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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shabby - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
I hear intel will be bringing back btx to cope with the 300w+ 11900k...Doug1820 - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
Rocket Lake is looking more and more like Netburst 2.0.Oxford Guy - Sunday, March 7, 2021 - link
Someone literally wrote ‘I commend Intel for this release’. Commend? Perhaps the word originally sought was condemn?This product exists due to inadequate competition. It is a gift from monopolization. While the mantra of the corporation is ‘sell less for more’, it’s adequate competition that’s supposed to be its saving grace. That hasn’t been the case in many areas of tech for a long time.
Not only is AMD not enough competition, it took this long for the company to finally beat Intel badly. If Intel had managed its business better it would still be competitive.
And, to top things off, just like in GPUs (dire lack of competition) it’s extremely profitable to fail. Nvidia is failing to meet gamer demand, for various reasons that come down to inadequate competition. Despite that, it is taking record money. Intel is profitable despite failing in the consumer desktop CPU market.
Allison Kilkenny joked that America is special because one can ‘fail upward’. But, really, tech has a huge problem with inadequate competition — a global one.
People see brief glimmers of competition and mistake it for adequate competition. This is not the first time AMD had the better CPU design and we all know how that turned out.
Being held captive by one and 1/2 companies (the typical tech competition ratio) isn’t at all close to approaching ideal.
If huge profitability while failing very badly to meet demand is the recipe for a good state of business...
GeoffreyA - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
I believe that was me. "While it hasn't displaced Ryzen, I commend Intel for the effort that Rocket Lake is."I should have worded it better, I agree, but what I meant was, instead of just releasing another Skylake refresh, they did the unthinkable, in an attempt to release something: porting Sunny Cove to their legacy node. "We will fail, but we'll try anyway, futile though our efforts may be." Their being the underdog at present makes me feel a bit sorry for them, but then again, when we consider Intel's bank account, we realise they don't need our sympathy.
For my part, I am not an Intel shill or proponent. In fact, from my teenage years I've had a distaste towards them, and as I see it, Rocket Lake is a disappointment: still behind Zen 3, using far more power, slower graphics than Tiger Lake. There's practically no good in it. For the elusive Sunny Cove, I had expected a lot more. Despite that, I do commend them for making an attempt, something in life that's more important than winning.
GeoffreyA - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
As for the business/economic side of the matter, I don't understand these things too much to comment, but from that side, Intel has always been wretched; and all these companies are only out to make profit. We've even learned that those who offer something for nothing---it comes at a cost (Google, Facebook, etc.).Spunjji - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
100%Oxford Guy - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
'all these companies are only out to make profit'Which means consumers need to get their heads out of the sand and fight for value for their dollars.
Spunjji - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
Intel are very much not the underdog - they're still the 800 lb gorilla, they've just got themselves trapped inside a cage of their own making. Tiger Lake is an example of the fact that they're still capable of first-tier core designs; they're just not (currently) capable of bringing them to market on a competitive process.Hifihedgehog - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
They are 800-lbs on a fixed rations in self-imposed solitary confinement. Watch them slim down in a jiffy to as skinny as a rail if Alder Lake fails to impress. It was a slippery slope with Bulldozer. The only issue with Intel is the sheer amount of corporate waste. If they go down, others will be ready to swoop in and pick up the layoff broken pieces—pieces, once surrendered, that never again be recovered without a fight. Intel has never been fully challenged but they just might fall into Bulldozer-like obscurity this time around.GeoffreyA - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
"self-imposed solitary confinement"Hard to believe how the tables have turned in a matter of four years, and worse for Intel, this isn't the slack, "we've done a good job, let's rest" AMD of the K8 days. This time round, they're relentlessly executing, with a vigour I don't remember them possessing. Whether it's Lisa or just the pain they went through in the Bulldozer days, I don't know, but it's magnificent to watch.