Intel Core i9-11900K

[W1zzard]

The Intel Core i9-11900K is the company's Rocket Lake flagship. It uses the new Cypress Cove architecture and includes support for new instruction sets like AVX512 and DLBoost to speed up AI calculations. We run the processor through our new test suite and also take a closer look at gaming performance, including frametimes.

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[cueman]

what a heck happend?

i except alot more.. what happend intel,is it there sometting still not ready...
dissapoinment..

well,now i can sure forget 1200 mobo and start wait intels 10nm cpu alder lake and 1700 mobo.

and thats is last change intel that i dont move amd camp,really.



anyway,bye forever 14nm cpu, i hope,and welcome intel last chance, 10nm alder lake.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Fail, as expected.

 

[Vya Domus]

Ignoring the 14nm process and the power consumption which is a meme at this point I find it incredibly bizarre that architecturally this isn't a clear step up. Perhaps Sunny Cove was never really intended to be a a high performance architecture but then why does it scale so badly with power ?

 

[Crazy_O]

FAIL CPU OF THE YEAR.

 

[1d10t]

Even in a non-gaming scenario, this CPU struggled against previous gen.
Now let see people buying these at $550 if they already mad about 6 core being $385.

 

[Fleurious]

Disappointing results to say the least. I can't see any reason for me to get this over the competition.

 

[Kapone33]

So it's a 9900K with PCIe 4.0 support?

 

[Prima.Vera]

3 words:
NO. THANK. YOU!

What a disaster and fiasco for intel with this joke lunch. The absurd and ridiculous power consumption is match only by it's hilarious price (!!!)
What a waste of silicon ))))))))))

 

[dgianstefani]

Lets wait 3 months for mature BIOS's and microcode. I remember my 5950x had issues that were mostly fixed by AGESA 1.2, but some still aren't.

 

[Deleted member 205776]

Hard pass.

 

[KarymidoN]

can someone with money to burn test if this new Intel Frier works well for pancakes? looking for an upgrade, at 100ºC i know that water boils, but will it make my pancakes or i'll have to wait for the 11900X ?

 

[birdie]

The CPUs could have been edible or even good if not for the atrocious pricing and very high power consumption (the 14nm node clearly is not a good match for the architecture initially designed for 10nm) . Intel, you're no longer the king of the hill, there's this thing called competition. You are supposed to compete with AMD, not collude with them, sigh. It really sucks we have just two x86 CPU vendors and just two GPU vendors. AMD now has zero incentive to lower prices for Ryzen 5000 CPUs. Darn!

The most disappointing part of the new CPUs is that their iGPU is as bad as it was in 2015 with the release of Sky Lake:

Still it's better than AMD parts which lack the iGPU altogether.

 

[Makaveli]

Review was petty much what I expected. If you must go intel right now Comet lake is a much better buy.

 

[john_]

It's funny, or sad, that most of those positive points in the conclusion, are either not positive points at all (being unlocked in a world of unlocked competitive products it's not positive, it should be a prerequisite), or positive points that are almost totally negated when looking at the negative points list (for example PCIe 4.0, but only for M.2, AVX512 but minimal software support etc. )

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Even in a non-gaming scenario, this CPU struggled against previous gen.
Now let see people buying these at $550 if they already mad about 6 core being $385.

It's actually over 600 usd on newegg.com

 

[Ravenas]

what a heck happend?

i except alot more.. what happend intel,is it there sometting still not ready...
dissapoinment..

well,now i can sure forget 1200 mobo and start wait intels 10nm cpu alder lake and 1700 mobo.

and thats is last change intel that i dont move amd camp,really.



anyway,bye forever 14nm cpu, i hope,and welcome intel last chance, 10nm alder lake.

What more do you expect from 14nm technology? The only gains that have been made over the past 3 years are slight single core gains with dismal multithreaded performance gains at the cost of extreme heat and power consumption. Intel has been stuck in 14nm since 2017 with single thread gains and high heat.

The writing is on the wall... Look at product stock across the board. AMD is never in stock, where Intel is always available.

I think what is worse is complete lack of strategy in terms of catching TSMC. Intel has begun airing commercials attacking Mac M1 chips... then to turn around and do a 180 and say that want to produce chips for Apple. The only way Intel will catch TSMC is 1 of 2 scenarios, or both:

1. TSMC is blackballed by the USA via sanctions or tariffs due to Chinese influence. TSMC can then no longer sell processors to USA companies. (very unlikely this will happen, supply would be too disrupted)
2. Intel picks up Apple iPhone/Mac business to fund astronomical fab investments. (very unlikely this will happen as Apple currently has 4nm contracts with TSMC, and would not revert back to 10nm or 14nm) unless scenario 1 were to occur).

 

[BArms]

One really interesting benchmark i'd like to see for CPUs is Civ 6 time-between-turns.

 

[watzupken]

Rocket Lake painted 2 problems that Intel need to address quickly in my opinion,
1. 14nm is simply no longer competitive. On the surface, Intel is able to squeeze performance out of it to match competition. However, the penalty is high power consumption and heat output. For the top end to go up to 100 degs or more is nuts. Even if the chip is cheap, the cost of the motherboard and cooler to sustain performance is going to be very high.

2. Cypress Cove is 1 gen behind competition. I recall Cypress Cove is derived from Sunny Cove introduced in Ice Lake U, and clearly it was competing against the likes of AMD's Renoir. WIth Zen 3, AMD upped the bar further in terms of performance vs efficiency, and clearly Rocket Lake is unable and not enough to keep up.

While I look forward to see what Alder Lake can bring to the table, I am at the same time skeptical. While Intel's 10nm Super Fin seems to be doing well, I actually think they are driving 10nm towards the same path as the 14nm. Pretty sure they will push 10nm very hard with Alder Lake, but at least they have the small cores to claw back some efficiency under light load. But against a 5nm Zen 4, assuming AMD don't drop the ball, they are likely still going to be on par if not behind competition.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

Temperature = Really Hot
Power consumption = Really hungry chip

Performance? ......... meh.............

 

[TheLostSwede]

Lets wait 3 months for mature BIOS's and microcode. I remember my 5950x had issues that were mostly fixed by AGESA 1.2, but some still aren't.

Hang on, doesn't Intel provide the most stable platform out there and technically doesn't need UEFI updates, according to the fanbois?

 

[chodaboy19]

I guess we wait for 10nm in 2022?

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Hang on, doesn't Intel provide the most stable platform out there and technically doesn't need UEFI updates, according to the fanbois?

To be fair 4th/6th/8th/9th/10th gen was all very stable for me so it was true till Rocketlake.

 

[Thefumigator]

ahhh sweet sweet competition. Loving these discussions.

 

[W1zzard]

To be fair 4th/6th/8th/9th/10th gen was all very stable for me so it was true till Rocketlake.

+1 on that. Never seen such finicky platform from Intel, ever I think