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: Final Fantasy XV
Upon arriving to PC, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition was given a graphical overhaul as it was ported over from console. As a fantasy RPG with a long history, the fruits of Square-Enix’s successful partnership with NVIDIA are on display. The game uses the internal Luminous Engine, and as with other Final Fantasy games, pushes the imagination of what we can do with the hardware underneath us. To that end, FFXV was one of the first games to promote the use of ‘video game landscape photography’, due in part to the extensive detail even at long range but also with the integration of NVIDIA’s Ansel software, that allowed for super-resolution imagery and post-processing effects to be applied.
In preparation for the launch of the game, Square Enix opted to release a standalone benchmark. Using the Final Fantasy XV standalone benchmark gives us a lengthy standardized sequence to record, although it should be noted that its heavy use of NVIDIA technology means that the Maximum setting has problems - it renders items off screen. To get around this, we use the standard preset which does not have these issues. We use the following settings:
- 720p Standard, 1080p Standard, 4K Standard, 8K Standard
For automation, the title accepts command line inputs for both resolution and settings, and then auto-quits when finished. As with the other benchmarks, we do as many runs until 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination has passed, and then take averages. Realistically, because of the length of this test, this equates to two runs per setting.
| 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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In more CPU limited scenarios, the 11700K shows generational improvements over other Intel processors, but as the resolution or quality increases, we end up being GPU limited and all the CPUs even out.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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TheinsanegamerN - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
They're the same chip, the only difference is clock speeds. Dont get your hopes up, RKL is a total dud, much like Williamette was.Samus - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
blppt - my concern is that AMD may have a superior IPC, but the real fruit comes from the manufacturing process. Intel is still (somewhat) competitive at 14nm and that in itself is quite unbelievable. Imagine where this chip would be on 7nm or 10nm, at 6GHz+ and more cores with 2-3x the cache.That said, this victory may be short lived because AMD is basically taking advantage of the embarrassing execution Intel has repeated, much like they did 20 years ago with the P4 (albeit that was an architecture failure, not a manufacturing process failure)
Thesubtlesnake - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Intel's latest 10nm process delivers *slower* clocks than its 14nm one. So, no, 6 GHz is not on the table. I imagine that when the transition to 7nm, Intel will be able to achieve moderately faster clock speeds than with 14nm.Otritus - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
10nm SF is good enough for 5 GHz. 10nm ESF can clock higher, so Intel's latest (but unreleased) process should match 14nm. I would not expect 7nm to clock higher than 14nm because it is becoming very clear that 5Ghz+ is just a waste of power and transistors, so i would not expect 7nm architectures to be designed to clock higher. We either are getting lots of IPC or just over 5GHz.Slash3 - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Mad lad.edved - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Nice write-up. Thank you.lucasdclopes - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Power efficiency is abysmal on this one.CiccioB - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
No, it is not. It lower than AMD's efficiency, but it not that bad for being based on such an old process.PixyMisa - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
So it's abysmal, but that's only to be expected?Spunjji - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
Not bad for an old process is still abysmal by the standards of 2021. No wonder Apple dropped them like a hot rock.