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: World of Tanks
Albeit different to most of the other commonly played MMO or massively multiplayer online games, World of Tanks is set in the mid-20th century and allows players to take control of a range of military based armored vehicles. World of Tanks (WoT) is developed and published by Wargaming who are based in Belarus, with the game’s soundtrack being primarily composed by Belarusian composer Sergey Khmelevsky. The game offers multiple entry points including a free-to-play element as well as allowing players to pay a fee to open up more features. One of the most interesting things about this tank based MMO is that it achieved esports status when it debuted at the World Cyber Games back in 2012.
World of Tanks enCore is a demo application for its new graphics engine penned by the Wargaming development team. Over time the new core engine has been implemented into the full game upgrading the games visuals with key elements such as improved water, flora, shadows, lighting as well as other objects such as buildings. The World of Tanks enCore demo app not only offers up insight into the impending game engine changes, but allows users to check system performance to see if the new engine runs optimally on their system. There is technically a Ray Tracing version of the enCore benchmark now available, however because it can’t be deployed standalone without the installer, we decided against using it. If that gets fixed, then we can look into it.
The benchmark tool comes with a number of presets:
- 768p Minimum, 1080p Standard, 1080p Max, 4K Max (not a preset)
The odd one out is the 4K Max preset, because the benchmark doesn’t automatically have a 4K option – to get this we edit the acceptable resolutions ini file, and then we can select 4K. The benchmark outputs its own results file, with frame times, making it very easy to parse the data needed for average and percentiles.
| 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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WoT is a fun test to see 700 FPS+ numbers with the best CPUs. However the differences between the CPUs end up being minor, and in absolute terms the 11700K still has issues, often sitting at the lower end of the results.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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Zoeff - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Now this is a welcome surprise!nandnandnand - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
This is actually Intel's best product launch ever. Because you can buy it and get in on the class action lawsuit later.Zoeff - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
To be clear, I was referring to the article itself.But yes the performance is also a surprise for me after going through the article. I expected a nice performance uplift, perhaps a bit faster than Ryzen 5000 but with a higher power draw as a trade off for being on the same Intel 14nm node still. Definitely did NOT expect it to be slower.
nandnandnand - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
To be clear, I was replying to you to get a reply at the top of the comments. Completely self-serving manipulation of AnandTech's comment section.Hopefully, terroradagio is right and an update will improve performance and efficiency slightly. Also, I wonder how the 11900K will look going ~200-300 MHz above this.
barich - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
I have a feeling that the additional power draw required to get that extra 2-300 MHz is going to be well out of proportion to the performance gained by it. This chip is already pushed past the edge just to not regress (usually) over the previous generation.whatthe123 - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Considering this chip is already drawing way too much power the 11900's are probably binned like crazy and run a much lower voltage. Even then it'll probably still use more power than the 11700k. I think they should've just accepted that 14nm was not going to work for this backport. There's a market for cometlake in gamers but what market is there for this? Niche scientific computing?terroradagio - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Games don't require the type of power people here are crying about. Honestly, do people just sit at their computers and run AVX benchmarks all day?barich - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
You're still looking at like an 80W difference and a requirement for the best air cooling available if you don't want temps to be out of control. I might be willing to tolerate the extra power draw if I got more performance out of it, but that's not the case.eva02langley - Saturday, March 6, 2021 - link
You mean LIQUID COOLING at this point. You need a good AIO with such power requirements.JimmyTheFish - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
No, power consumption is exactly as bad as people are "crying" about, this chips is a joke, hotter, slower and more expensive than even the quite Sub-Par cometlake chips on the market, nevermind the superb Zen 3 offerings, which are starting to see increased availability with the single CCD 6 and 8 core 5600X and 5800XTo even be remotely appealing the 10700K need to be cheap, sub $350 cheap, and thats just not gonna happen