Someone stole and reviewed an Intel i7-11700K engineering sample, a.k.a. Rocket Lake

[HardReset]

I am still not convinced by the arguments deriding processors that produce high temperatures.

Inefficiency - sure, it's not the preferred option, but if I get a Lambo, I don't care much that it guzzles gas.

Needing other components to be more expensive? If I'm buying an expensive processor I don't intend to skimp with cheaper components elsewhere anyway.

The power draw is not really going to be higher than processors in past 'eras' were either, from what I can see.

At the end of the day, plenty of us are overclocking our processors anyway, introducing inefficiency and costs to satisfy the same desire of better performance.

I accept that it's not 'impressive' in technological terms, but in practical terms, that may not matter. If I can take the performance crown in its price bracket, that's progress.

This is very simple. It's very unlike that Intel could reach same clock speeds with 10nm manufacturing tech that they are able to do with 14nm++++++++++++++. What's the point making CPU's with newer manufacturing tech if it means slower processors? Main reason for that is, fanfare, lower power consumption!

Overclockers are around 0.01% of total market. No, Intel won't make CPU's for overclockers. It's just that Intel's process is very hot but it also could achieve high clock speeds. It may be good for niche scenarios like overclocking but for majority it's just obsolete technology.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Its not really that impressive this is new arch that was back ported.

If they were doing this still on skylake then sure. I would expect better performance from a new arch.

And the chipset fan thing is overated.

I've been on x570 since Dec 2019 and I've yet to hear that fan.

It is impressive. Show me an AMD chip on 12nm that can even come close to Intel’s 14nm performance.

If they can match AMDs 7nm performance on 14nm then really AMD are bloody lucky that Intel dropped the ball on their 10nm fabs.

As for the fan, I don’t hear it on my X570 really. But that isn’t the point, it’s lazy engineering. It’s an unnecessary moving part. X570 is good don’t get me wrong but it’s not perfect and a chipset fan is one of the reasons why.

 

[Lionvibez]

It is impressive. Show me an AMD chip on 12nm that can even come close to Intel’s 14nm performance.

If they can match AMDs 7nm performance on 14nm then really AMD are bloody lucky that Intel dropped the ball on their 10nm fabs.

As for the fan, I don’t hear it on my X570 really. But that isn’t the point, it’s lazy engineering. It’s an unnecessary moving part. X570 is good don’t get me wrong but it’s not perfect and a chipset fan is one of the reasons why.

I don't need to show any.

Back porting an arch to 14nm because you are falling behind and have not been able to get 10nm working for years is not impressive. You're view is that of intel vs amd mine is not. They are late as this was a stop gap solution with alderlake coming around the corner.

Are you an engineer? who are you to call it lazy engineering? can you do better?

 

[Shadowboxer]

I don't need to show any.

Back porting an arch to 14nm because you are falling behind and have not been able to get 10nm working for years is not impressive. You're view is that of intel vs amd mine is not. They are late as this was a stop gap solution with alderlake coming around the corner.

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Yes mate I get it. You want to ignore the fact that Intel’s 14nm readily competes with AMDs 7nm and say that Intel should be ashamed for being late.

It’s a good thing it wasn’t the other way around and AMD didn’t get stuck at 12nm and Intel selling 10nm because their 12nm stuff didn’t really compete with Intel’s 14nm.

It IS an achievement for a CPU on a larger due process to be still competing. Or maybe another way of looking at it is that AMD should be embarrassed that they are getting matched in performance by a competitor using a larger die process?

I’m sure your answer will resemble “*grunt* Intel bad”.

 

[punctualturn]

We already knew this and will be proven again when official reviews come out: RKL will have at best +5% better performance than Zen 3, most likely less on average and also depending on the game, but less efficient on all other counts.

So unless you are a die hard intel fan or you absolutely need those 5-10fps (at 1080p) for that particular game, the performance will be the same as with Zen 3 in games that don't use more than 8c/16t, in everything else Zen will smash the ground with this RKL, or how I like to call it Skippy Lake.

Oh and not before long AMD will bring Zen3+ in some months time, probably before Alder Lake, this year.

But, but, but you know that I have to show my undying loyalty to both Intel and nvidia or my soul will forever burn in hell!


Or something along the lines, because today’s fanbois are a special kind of breed, really sad.

On another note, the “stolen and benchmarked “ part sounds like absolute bs.

This was leaked by intel on purpose.

They know their fanbois and a they know that in their delusional minds, a 1% increase means 100 more fps or something similar with RT and dlss 3.0 at 16K res.

 

[Lionvibez]

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Yes mate I get it. You want to ignore the fact that Intel’s 14nm readily competes with AMDs 7nm and say that Intel should be ashamed for being late.

It’s a good thing it wasn’t the other way around and AMD didn’t get stuck at 12nm and Intel selling 10nm because their 12nm stuff didn’t really compete with Intel’s 14nm.

It IS an achievement for a CPU on a larger due process to be still competing. Or maybe another way of looking at it is that AMD should be embarrassed that they are getting matched in performance by a competitor using a larger die process?

I’m sure your answer will resemble “*grunt* Intel bad”.

No you are focusing on 7nm vs 14nm. And intel has been delayed on 10nm for how many years now yet you want to pat them on the back.

I'm focusing on the Arch Zen 3 vs Rocket Lake S, its not an achievement that you couldn't get your node worked out properly for years and now have to stop gap the solution.

You prefer Intel that is why your point of view is what is it. But everyone else see's it for what it is. So no I'm not impressing with the performance being similar at an arch level it is suppose to be.

Everyone on this site knows you prefer Nvidia and intel so your judgement on these topic will always lean one way.

 

[punctualturn]

No you are focusing on 7nm vs 14nm. And intel has been delayed on 10nm for how many years now yet you want to pat them on the back.

I'm focusing on the Arch Zen 3 vs Rocket Lake S, its not an achievement that you couldn't get your node worked out properly for years and now have to stop gap the solution.

You prefer Intel that is why your point of view is what is it. But everyone else see's it for what it is. So no I'm not impressing with the performance being similar at an arch level it is suppose to be.

Everyone on this site knows you prefer Nvidia and intel so your judgement on these topic will always lean one way.

My response was deleted because calling what the person is, its an ad hominem attack (someone here really likes that expression).

Anyways, dont waste your time on that, its an already known fact.

 

[Lionvibez]

My response was deleted because calling what the person is, its an ad hominem attack (someone here really likes that expression).

Anyways, dont waste your time on that, its an already known fact.

no doubt you and I both know those are facts it can be deleted but changes nothing.

 

[HardReset]

It is impressive. Show me an AMD chip on 12nm that can even come close to Intel’s 14nm performance.

Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX

It has 32 cores and 64 threads, base 3 GHz, boost 4.2 GHz.

Intel's closest "competitor" is i9-10980XE Extreme Edition (18C/36T, 3 GHz/4,6 GHz).

Not really competition there, Threadripper is so much faster.

 

[Kosmoz]

Some people won't believe even if presented with hard cold facts and evidence in front of their eyes. It's just how it is...

I for example even if for now I like AMD, I like them for what they can offer me now from a price/performance/efficiency/future prospects - perspective. But if at some point in the near future AMD drops the ball hard or Intel recovers and surpasses AMD with great price/performance/efficiency/future prospects, I see myself liking them again (for that particular product), but they would have to first prove that they can do that, to gain my trust again.

I'm eagerly waiting on Intel not for this Skippy Lake that they launch now as a stop gap, but for Alder Lake and not so much that I think they will stomp on AMD, but because I think that product will be the 1st real competition to AMD, thus pushing AMD even harder to make better next gen CPUs (Zen4, etc).

I also cant wait for Intel GPUs to come to the rescue of this whole **** show in GPU market unavailability and scalper prices, they can't launch soon enough, if you ask me. We desperately need at least one more big GPU maker in the market.

 

[poohbear]

I'd like to buy Zen3, but they're all sold out here in Toronto Canada. As such, when this is released, if Intel has more supply then I'm just buying intel. The supply issues might very well be Zen 3s undoing.

 

[Lionvibez]

I'd like to buy Zen3, but they're all sold out here in Toronto Canada. As such, when this is released, if Intel has more supply then I'm just buying intel. The supply issues might very well be Zen 3s undoing.

I live in Toronto Canada and bought a 5800X about two weeks ago.

That same store has the 5600X in stock currently. The best chance of getting one these days is local pickup.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

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Yes mate I get it. You want to ignore the fact that Intel’s 14nm readily competes with AMDs 7nm and say that Intel should be ashamed for being late.

It’s a good thing it wasn’t the other way around and AMD didn’t get stuck at 12nm and Intel selling 10nm because their 12nm stuff didn’t really compete with Intel’s 14nm.

It IS an achievement for a CPU on a larger due process to be still competing. Or maybe another way of looking at it is that AMD should be embarrassed that they are getting matched in performance by a competitor using a larger die process?

I’m sure your answer will resemble “*grunt* Intel bad”.

"readily competes" is a big stretch. Rocket Lake is so power hungry on 14nm that intel had to retract core count from 10 to 8, wiping out any gains from IPC improvements for the i9. And it should be pointed out that in the leaked gaming performance benchmarks over the last month, the i9-10900k has usually been within margin of error, usually on the losing side, of the 10900k. The 5000 series took the gaming crown from intel, and it is highly unlikely that rocket lake will be able to take it back from what has been shown so far.

Of course this is only in gaming performance. In production applications, intel's 10900k gets CREAMED by the 7nm 3000 series, let alone the 5000 series. Even the 6 core ryzens take intel to task in production workloads, all while puling half the power of a 10900k with 16 cores.

RKL is dead on arrival, as will be any other intel chip so long as they are stuck on 14nm.

 

[rmcrys]

I don't understand all the b**ching...
Most code and games are optimized for Intel chips so they have an advantage here. Together with their 14nm++++++++ is very good (~10 nm tsmc), as their 10nm, rivaling with 7nm from AMD/tsmc.

Now, their chips reach excellent performance but requiring HUGE amounts of power and cooling; which means with Intel chips you'll have expensive and "hot" performance

 

[Shadowboxer]

"readily competes" is a big stretch. Rocket Lake is so power hungry on 14nm that intel had to retract core count from 10 to 8, wiping out any gains from IPC improvements for the i9. And it should be pointed out that in the leaked gaming performance benchmarks over the last month, the i9-10900k has usually been within margin of error, usually on the losing side, of the 10900k. The 5000 series took the gaming crown from intel, and it is highly unlikely that rocket lake will be able to take it back from what has been shown so far.

Of course this is only in gaming performance. In production applications, intel's 10900k gets CREAMED by the 7nm 3000 series, let alone the 5000 series. Even the 6 core ryzens take intel to task in production workloads, all while puling half the power of a 10900k with 16 cores.

RKL is dead on arrival, as will be any other intel chip so long as they are stuck on 14nm.

I agree. In fact I agree so much that I bought a 5800X a couple of months ago. But Intel are still competing. And I’m just trying to offer a bit of balance. AMD isn’t slaughtering Intel, in fact currently Intel appear to be catching up on sales with lower prices and higher availability.

I wouldn’t announce rocket lake DOA just yet. We don’t know the prices, the performance or anything. If an 11700K comes in cheaper than a 5800X it will definitely not be dead on arrival.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Someone wanted revenge against Intel? I wonder how that could've come to pass! I mean, Intel is a paragon of good business practices, right?

 

[Avro Arrow]

This Boiling Lake was nothing more than Intel's desperate contingency plan to deliver some sort of performance boost, at the expense of even more power draw.

The real deal will be Alder Lake, I.e. the product we've been waiting for them to deliver for years now.

+1 to you for giving it the name "Boiling Lake". That's just priceless!

 

[Avro Arrow]

Why does power consumption under load matter to you out of interest? Is it just because you need a bigger cpu cooler and case fans?

I see power getting mentioned a few times, I just don’t really see it as much of an issue?

For a lot of people, a bigger CPU cooler and case fans means more noise. Now personally, I don't care about fan noise because the first PC I ever used was an original IBM PC (model 5150). If you want to talk about noise, holy crap, the PSU sounded like a jet engine on that thing. And I also had to get use the sound of a Panasonic KX-P1091 9-pin dot matrix printer and the sound of a carrier tone from my modem. What people whine about today with regard to noise makes me laugh but, to them, it's a big deal.

These days, increased power draw causes increased cooling needs and, therefore increased noise, which is a detrimental thing. I remember when AnandTech refused to recommend the Radeon R9 290 card, one of the best value video cards in history, because ATi's reference blower cooler was too loud. These things do matter to people (as stupid as I may think that it is).

 

[Avro Arrow]

Unambiguous Thunderbolt support is absolutely a strength on Intel platforms, and it's frustrating to see few vendors on the AM4 side dip their toes into it. There are ways to get connectivity with an add-in card, but otherwise it's essentially only ASRock and Gigabyte making any moves in that space.

Honestly, while I agree that Thunderbolt is a great thing for those who want it, I believe that for the vast majority of people, it would be a waste of circuitry and an unwanted increase in the cost of the board. I haven't really seen any peripherals that support it that the consumer market would have any interest in. For servers, it's a fantastic standard but when I look on Newegg at Thunderbolt storage devices, they start at $330USD for only 4TB. That's pretty steep when I can get an 8TB USB3 drive for under $200 that works just fine. Thunderbolt is much (as in 8x) faster than USB3, sure, but it's not going to mean anything on a spinning drive that has read/write speeds that are slower than USB3's own transfer rate.

Thunderbolt makes the most sense for colossal RAID arrays or NVMe SSDs, both of which are not mainstream in the consumer market because nobody needs it (even if some want it). The fact that you can just add a Thunderbolt card makes it unnecessary to have on-board. It's not like a sound device which everyone uses all the time, it's a very specialised device that most do not use.

If I decide down the road that I want to use Thunderbolt, I can just get an ASUS X99 Deluxe Thunderbolt card for $47USD from Newegg and pop it in. That's why motherboards have those bus slots. It's for adding things that you might want down the road.

It's better to not increase the price of the motherboard for a feature that most people don't use but offer a solution that they can still use if they want it. Otherwise, we may as well do away with non-video card bus slots if we just want everything to be on the motherboard itself.

Competition is good.

Amen to that good buddy!

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I agree. In fact I agree so much that I bought a 5800X a couple of months ago. But Intel are still competing. And I’m just trying to offer a bit of balance. AMD isn’t slaughtering Intel, in fact currently Intel appear to be catching up on sales with lower prices and higher availability.

I wouldn’t announce rocket lake DOA just yet. We don’t know the prices, the performance or anything. If an 11700K comes in cheaper than a 5800X it will definitely not be dead on arrival.

sales /=/ success. If that were true then Qualcomm would technically be obliterating both intel and AMD.

We've seen multiple performance leaks of rocket lake from multiple sources in multiple countries. Unless intel can increase IPC through a BIOS update, rocketlake really isnt holding up to early scrutiny, not the way zen 2 or 3 did.

Intel can "compete" in sales simply by virtue of having the capacity to do so. When talking about the PROCESSORS themselves, no, intel is not competing. They are faltering, all over the place.

Price? Well that has nothing to do with whether intel's architecture sucks (because it objectively is worse then AMD by nearly every metric) but the prices of i9 11900k CPUs have leaked from multiple retailers, anywhere from 505 to 612 euros. It isnt going to be cheap, this is intel. They were charging $1000 for a pentium D that was getting kneecapped by a $300 athlon. So long as OEMs keep buying their pentium and core i3 chips for cheap walmart specials, intel isnt going to have enough inventory pressure to lower prices.

For a lot of people, a bigger CPU cooler and case fans means more noise. Now personally, I don't care about fan noise because the first PC I ever used was an original IBM PC (model 5150). If you want to talk about noise, holy crap, the PSU sounded like a jet engine on that thing. And I also had to get use the sound of a Panasonic KX-P1091 9-pin dot matrix printer and the sound of a carrier tone from my modem. What people whine about today with regard to noise makes me laugh but, to them, it's a big deal.

These days, increased power draw that causes increased cooling needs and, therefore increased noise, is a detrimental thing. I remember when AnandTech refused to recommend the Radeon R9 290 card, one of the best value video cards in history, because ATi's reference blower cooler was too loud. These things do matter to people (stupid as it is).

It isnt really stupid. You may be OK listening to a jet engine next to your ear, but most people would find that very distracting. Especially when it isnt necessary. I work in network closets all day, those things are LOUD. That doesnt mean I'm OK with having loud noises coming from my PC.

Anandtech couldnt recommend the 290 because it topped 70 DECIBELS. That's on the level of a vaccum cleaner, or standing within a short distance of an active highway. It was utterly unacceptable, even among blower coolers. The RTX 3090 draws more power but runs at ~40 DB, there is no reason the 290 should have been as absurdly loud as it was.

 

[Avro Arrow]

sales /=/ success. If that were true then Qualcomm would technically be obliterating both intel and AMD.

We've seen multiple performance leaks of rocket lake from multiple sources in multiple countries. Unless intel can increase IPC through a BIOS update, rocketlake really isnt holding up to early scrutiny, not the way zen 2 or 3 did.

Intel can "compete" in sales simply by virtue of having the capacity to do so. When talking about the PROCESSORS themselves, no, intel is not competing. They are faltering, all over the place.

Price? Well that has nothing to do with whether intel's architecture sucks (because it objectively is worse then AMD by nearly every metric) but the prices of i9 11900k CPUs have leaked from multiple retailers, anywhere from 505 to 612 euros. It isnt going to be cheap, this is intel. They were charging $1000 for a pentium D that was getting kneecapped by a $300 athlon. So long as OEMs keep buying their pentium and core i3 chips for cheap walmart specials, intel isnt going to have enough inventory pressure to lower prices.

It isnt really stupid. You may be OK listening to a jet engine next to your ear, but most people would find that very distracting. Especially when it isnt necessary. I work in network closets all day, those things are LOUD. That doesnt mean I'm OK with having loud noises coming from my PC.

Anandtech couldnt recommend the 290 because it topped 70 DECIBELS. That's on the level of a vaccum cleaner, or standing within a short distance of an active highway. It was utterly unacceptable, even among blower coolers. The RTX 3090 draws more power but runs at ~40 DB, there is no reason the 290 should have been as absurdly loud as it was.

I think that you misunderstood. I said that it didn't bother me because I cut my teeth on much louder PCs in the 80s. Every advancement in reducing noise since then has been a bonus for me. For people who started more recently, a PC's ability to be quiet is more precious than it is to me. When I said (even though it's stupid), I meant the people who whine about louder CPU coolers because, let's face it, they're not really that loud compared to case fans and video cards. To those people, noise matters.

I agree that the noise level of the R9 290 was absurd but the performance per dollar that it put out was also absurd (in a good way) which made it a good example of just how important noise can be to people. When I'm gaming, I generally have the sound loud enough that I can't hear my PC at all, and that's with speakers. If I were using earbuds or a headset, I really wouldn't hear the PC and that's when the card was actually loud, when gaming. AnandTech also used an open test bench which probably made it worse but that doesn't matter. The point I was making is that while I don't care about the noise, lots of people do and that's the biggest reason that the power draw of a CPU is a relevant metric. The high power draw of "Boiling Lake" (god I love that name! ) will make computers that use it louder and there are a good number of people that would consider that to be a real negative. There are also people who live in hot climates that won't appreciate the heat that it generates.

These are all valid knocks against this Intel CPU just as they were valid knocks against AMD's FX CPUs. Increased power draw causes more heat and more heat causes more noise from the cooling system (as well as more ambient heat).

I only mentioned that I don't care about the noise level so that you knew I was being objective instead of saying "I wouldn't like it so it can't be good for anyone!", which would of course be insane (but it doesn't stop people from having that attitude).