Full test of the eight-core flagship Intel Core i7-11700K. 125 W turned into 291 W, and the performance still falls short of the Ryzen 7 5800X

Despite the fact that official sales of 11th generation Intel Core (Rocket Lake-S) processors for desktop processors have not yet started, some online stores have not only added them to their catalogs, but also launched them. In particular, if desired, you could buy a Core i7-11700K. And one of these CPUs has been fully tested.

For starters, the characteristics. The Core i7-11700K has eight processing cores and supports multithreading. The cache memory of the second level was 4 MB, of the third level – 16 MB. TDP is 125W, DDR4-3200MHz memory is supported.

The base frequency is 3.6 GHz, the maximum frequency with two active cores is 5.0 GHz, and with all active cores – 4.6 GHz. The CPU supports direct connection of video cards and SSDs via PCIe 4.0 – with 16 and 4 lanes, respectively. It also has an integrated Intel Xe-LP graphics core with 32 execution units.

Power consumption and heating tests were performed with different applications that run different sets of instructions. Under normal conditions, the processor temperature was 60 ° C, and the power consumption was 130-155 W. Of course, this is more than the declared TDP value, but not by much.

But it is enough to run an application designed for AVX2 instructions, and the TDP already reached 225 watts. And executing the AVX-512 instructions is generally a stress test: with temperatures up to 104 ° C at peak and power consumption of 292 W! For reference: during the test, the CPU was cooled with a conventional cooler with a fan, heatsink and several heat pipes. In terms of power consumption, the Core i7-11700K makes no sense to compare with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X – the AMD processor is cold as ice against its background.

In normal applications and games, the Core i7-11700K is also not a competitor to the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, which clearly follows from the graphs below. Moreover, the performance of the new product is practically the same as that of the current Core i7-10700K.

There is an assumption that the problem with the Core i7-11700K lies in the organization of the L3 cache. More precisely, in increased time delays. But so far this is only an assumption. In addition, Intel is still finalizing the Rocket Lake microcode, so, perhaps, by the beginning of official sales, the CPU performance will still slightly increase.

But while the Core i7-11700K looks very pale compared to the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. And even if the performance gets slightly higher, nothing makes up for the huge difference in power consumption between these CPUs. So after the release of the Core i7-11700K, the Ryzen 7 5800X will continue to be a better buy.