It’s no secret that Intel’s brand spanking new 11th-gen chips aren’t actually all that spanking
or new at all. Certain chips went on sale in some regions literally weeks
ago even though they were only supposed to go on sale today.
Which is why the legends, or “big old meanies” according to certain companies
like Intel I’m sure, Gamers Nexus, and a few others already spilled most
of the tasty 11th-gen beans weeks ago, while I had to sit and wait.
But I’m done waiting, boys! And in this video, I’ll be taking a look at Intel’s “new''
Core i7-11700KF along with ASUS’s TUF Gaming Z590-Plus WIFI
to see whether Intel will reign once again as the gaming CPU king!
But first, you know the drill. If you want to grab any of the parts in this video,
go ahead and do so via the Amazon Affiliate links in the description down below.
It helps the channel out and costs you nothing.
And, for my fellow South Africans, if you’re not already buying all of your
tech things at Wootware, then you’re just plain unpatriotic.
Now, as some of you will remember, I reviewed Intel’s last-gen 10700KF about ten months ago
(also with an ASUS TUF Gaming board interestingly enough), and I called it the new gaming king.
But after that, AMD came in like a big red wrecking ball with their 5000-series
CPUs which matched, and even crushed Intel’s 10th-gen chips in a ton of games.
So it is a little concerning then, that Intel’s new 11th-gen chips, or at least the one we’re
dealing with here, doesn’t really seem all that different from the 10700KF.
They’re built on the same 14nm architecture, they have the same eight cores with hyperthreading,
the same 125W TDP, and curiously, the 11700KF advertises lower base and boost clock speeds
than the 10700KF, all while the new chip comes in at around $400 or about 15 to 25 more dolaroonies.
So what the heck is going on here? Well, luckily even though the two look almost
identical at first glance, the 11700KF has more than a few tricks up its sleeve
that make it the superior chip in all the ways that matter.
One of the biggest being a pretty hefty IPC or Instructions Per Cycle improvement,
with 11th gen seeing a boost to IPC of up to 19% on the 11900K compared to the 10900K,
with presumably the rest of the lineup including our 10700KF also seeing a similar upgrade.
This is important because even though the 11700KF sports a slightly lower clock speed, the IPC boost
means it uses that speed more efficiently and should result in a decent performance upgrade
overall. IPC improvements are a big part of the reason the red team’s newest chips
should be able to trade blows with Intel even though they usually run at lower clock speeds.
Memory is another area where Intel brought some fire with their new chips, bumping the
max official supported memory speed to 3200 MHz, a sizable improvement over last gen’s 2933 MHz.
The most crucial of the upgrades coming with this generation is something Intel
really dropped the ball on the last generation, that being support for PCIe-Gen 4. AMD pioneered
that shiz ages ago, and it really should’ve already been a thing on the last-gen chips.
Other notable improvements include a new iGPU
(although on the KF chips like the one we’re working with here, that’s been ripped out),
four more PCIe lanes for 20 in total, new overclocking tools, and some AI improvements.
And that’s about it for all of the stuff that matters to most of us, but if you want to dive
deeper into all of the changes and improvements, I’ll leave a link to those down below.
Now that we’re acquainted with the chip, we should take a closer look at the board we’ll be using to
test it, especially since it’s probably, maybe, possibly more interesting than the chip itself.
In the box we get the board itself which we’ll ogle in just a bit,
then we have an attachment to the side which houses the board’s WIFI antenna
which should pair well with the WIFI 6 capabilities of the board.
Next up is a little book that I wouldn’t recommend reading – it just looks kind
of boring and I’d rather read The Lost World which I’ve been
meaning to get to for a while now. The certificate of reliability ASUS ships with the TUF boards
is definitely a bit of a better read and tells you all about how tough it is which is kinda cool.
Then some more stickers for your collection of stickers that I hope you won’t actually stick
onto your PC parts. On a serious note, even though I never use these things,
they’re still kinda cool to look at. Maybe I’ll start a collection.
Then we’ve got an M.2 rubber pad or two, another branded coaster for my collection, a couple of
M.2 screws, and then two SATA cables to bring it all home before we get to the board itself.
Now, as I mentioned earlier,
this isn’t my first time laying hands on an Intel version of a TUF Gaming board,
and just like the Strix Z590 I checked out very recently looked diiiiiiiferent, but
still same to the Z490 Strix, the Z490 and Z590 TUF Gaming boards are also different, but same.
The TUF Gaming Z590-Plus again sticks with the whole grey and black color scheme,
one that’s only really interrupted by white and grey logos or wordy things.
While I didn’t mind the color scheme or the look of the Z490 TUF in general,
in fact, I didn’t think it looked half bad at all, I did have some issues with it,
issues that ASUS has apparently taken into account and changed on the Z590 TUF.
Most notably, there’s a very noticeable reduction of yellow accents on the board, I mean,
there’s like 70% less yellow here. Even though I thought it added a bit of character on the Z490,
it stood out a little more than I would’ve liked, so only having a tiny yellow accent on the Z590
right next to the CPU socket where it’ll be covered up by a cooler is a smart move, ASUS.
Beyond that, the Z590 as a whole just looks much better than the board it’s replacing.
Due to the included M.2 heat spreaders (which we’ll get to in a minute),
and a few other tweaks like an extended IO cover and heat sink,
the board looks a hell of a lot cleaner and less busy, and I honestly think it looks fantastic.
The only thing I’m not too big a fan of is the design of the chipset heatsink.
It looks sort of futuristic, like some sort of stealth bomber spaceship thing,
but it just doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the board in my opinion.
And, unfortunately for the RGB nuts like myself, there’s not much to write home about here,
with the TUF Z590 also only featuring two somewhat cute little lighting zones on the
right of the board. Even though they’re customizable through ASUS’ Aura software,
they’re just not very exciting or creative.
What is exciting is that the board is currently selling for $260 (with no pricing for us here in
South Africa because I can’t find anyone actually selling the thing), which actually makes it a very
competitive Z590 indeed. Especially with everything it has to offer.
Kicking things off, we’ve got a beefy 14+2 power phase design just like on the Strix Z590,
although there are probably some quality or efficiency differences between the two,
regardless that means that this board should be able to handle pretty much
any 10th or 11th-gen chip you can throw at it.
It can also handle almost any memory kit you toss its way (unless it’s ECC memory obviously), as the
board, thanks to ASUS’ Optimem II tech, can handle kits with overclocked speeds of up to 5133 MHz.
Cooling is another area that’s gone through an impressive glow-up from the previous generation,
with much bigger heat sinks for the board’s VRM and chokes,
and a nice hunk of metal to keep the chipset cool too.
Adding even more metal to the board, we also have two hefty heat spreaders, one dedicated
to the topmost M.2 drive, and one long boy at the bottom covering the two other M.2 slots.
Oh yeah, that’s right, the board features support for three M.2 drives, which is awesome,
although only the topmost slot is wired for PCIe 4.0,
with the two at the bottom only being wired for PCIe 3.0.
Along with all of that, the board also focuses heavily on its impressive audio hardware and
features like AI noise cancellation, all of which provide a great experience and are nice to haves,
but it’s not nearly as big of a selling point to me as I’m sure ASUS wants it to be.
With this being a TUF board, you’d expect it to be pretty tough,
and it definitely is. The board is built from the ground up for stability and “toughness”,
and the premium, reinforced, shielded,
military-grade parts everywhere show it. I didn’t take the board out into the wilds of Africa
(also known as my backyard) to truly test all the toughness, but I’m sure it’ll survive just fine.
And “just fine” is about what I’d say about the board’s rear I/O.
It features all of the usual suspects, including audio jacks, Displayport and HDMI ports,
and all of that jazz, but more importantly, it’s equipped with the WIFI 6 connectors,
a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, and a total of 7 USB ports.
The USB ports include a mix of 2.0, 3.2 Gen 1 and 2, and a single Type C port, and that’s
more than enough for most people, but I’m not most people and I need me some more USB ports!
Luckily, along with a long list of other things I don’t have the time to really get into,
the board’s internal I/O configuration comes packed with a bunch more USB connectors
(including a Thunderbolt header), as well as six SATA ports,
four RGB headers, a clear CMOS header, and a strange array of fan connectors.
Strange because even though the board has six headers in total,
only three of those are chassis fan headers, which is not nearly enough,
ASUS! I mean, sure I can plug chassis fans into some of the other headers,
and yes, I do have fan splitter cables, but still. I’m mad about it purely out of principle.
Now, with all of that talk out of the way, it’s finally time for some action.
That’s right, it’s benchmark time.
Now there are a couple of things to note here before we get started.
The first is that I only have numbers from the 11700KF,
10900K, and AMD’s 3800XT because they are the only CPUs I had access to. I’m sure if I had
access to a 5000-series Ryzen chip, it would definitely skew the results so keep that in mind.
Secondly, I tested all configurations with resizable bar support on as I found that
to improve performance by a small margin overall, and while I usually run my kit of
Crucial Ballistix RGB at 3600 MHz for benchmarks like this, because of the way Intel’s new chips
operate with regards to memory, I found 3200 MHz to produce significantly higher results.
Gamers Nexus covers this topic in a video I’ll link down below.
As for the system we’re using, we have the aforementioned 32GB kit of Crucial Ballistix RGB,
a 360mm AIO handling our cooling, Antec’s EAG Pro 750W covering our power needs,
the Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.0 drive I picked up at Wootware,
and for our GPU we’ve got an RTX 3070 doing all the heavy lifting.
Oh, and I didn’t overclock any of the chips for this round of benchmarks,
but I did leave all board enhancements like ASUS’ MCE on as that’s what it defaulted to,
and is something I’d imagine most of you would leave enabled too. So also keep that in mind.
So, as with any good review, we kick things off with Cinebench,
which paints a fairly predictable picture. The 10900K with its extra cores came out on
top when it comes to multithreaded workloads, but surprisingly the 11700KF almost kept up with it.
And when it comes to the single-threaded test, the 11th gen chip from Intel really
flexes that IPC gain muscles, handily outpacing both of the other chips.
Blender, which likes as many cores as it can get, unsurprisingly heavily favors the
higher core count 10900K, while both the 3800XT and 11700KF still put up a pretty good fight.
Switching to more gaming-oriented tests, we’ve got Superposition up first,
and here’s where things get a little interesting, with the 10900K dropping to the back of the pack,
with the 3800XT taking the lead, and the 11700KF landing right in the middle.
In 3D Mark’s Time Spy we see things shake up yet again, this time with the 3800XT posting
the lowest CPU score, the 11700KF coming in second place, and the 10900K coming out on top.
As for actual gaming benchmarks, first up is Civilization 6 where average turn time is king,
and here we start to see the 11700K slowly coming into its own.
Then we’ve got Cyberpunk 2077, where our two previous-gen chips
posted scarily similar FPS averages, with the 11700KF edging out the lead.
Then, in Hitman 3 we have a much clearer win for the 11700KF,
a win that more or less sets the tone for the rest of the games I tested,
where the 11700KF came out on top in all of them except for in Apex legends.
The 11700KF’s lead obviously varies quite a bit with each game tested,
where in some it just barely comes out on top, and in others it clearly dominates,
but wins are wins and the chip’s showing here is pretty impressive.
It’s because of how impressive it is that I wish I was able to get my hands on a
3800X for this comparison because I’m really curious to see how the 11700KF
would fare against that beast in my testing.
During stock testing, I saw the 11700KF hit a max power draw of 166W, which led to a max temp
of 85 degrees with a controlled ambient temp of 23 degrees. Which is actually not bad at all,
especially with the chip maxing out at an all-core clock of 4.6 GHz and a single-core max of 5 GHz.
The board’s beefy VRM heatsinks also did a fantastic job of keeping things cool,
with those temps only hitting a max of 54 degrees.
In order to really put both the chip and our TUF Gaming Z590 through their paces,
I also tried my hand at a bit of overclocking, and after a bit of tweaking I got the chip to
stick to a stable, all core overclock of 5GHz, and man did these two make a great pairing.
I’m only showing a handful of benchmarks and only comparisons to the stock 11700KF
because this video is already way longer than it should be,
and I didn’t get to overclocking the other chips so including those wouldn’t be fair.
But holy crap did that OC do some WORK.
In Cinebench I got the highest single-core score I’ve ever personally gotten, and even
though it’s not on the chart, the multi-core score even beat out the stock 10900K’s score.
When it comes to the games I tested, the difference was far less pronounced,
with some games barely benefitting at all from the OC, while others saw a pretty sizable uplift,
including Civilization 6 which reduced its average turn time by about 11%.
This isn’t an overclock I’d stick to for everyday use as I’d much rather set a per-core OC for that,
and this is why.
With the 5GHz all-core OC applied, the Chip was guzzling down a massive 281W under load,
and easily hit 100 degrees on the core,
while our VRM temps were surprisingly still very manageable at a max of 65 degrees.
All in all, an impressive showing from both Intel and ASUS.
So what’s the verdict here then? Has Intel ripped back their gaming CPU crown from AMD’s clutches?
Well, unfortunately, I can’t really answer
that question since I don’t have a 5000-series chip to test myself.
But others like Gamers Nexus did, and from what I’ve seen from them
and others, that’s a big old… sort of, but not really. It seems like Intel and AMD are
about evenly matched in most games, with a slight advantage still going to team red.
Which is really disappointing. Intel has been sort of stagnating for years now on
an old architecture, squeezing every last drop of performance they can out of 14nm,
and AMD has proven that that’s just not cutting it anymore.
Intel has to bring more to the table than they are right now, and we as consumers need them to,
or we might see AMD starting to do the same thing moving forward.
As for the TUF Gaming Z590 though, I’m almost all for it. I would’ve liked a few more USB
ports and fan headers, either some more or no RGB, and an onboard power/reset switch,
or at least a debug LED tossed into the mix, but overall it’s a pretty fantastic board.
And that’s all folks.
Again, if you’re planning on picking up any of the parts I mentioned in this video, be sure to
use my Amazon affiliate links down below, or if you’re in South Africa grab it all at Wootware.
Huge thanks to ASUS for lending me the board and chip for this review,
and thanks to everyone who stuck around this far into the video, I know it’s a long boy.
Now, I’ve been working on videos for like 27 hours straight at this point,
so I’m going to go destroy my bed. See you in the next one, cheers.