Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core Rocket Lake CPU Review

Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake 8 Core CPU Review Shows That It's Very Hot, Power Hungry & Hardly Catches Up To AMD's Zen 3 Based Ryzen CPUs

It is noteworthy that the finding is dependent on the supermarket sample than the one we saw leak before. AMD's fastest 8 core offering built on the core Zen 3 architecture is Ryzen 7 5800X which will counter the Intel Core i7-11700K. The Core i9-11900K is the top dog, but it can compete against Ryzen 9 5900X according to its pricing

Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core & 16 Thread Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Specs

The Core i7-11700K is core-configured as the 8-core and 16-thread Core i9-11900K, but the clock speeds are diminished. The chip has a boosting clock in all its 8 cores of 5.0GHz on a single and 4.6GHz. The CPU also holds the same amount of cache so that little has changed, but clocks and power constraints are the key difference. This lower-purpose chip is about 225-250W (PL2), while the regular PL1 chip is about 125W. The PL1 rating is 56 seconds high, while the PL2 rating is 2.44ms long.

It would be fun to see if Rocket Lake CPUs overclock since a slight overclock overcomes the small gap between the Core i9 and the Core i7 chips. The Core i7 is also cheaper for pricing than the Core i9 version, but we do not know how Intel is yet going to market its 8-core Rocket Lake-S Desktop CPUs. Intel will price chips at about US$400 for the Core i9 and US$300 for the Core i7, which might prove to be a better choice if they choose to go against the pieces from AMD's Zen 3 in the sub-$500 U.S. market.

Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Lineup Specs (Preliminary):

Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core & 16 Thread Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Benchmarks

The test results for Anandtech were conducted on an unrevealed device with a Z590 motherboard. The ADATA 16GB DDR4-3200 (CL22) Memory Set and a True Copper Heatsink were included as other test equipment with SST-FHP141-VF Dual fan. The Rocket Lake and the Zen 3 CPUs have all been tested for the same memory settings while DDR4-2933 and DDR4-2666 MHz memory was tested for Comet Lake. Here are the evaluation results, The following

Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Benchmarks (Office & Science / Credits: Anandtech):

As seen in the above findings, the CPU-specific speed benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 5800X are almost always quicker. The only way Intel can save money is with its AVX-512, which contributes to an unforeseen increase in power demand and a far higher unreliable Rocket Lake Intel Core i7-11700K. Anandtech estimates that floating-point performance in single and multi-threads increases by 19-19.5 percent, but integral performance only rose by an average of 10 percent.

Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Benchmarks (Gaming Credits: Anandtech):

The Intel Core i7-11700K fails seriously in its game success with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and even its Predecessor from Comet Lake.

Anandtech attempts to illustrate that increased L3 cache cycles could be a cause of this adverse game output. Our sources indicate that Intel is working hard now to solve some of these problems by microupdating that the management partners were expected to have by mid-March. Intel will address some issues relating to cache through BIOS updates, but that is something we need to be careful about in the long term, as early reviews of the 11th Gen Desktop CPU line-up may demonstrate such results.

Finally, we have information on power and temperature. The Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake CPU reaches 81C at out-of-the-box operations and has a capacity consumption of 225W. But with AVX-512, the power consumption of the AVX-512 is up to 104C, reaching an avg. 290 W. The strength of AVX-512 instructions is hungrier than those of Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. We can see therefore that total Rocket Lake will always be hot and power-hungry, and that you will probably need to invest in a good AIO liquid cooler as well as a solid PSU.

SiSoftware has released its own Intel Core Desktop i7-11700K Desktop Rocket Lake CPU test results and found that it is lent than AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X.

Summary: A long due upgrade with great (+40% improved) performance: 9/10

It was too long to wait - infinite (Gen 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10) Skylake derivatives then IceLake (ICL) and TigerLake (TGL) for smartphone (ULV). Rocket Lake is not quite what we had expected but it is at least consistent with the 400-series (LGA 1200) model not with the 10nm lithography but the 14nm++ backported platform, but also with older ICL cores (not TGL).

The top-end i9 10900K CometLake (CML) did not keep up with AMD's constant progress with Ryzen (series 2000, 3 000, and now 5000), so we still wanted a new Intel contender. We have waited for PCIe 4.0 already backed by AMD 2 generations ago, and all new GP-GPUs and NVMeSSD. It may not have been very necessary, but it has been somewhat embarrassing for top-end PCs, because of the mass-market gaming consoles (Sony Ps5, Microsoft Xbox SS/XS) using NVMe/PCIe4.

RocketLake (RKL) i7 (1170k) does not increase the number and speed (rated/turbocharged) of cores (even 8C / 16T), but AVX512 + improved arch speeds (greater Caches, TLBs, etc.) are about 50 percent faster than CFL/CML and are more optimized (and speed stores). TDP (power) is higher at 125W and at 14nm RKL a lot more (~155W) is required if top clocks are to be sustained.

Current 400-series boards still can support RKL, but of course, PCIe 4.0 is not to be introduced (as we did with AMD Ryzen 3000/5000 and board of 400-series). You'll need an unintended, but still deceptive, 500-series board.

In that post, which is a large upgrade from the old EV9.x graphics, we haven't touched on the Iris Gen12 graphics but at this stage (i7+), dedicated graphics are probably being used. The G7 96 EU versions are very strong, as we have seen with TGL.

Despite the concerns that have been mentioned – it is quite an impressive improvement for anyone who buys today – the purchase of old Skylake products (e.g. Cometlake) does not matter much until the price of them is reduced considerably. If you need more cores for a (virtualization?) workload, you can always be of 10C/20T CML or multi-core SKL-X/KBL-X.

You should expect more detail about processors and announcements about how and where you can purchase these chips for your motherboards in the 400 and 500 series over the next few weeks.