It's finally here! Intel Rocket lake i7 11700K review!

[cagoblex]

Hello everyone and welcome to another review. Today we will be looking at the i7 11700K and i9 11900K. We have covered the basics for Rocket lake and Z590 in the past, and you can check them out in my former reviews. So we finally got the top of the line 11900K, and the second best Rocket lake 11700K.



We will be taking a look at the 11700K first and see how it performs. Spec wise it is the same as the 11700 we reviewed last time. The only difference is it has a higher TDP of 125W compares to 65W of 11700, and it’s unlocked. The turbo frequency is 4.6Ghz all core and 5.0GHz single core with Turbo Velocity boost. Spoiler alert, it is almost the exact same chip as the 11900K we will review next.


 

In today’s review I am pairing it with the Asus Maximus XIII Hero we reviewed last time, 16 GB of Gskill DDR4 3200MHz CL14 memories, Western digital SN850 PCI-E4.0 SSD and the EVGA 3080 FTW3 video card.



Let’s start with CPU-Z. So as expected, it’s a 8 cores 16 thread parts, with 125W TDP. Let’s run CPU-Z benchmark first.


 

 

It is getting slightly higher score than the 11700 non K version. And it’s getting higher score than the 5800X in both single core and multi core testing. It would be a serious competitor to the 5800X.
 

Let’s move on to Aida64. Intel is still having problem with memory performance on Rocket lake. However even with the lower numbers on memory performance, it still pulling ahead in all benchmarks compares to Comet lake.
 

Next is Blender. We are rendering both classroom and BMW with the processor. And here is the results.

The 11700K is slightly faster than the 5800X in BMW but about 10% slower in classroom. It gets very close to a unlocked 11700.

 

In 7 zip, again it’s very similar to a 11700 with unlocked TDP. It is about 20% faster than 10700 Comet lake processor but it’s still slower than the 5800X.



Next is Cinebench. We are running both R15 and R20 here. R20 would utilize AVX instructions so AVX frequency offset does matter here.

 

In Cinebench R15, we also tested the OpenGL performance with the iGPU. Same as the few other Rocket lake chips we reviewed, it has a 30% increase over Comet lake. So the new XE architecture is really something to be excited for. As for the CPU part, it is not much faster compares to the non K 11700, but it’s still a 25% increase over Comet lake. It’s a very impressive increase considering it’s still on the 14nm node.
 

For Cinebench R20, it is getting the same single core score as 5800X, while being slightly slower in multi core. However it is the fastest among the Intel desktop CPUs we’ve tested so far.



Next is V-Ray. It’s a rendering benchmark that tests the CPU’s performance in rendering pictures.

 

Again the 11700K is not as fast as the 5800X, but it’s still marginally faster than Comet lake. It has an average clock speed of 4.55GHz, which is the same as 11700.
 

In Handbrake, we are transcoding a 1:31 second 4K 30fps video into 1080P H.264.



It is two seconds faster than the non K version, and it’s a tie with 5800X.



For Y-cruncher, it is a few benchmarks that can utilize AVX512. It’s almost exactly the same speed as the non K version, while being almost 60% faster than 5800X in multi threads benchmark. So if your workload is AVX heavy, you still have a good reason to choose Intel over AMD.



 

Next let’s take a look at the gaming performance.



First let’s run 3D mark Time Spy.

 

It is running about 2% faster than i7 11700. But it’s still slightly slower than the 5800X.





 

In hitman2, it is about 2fps faster than the non K version, which is within the margin of error. They 5800x is pulling way ahead in Hitman.


 

In Horizon, the trend continues. However this time it’s a tie between Rocket lake and 5800X.


 

In Dirt 5, the 11700K is pulling about 3fps ahead of the other two Rocket lake. It is also about 8% faster than the 5800X.

 

For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, It’s also the fastest among the group. However it’s still slower than 5800X in CPU games.



Lastly for stock frequency, let’s run Prime 95 and check the thermal and power consumption for 11700K. The cooler we are using today is a Corsair 360mm H150Pro AIO cooler with three PWM controlled fans. I enabled AVX512 so that we can see the maximum possible power consumption and heat dissipation. It thermal throttles even under default clock speed, and the maximum power consumption recorded was 260W. This is ridiculous for a desktop processor. But that’s how AVX512 works, and that’s why the LGA3647 Xeons are limiting the AVX512 frequency at a much lower speed to keep the thermals in spec for passive cooled servers.

 

Alright, enough of the default benchmarks. Since we have a K version, the whole point is to overclock it right? As we discovered in the past few reviews, Rocket lake requires a much higher voltage compares to Comet lake. I am seeing voltages close to 1.5V even at stock speed. Let’s enter the BIOS and see what ASUS has to say about this chip. So we have a super low SP score of 60. It is predicting that it needs close to 1.7V for 5.3GHz all core. So let’s start with 1.5V 5.2GHz, and it’s a freeze. Our goal here is to complete Cinebench R20. I did get it to 5.3GHz all core with 1.62V voltage however the chip is thermal throttling really badly. And the Cinebench score is actually worse than 5.2GHz. After some tweaking the best score I was able to get was at 5.2Ghz all core with 1.55V core voltage. The CPU temprature is among the low 90s and we are getting great improvements in CPU-Z and Cinebench R20 tests. We ran Cinebench R15, R20, V-ray and CPU-Z benchmark to test the improvement of the overclocking. A 700+ CPU-Z single core score is the highest among any processors on the market so far.

 

 

 

Somehow V-Ray reported 5.5GHz but this can't be true...

 

 

Overall I am very impressed by how it performs. At $399 MSRP, it’s very hard to say no to it. It trade blows with 5800X but with the addition of AVX512 support and a wider motherboard choice. It supports Thunderbolt 4 which would be the standard for external devices in the near future. The only drawback I can think of is the higher power consumption and the high heat dissipation. But still, even at stock speed it is still way faster than Comet lake. Should you buy one? It depends. If you are upgrading from Kaby lake then it’s definitely a game changer. But if you have Coffee lake or Comet lake, you would be better off to wait for Alder lake which will come out at the end of this year.

I understand there are Intel fanboys and AMD fanboys and it's an endless debate that has already last for a decade. But let's be honest here, Zen 3 is a great architecture, that is without any doubt. But Intel is at least catching up this time with Rocket lake, and keep in mind Intel did this on 14nm node compares to 7nm. This is almost an impossible task to do but Intel did it. So big thumb up to Intel!

You can watch a video version of it here:






Thanks!

[Helpful Tech Witch]

I'm still working through all of this, but it seems to be: better than a 10700k (but not much), about as good as a 5800x, and the blender for the 11900t sucks.

Pretty much?

[cagoblex]

50 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

I'm still working through all of this, but it seems to be: better than a 10700k (but not much), about as good as a 5800x, and the blender for the 11900t sucks.

Pretty much?

11900T is stuck at 35W in this test. But with the TDP limit removed, it’s about the same as the 11700 non K version. It is about 20% better than 10700 in terms of IPC and the iGPU is much better if you care about that. But the addition of AVX512 and the new cache algorithm does help in a lot of real life workload 

[GrumpKat]

Nice review! What are the temps and draw when just gaming?

[cagoblex]

49 minutes ago, GrumpKat said:

Nice review! What are the temps and draw when just gaming?

It’s around 60-70 with Corsair H150pro and the power is around 124-150W. 

[porina]

10 hours ago, cagoblex said:

We will be taking a look at the 11700K first and see how it performs. Spec wise it is the same as the 11700 we reviewed last time. The only difference is it has a higher TDP of 125W compares to 65W of 11700, and it’s unlocked. The turbo frequency is 4.6Ghz all core and 5.0GHz single core with Turbo Velocity boost. Spoiler alert, it is almost the exact same chip as the 11900K we will review next.

Your Aida screenshot appears to show microcode 0x1B, which is a very old version. My Z490 chipset mobo latest bios includes 0x34, and I just saw apparently 0x39 now exists. 

 

I'm not expecting radical differences but it is not no difference either. I have to wonder if it will be more important for the i9's Adaptive Boost Technology support.

 

BTW I happen to see 11700k listed at online store today so expect to receive one tomorrow, so will also be playing with it.

 

 

 

 

[cagoblex]

4 hours ago, porina said:

Your Aida screenshot appears to show microcode 0x1B, which is a very old version. My Z490 chipset mobo latest bios includes 0x34, and I just saw apparently 0x39 now exists. 

 

I'm not expecting radical differences but it is not no difference either. I have to wonder if it will be more important for the i9's Adaptive Boost Technology support.

 

BTW I happen to see 11700k listed at online store today so expect to receive one tomorrow, so will also be playing with it.

 

 

 

 

I will look into the new microcode. Yeah it seems like intel is selling them before official embargo. 

[porina]

On 3/22/2021 at 4:35 PM, cagoblex said:

Yeah it seems like intel is selling them before official embargo. 

It's not Intel selling them, but retailers. I'm not getting it early after all. The store I ordered from moved it to pre-order status, even though it was clearly showing as in stock and the automated e-mail gave next day delivery. I can only assume they accidentally made it live early but managed to stop it before shipping. I've cancelled that order and will try again on actual launch I guess, but targeting a cheaper model.

[cagoblex]

9 hours ago, porina said:

It's not Intel selling them, but retailers. I'm not getting it early after all. The store I ordered from moved it to pre-order status, even though it was clearly showing as in stock and the automated e-mail gave next day delivery. I can only assume they accidentally made it live early but managed to stop it before shipping. I've cancelled that order and will try again on actual launch I guess, but targeting a cheaper model.

No it's not just your retailer. It has been happening to retailers around the world. I'm not sure what's going on at this point, but it might be due to supply issues. It seems most OEMs are still selling them 11th gen prebuilds on 30th March. 

[Gamer4714]

The best option is to go AMD.

[iCoNrant]

On 3/22/2021 at 9:42 AM, cagoblex said:

Hello everyone and welcome to another review. Today we will be looking at the i7 11700K and i9 11900K. We have covered the basics for Rocket lake and Z590 in the past, and you can check them out in my former reviews. So we finally got the top of the line 11900K, and the second best Rocket lake 11700K.



We will be taking a look at the 11700K first and see how it performs. Spec wise it is the same as the 11700 we reviewed last time. The only difference is it has a higher TDP of 125W compares to 65W of 11700, and it’s unlocked. The turbo frequency is 4.6Ghz all core and 5.0GHz single core with Turbo Velocity boost. Spoiler alert, it is almost the exact same chip as the 11900K we will review next.


 

In today’s review I am pairing it with the Asus Maximus XIII Hero we reviewed last time, 16 GB of Gskill DDR4 3200MHz CL14 memories, Western digital SN850 PCI-E4.0 SSD and the EVGA 3080 FTW3 video card.



Let’s start with CPU-Z. So as expected, it’s a 8 cores 16 thread parts, with 125W TDP. Let’s run CPU-Z benchmark first.


 

 

It is getting slightly higher score than the 11700 non K version. And it’s getting higher score than the 5800X in both single core and multi core testing. It would be a serious competitor to the 5800X.
 

Let’s move on to Aida64. Intel is still having problem with memory performance on Rocket lake. However even with the lower numbers on memory performance, it still pulling ahead in all benchmarks compares to Comet lake.
 

Next is Blender. We are rendering both classroom and BMW with the processor. And here is the results.

The 11700K is slightly faster than the 5800X in BMW but about 10% slower in classroom. It gets very close to a unlocked 11700.

 

In 7 zip, again it’s very similar to a 11700 with unlocked TDP. It is about 20% faster than 10700 Comet lake processor but it’s still slower than the 5800X.



Next is Cinebench. We are running both R15 and R20 here. R20 would utilize AVX instructions so AVX frequency offset does matter here.

 

In Cinebench R15, we also tested the OpenGL performance with the iGPU. Same as the few other Rocket lake chips we reviewed, it has a 30% increase over Comet lake. So the new XE architecture is really something to be excited for. As for the CPU part, it is not much faster compares to the non K 11700, but it’s still a 25% increase over Comet lake. It’s a very impressive increase considering it’s still on the 14nm node.
 

For Cinebench R20, it is getting the same single core score as 5800X, while being slightly slower in multi core. However it is the fastest among the Intel desktop CPUs we’ve tested so far.



Next is V-Ray. It’s a rendering benchmark that tests the CPU’s performance in rendering pictures.

 

Again the 11700K is not as fast as the 5800X, but it’s still marginally faster than Comet lake. It has an average clock speed of 4.55GHz, which is the same as 11700.
 

In Handbrake, we are transcoding a 1:31 second 4K 30fps video into 1080P H.264.



It is two seconds faster than the non K version, and it’s a tie with 5800X.



For Y-cruncher, it is a few benchmarks that can utilize AVX512. It’s almost exactly the same speed as the non K version, while being almost 60% faster than 5800X in multi threads benchmark. So if your workload is AVX heavy, you still have a good reason to choose Intel over AMD.



 

Next let’s take a look at the gaming performance.



First let’s run 3D mark Time Spy.

 

It is running about 2% faster than i7 11700. But it’s still slightly slower than the 5800X.





 

In hitman2, it is about 2fps faster than the non K version, which is within the margin of error. They 5800x is pulling way ahead in Hitman.


 

In Horizon, the trend continues. However this time it’s a tie between Rocket lake and 5800X.


 

In Dirt 5, the 11700K is pulling about 3fps ahead of the other two Rocket lake. It is also about 8% faster than the 5800X.

 

For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, It’s also the fastest among the group. However it’s still slower than 5800X in CPU games.



Lastly for stock frequency, let’s run Prime 95 and check the thermal and power consumption for 11700K. The cooler we are using today is a Corsair 360mm H150Pro AIO cooler with three PWM controlled fans. I enabled AVX512 so that we can see the maximum possible power consumption and heat dissipation. It thermal throttles even under default clock speed, and the maximum power consumption recorded was 260W. This is ridiculous for a desktop processor. But that’s how AVX512 works, and that’s why the LGA3647 Xeons are limiting the AVX512 frequency at a much lower speed to keep the thermals in spec for passive cooled servers.

 

Alright, enough of the default benchmarks. Since we have a K version, the whole point is to overclock it right? As we discovered in the past few reviews, Rocket lake requires a much higher voltage compares to Comet lake. I am seeing voltages close to 1.5V even at stock speed. Let’s enter the BIOS and see what ASUS has to say about this chip. So we have a super low SP score of 60. It is predicting that it needs close to 1.7V for 5.3GHz all core. So let’s start with 1.5V 5.2GHz, and it’s a freeze. Our goal here is to complete Cinebench R20. I did get it to 5.3GHz all core with 1.62V voltage however the chip is thermal throttling really badly. And the Cinebench score is actually worse than 5.2GHz. After some tweaking the best score I was able to get was at 5.2Ghz all core with 1.55V core voltage. The CPU temprature is among the low 90s and we are getting great improvements in CPU-Z and Cinebench R20 tests. We ran Cinebench R15, R20, V-ray and CPU-Z benchmark to test the improvement of the overclocking. A 700+ CPU-Z single core score is the highest among any processors on the market so far.

 

 

 

Somehow V-Ray reported 5.5GHz but this can't be true...

 

 

Overall I am very impressed by how it performs. At $399 MSRP, it’s very hard to say no to it. It trade blows with 5800X but with the addition of AVX512 support and a wider motherboard choice. It supports Thunderbolt 4 which would be the standard for external devices in the near future. The only drawback I can think of is the higher power consumption and the high heat dissipation. But still, even at stock speed it is still way faster than Comet lake. Should you buy one? It depends. If you are upgrading from Kaby lake then it’s definitely a game changer. But if you have Coffee lake or Comet lake, you would be better off to wait for Alder lake which will come out at the end of this year.

I understand there are Intel fanboys and AMD fanboys and it's an endless debate that has already last for a decade. But let's be honest here, Zen 3 is a great architecture, that is without any doubt. But Intel is at least catching up this time with Rocket lake, and keep in mind Intel did this on 14nm node compares to 7nm. This is almost an impossible task to do but Intel did it. So big thumb up to Intel!

You can watch a video version of it here:






Thanks!

@cagoblex Pretty helpful indeed... May I ask if I can choose between the 11700 or 11700k, which would you recommend? 

[cagoblex]

On 3/29/2021 at 8:47 PM, iCoNrant said:

@cagoblex Pretty helpful indeed... May I ask if I can choose between the 11700 or 11700k, which would you recommend? 

Honestly I think 11700 would be enough for most games. The 11700K is only $50 more, but then you have to invest more into a Z590 motherboard, and maybe faster RAM. So the whole platform will cost you anywhere from $100-200 extra. 

[iCoNrant]

5 hours ago, cagoblex said:

Honestly I think 11700 would be enough for most games. The 11700K is only $50 more, but then you have to invest more into a Z590 motherboard, and maybe faster RAM. So the whole platform will cost you anywhere from $100-200 extra. 

Thanks for the information

I don't really overclock the cpu because intel have the turbo boost technology so that will help

[Mnky313]

On 3/21/2021 at 9:42 PM, cagoblex said:

and the maximum power consumption recorded was 260W

yikes, I was hoping the 11000 series power draw wouldn't be as bad as the 10900k but it appears it's even worse XD.
Guess I'm sticking with my 10900k because I can't seem to cool anything more than ~150-160W sustained and even then it's running at 100c under full load. I'm still thinking about picking up either a delidded 10900k or just another one to see if maybe something's bad with mine.

Is it normal for temps to instantly jump 30+ c under load? Mine idles in the 60s and the second a load is started it jumps right up to the 90s even single cores will jump for single core loads leaving a 30c delta between cores.