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- 14 nanometers!
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- Yeah, yeah nanometers aren't an accurate measure of
anything, I know.
But this process is old
and this has huge performance implications
which we'll test on the Core I9-11900K and
Core I5-11600K that we have here today.
To do that we've grabbed the equivalent 10th gen core
processors, along with the Ryzen 5 5600X and
Ryzen 9 5900X for comparison with team red.
Special note, we're running both benches at
one-to-one memory.
More on that later.
And we're running these tests under
completely stocked turbo limits.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the
Core I9's first L.
At a roughly eight percent lower average FPS
than Ryzen 9.
While the Core I5 sees significantly
better minimum frame rates than Ryzen 5.
GTA5 has the Core I9 pulling ahead
of the 5900X by five percent or more
in minimum frames, while the Core I5 again pulls off a
13 percent or so lead over Ryzen 5's minimums.
F1 2020's absurd frame rates
really generational improvements
Intel's manage here for the Core I5.
The Core I9 appears roughly in line with 10th gen
thanks to fewer threads and lower base blocks.
Forza Horizon 4 has Intel trading blows with AMD
with better minimums and worse averages on both
new CPU's, while turn times in Civilization 6 are
about half a second or so faster on 11th gen.
Flight Sim 2020 has both CPU's ahead of last gen, but
falling short of AMD in all but the minimum frame rates.
CSGO is another bloodbath, where AMD's Zen 3 architecture
firmly curb stomps rocket lake.
Perhaps, thanks to the
gigantic amount of sheer cash Ryzen enjoys.
Although it's worth pointing out
that every CPU here is already
in overkill territory.
Moving on to productivity, Intel's single threaded
Cinebench scores are much better than last gen and
higher than AMD's, but not by a huge amount.
While PugetBench for Creative Cloud shows that even
lightly threaded work loads like Photoshop can still
favor AMD, again, likely thanks to the extra cash.
It's not a big L though.
That comes from Blender.
The Core I5 falls behind by 10 percent in Gooseberry,
while the Core I9, because of stock turbo, is a
staggering 40 percent slower than Ryzen in the same test.
Corona bench mark, being much shorter, puts the
Core I5 much closer to Ryzen 5 and the same goes for V-Ray.
A test that only lasts about a minute.
POV-Ray has Intel very close to AMD
in single-threaded performance,
while the Core I9 continues to struggle.
SPECworkstation is mostly another pain point for Intel.
With some tests again favoring the 10th gen Core I9,
thanks to it's additional cores and threads.
Even the Core I5 struggles with 10 to 14 percent lower
aggregate scores than AMD across the life sciences,
financial services, and energy segments of the test.
Not looking great so far, at least not for the Core I9.
But now we need to talk about power in thermals,
and we're gonna talk a lot, because if you recall
Comet Lake was better than Coffee Lake for thermals,
but only because Intel busted out all the tricks of
the trade to make it happen.
And now despite having
two fewer cores, all early reports had Rocket Lake
pegged at basically being a flame thrower in addition
to the performance concerns relative to AMD.
At stock, both are Core I9 and Core I5 managed thermals
that are reasonable.
Thanks in large part to strictly
conforming to Intel's rated 125 watt TDP,
once turbo expires.
They do draw much higher power than last gen
to hit their peak all core turbo speeds, but in the
Core I9's case, Intel's new adapted boost technology
impressively allows the cores to run 300 megahertz
higher all core than it's rated for.
This new behavior is similar to AMD's Precision Boosts Two,
opportunistically increasing all Core clocks
within thermal and power limits, but Intel's is still
constrained by their finite turbo period of 56 seconds
by default.
Upon disabling this turbo limit using our motherboards
multi-core enhancement feature, the Core I9 draws
a staggering 275 watts peak with 260 watts sustained
from the socket.
That is nearly double the Ryzen 9's power draw.
And around 40 percent more than 10th gens.
We did get about a 19 percent faster render time
than stock, but even with our
Noctua NHD 15S the I9 instantly hits
80 degrees and creeps up to the mid 90s throughout the run.
Bizarrely though, the Core I5 manages better thermals
and power draw with multi-core enhancement compared
to its own stock turbo, thanks to a lower core
voltage provided by the motherboard.
These results however were for AVX 2.
Intel added the AVX 512 instructions set and machine
learning extensions to Rocket Lake, and they're
leaning heavily on the marketing.
We don't have any benchmarks for that right now, but
we can do a quick stress test with Prime95.
Where at stock we've got okay thermals, again, for our
Core I9, but our Core I5 hits the 100 degree mark
thanks to a higher turbo speed before settling into
the mid 60s to 70s.
Power consumption roughly matches the non AVX-512
testing, and unsurprisingly both CPUs dropped
straight to base clock after the turbo window expired.
It's when we remove the limits again that, oh no.
Intel, are, are you okay?
The Core I9 can draw over 290 watts at peak.
The Core I5 once again draws less power thanks to the
motherboard SPID control, but both CPUs still run
toasty enough that our dual tower cooler can just
barely handle it.
We're really at the limits of
what Intel's reheated 14 nanometer process can do here.
Thankfully you won't have to reheat your drink for up
to eight hours with a water bottle from lttstore.com!
But even without AVX-512 you have to ask, why is 11th
gen so hot, with fewer cores than last gen?
Aside from AVX-512 taking up a huge amount of dye space,
it was originally built for 10 nanometers.
That's right, Intel had to backport this thing.
And that's why
we got this really strange looking procstack.
No fewer than 10 eight core CPUs across Core I7
and Core I9.
9 six core CPUs in the Core I5 line, and
everything else is just a Comet Lake refresh.
No Rocket Lake Core I3s or Pentiums this time around.
Without being able to rely on core counts to cleanly
distinguish between skews, the differences are so minor
in practice that they're going to make most
people think twice about spending an extra $140
for a Core I9 when a Core I7 is almost as good, or
when AMD is a better performer for the money.
Granted, Core I9s get thermal velocity boost and
adaptive boost technology, but you can mimic that
by enabling multi-core enhancement if your motherboard
has it or by maxing out the power loads manually in Intel
XTU if it doesn't.
All 11th gen core desktop CPUs that we know about, have
the same cash for core and the same improved graphics
core with expanded video decode capabilities on
skews that include them.
Once more, they all have an extra four PCI express gen
four lanes on the CPU now for MVME's storage like AMD does.
Hit subscribe by the way because even within the same
models not all the MVMESSDs are created equal,
and we're calling out the worst offender.
Now there is the issue of gear one mode support.
TLDR, it's just like running infinity fabric in
one-to-one mode with memory speed on Ryzen
for better performance.
The Core I9-11900K in KF are supposed to be
the only ones that handle DDR4-3200 memory this way,
but from our testing the Core I5-11600K can too.
It's just not the default.
And it'll go even higher than that.
It looks like the Core I9's main draw will be in
pre-built PCs that don't expose these options.
If the Core I7-11700K is as Gamers Nexus put it,
a waste of sand, the whole Core I9 line up on paper
is even worse.
Especially the case skew that's just
priced $10 less than Ryzen 9.
Thankfully you don't need to buy a high-end motherboard
to use faster memory now, so that's one savings
that's no longer exclusive to team red.
But that doesn't save the Core I9.
In games matching Ryzen's performance is a best
case scenario, where even the Ryzen 5 at times comes close.
Granted it may not make or break your game play, but
the value's just not there.
For work, unless you can use AVX-512, the extra
oomph from Ryzen 9's 12-cores means Intel is not
going to be your first choice this generation in
that domain either.
The real star of the show is the Core I5.
It's only about two to six percent slower
than the Ryzen 5 at stock
across our testing, but it costs $30 less at retail.
Even better for Intel, availability troubles means
the 11600K is $100 cheaper than Ryzen 5's street price.
Making it a no brainer as long as Intel
has the chips to sell.
Bonus, if you don't overclock you'll lose
very little by getting a cheaper non-k skew and
turning on multi-core enhancement to offset the
difference in baseclock.
Just make sure you get a cooler that can handle it.
If you're worried about upgradability, DDR5's
impending arrival means both teams sockets have an
expiration date at this point, so you
lose nothing either way if you need a new CPU today.
Or, or you lose everything depending on
how you think about it.
You know, glass half empty, half full.
It might be rough going for Intel for a while longer,
but it looks like things are improving.
A week ago their CEO, Pat Gelsinger,
announced a renewed focus
on fabrication and process technology including a
seven nanometer tile process that will hopefully power
Meteor Lake two generations from now.
We've heard this kind of promise from Intel before,
so, time will tell.
For now, just buy a Core I5
or AMD when the scalpers have finished scalping.
But if Linus won't scalp you for sponsor segways,
I won't either.
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Thanks for watching guys.
Go check out our video on the dangers, or lack-there-of
of mixing and matching memory.
With these new memory controllers it might be more
important than you think.
Or not.
You just have to see.