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: Red Dead Redemption 2
It’s great to have another Rockstar benchmark in the mix, and the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) on the PC gives us a chance to do that. Building on the success of the original RDR, the second incarnation came to Steam in December 2019 having been released on consoles first. The PC version takes the open-world cowboy genre into the start of the modern age, with a wide array of impressive graphics and features that are eerily close to reality.
For RDR2, Rockstar kept the same benchmark philosophy as with Grand Theft Auto V, with the benchmark consisting of several cut scenes with different weather and lighting effects, with a final scene focusing on an on-rails environment, only this time with mugging a shop leading to a shootout on horseback before riding over a bridge into the great unknown. Luckily most of the command line options from GTA V are present here, and the game also supports resolution scaling. We have the following tests:
- 384p Minimum, 1440p Minimum, 8K Minimum, 1080p Max
For that 8K setting, I originally thought I had the settings file at 4K and 1.0x scaling, but it was actually set at 2.0x giving that 8K. For the sake of it, I decided to keep the 8K settings.
For our results, we run through each resolution and setting configuration for a minimum of 10 minutes, before averaging and parsing the frame time data.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
541 Comments
View All Comments
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.