Intel Core i7-11700K performed on par with Ryzen 7 5800X in its first full test, but power consumption is off the charts

The first full review of the eight-core Core i7-11700K (Rocket Lake-S) processor, which has not yet gone on sale, has appeared on the Web. Based on this data, you can get an idea of ​​the performance and energy efficiency of the CPU, as well as decide whether to buy it – sales will start in the current quarter.

It should be noted right away that we tested not a retail copy, but an engineering sample, so as the microcode is updated, the performance may slightly increase, but certainly not significantly – so much as to have to revise the results of these tests. The CPU, recall, has 8 cores and supports multithreading. The base frequency is 3.6 GHz, the frequency with all involved cores is 4.6 GHz, and with one active core – 5.0 GHz. Despite the 14nm process technology, Intel managed to increase the IPC by 19% relative to the Comet Lake CPU.

Three motherboards took part in the test: a certain model on the Z590 chipset for the hero of this news, the MSI MEG X570 Godlike for the Ryzen CPU and the Z490 Aorus Xtreme for the current 10th generation Intel Core CPU. All tests used DDR4-3200 MHz memory and a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.

So what about performance? In Cinebench and FireStrike tests, the Core i7-11700K significantly outperforms the Core i7-10700F, but still falls short of its direct competitor Ryzen 7 5800X.

But in games, the performance of the Core i7-11700K roughly matches that of the Ryzen 7 5800X.

In 3DMark, the Intel CPU wins slightly, but not with a crushing score.

In general, in its first test, the Core i7-11700K looks no worse than the Ryzen 7 5800X, unless we take into account the power consumption: since under CPU load AMD “consumes” 60 watts less. Moreover, even the Ryzen 9 5950X consumes less. Alas, this is a legacy of the 14-nanometer process technology, and there is no way to get rid of it.