holding back on that because he already knows the 11900K is going to be a throttling disaster and only the 11700K is an ACTUALLY USABLE PROCESSOR. *mike drop*Hifihedgehog - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
I am referring to 14nm mainstream consumer processors if that wasn't abundantly clear.Santoval - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
"To be clear, I was replying to you to get a reply at the top of the comments".You got me.. :)
Samus - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
In all fairness, it's actually amazing what Intel has achieved here with, essentially, a 6 year old manufacturing process!Spunjji - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
Are we reading the same review? It looks like they *regressed* in performance vs their 5.5-year-old architecture on the same process.dihartnell - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
I think they did they realistically could given the contraints they have. We are not going to see intels true potential until they get thier manufacturing process fixed or they swallow the dead rat and go to another foundry. This will be enough to keep them in the game for another year.Hifihedgehog - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Summary image:https://i.redd.it/4i2eu882qbl61.png
tl;dr: Worse in games, moderately better in synthetics, slower and far more power hungry than Ryzen 5000
Bik - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
ThanksGondalf - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Main defect of the article: AMD best of the best (low availability) versus a common high volume medium level Intel SKU.No matter the price that will change on retails or OEMS.
I don't understand AMD, they pump hard the pedal still they can not do much to gain market share. New processes are medium volume and with too much customers.
The NEW AMD will be a company capable to deliver a pile of good dies to all channels, without limitation on volume. Unfortunately Lisa follow the wrong street, in this manner Intel will always dominate the market.
Bet 2021 will be Lisa last year at AMD.