During the CES 2021, Intel only talked about its flagship Core i9-11900K Rocket Lake-S processor. The rest of the Core lineup details are still under embargo until Mar. 30, but the prices have already been leaked.
Core i7-11700K review
German retailer Mindfactory sold almost 120 pre-launch Core i7-11700K units worth $558.86 each, weeks before the embargo lift. Tech site Anandtech was able to snag a piece of Core i7-11700K from Mindfactory and put out an early review of the processor.
According to Anandtech, the processor needs minor performance improvements. Intel may upgrade it weeks before the official launch since the company has not seeded the final microcode for the processor yet.
Anandtech did AVX2 and AVX-512 tests to show the increased temperatures and the power draws of the processor. Even though Intel lists the TDP of the Core i7-11700K as 125 W, there is still no upper power limit for turbo performance.
An AVX2 workload causes the processor's power consumption to increase to at least 225 W with a temperature peaking at 81 °C and an all-core turbo at 4.6 GHz.
Meanwhile, the AVX-512 workload shows the power draws increasing to 292 W and the core temperatures peaking at 104 °C. The Core i7-11700K scored higher in AVX-512 workloads than any other processor, although the AVX-512 is traditionally meant for servers.
Even though the Core i7-11700K shows impressive workload performance, it still trails behind Ryzen 7 5800X, another promising processor in the market.
The Ryzen 7 5800X thrives in benchmarks like Cinebench R20, Handbrake 1080p30, 7-Zip, 4K60 H.264 encode, and web-based benchmarks.
When it comes to gaming, the results show regression in performance despite Intel's claims that it has a 19% IPC uplift over the previous processors.
In all gaming tests, except for "Gears Tactics," the Core i7-11700K was outclassed by Ryzen 7 5800X, especially at 720p and 1080p resolutions where the CPU usually becomes a bottleneck.
The difference in performance and quality between Ryzen 7 5800X and the Core i7-11700K becomes more obvious at resolutions that are lower than 1080p.
What Core i7-11700K needs to improve on
Overall, the initial benchmarks seem to show the disadvantages of backporting a 10 nm architecture to a 14nm process. Along with the AVX-512, the benchmarks have resulted in a bigger chip that tops-out at eight cores and is more hungry for power than the previous processors.
According to Anandtech's notes, Intel's 19% IPC uplift claim is not entirely false. However, it applies to floating-point workloads (such as mathematical operations) where the benefits lie in the 13% range.
Is the Core i7-11700K great for gaming? The answer is no. It is likely because it has higher L3 latency going up to 28-30 ns compared to the 18-24 ns of the other processors, according to Guru3d.
The reason behind the higher L3 latency is unknown, but if there is one thing that Intel needs to fix before the official roll-out of the Core i7-11700K, this would be it.
The success of the processors, in the end, would depend on their price and availability. With the current uncertainty in CPU stocks, PC users are not left with many choices regarding processors.
Related Article: Intel Core i9-11900K Pre-Order Details, Prices, Specs: Is It Cheaper Than Its Predecessor?
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Written by Sieeka Khan
