Intel Core i7-11700K Appears to Beat AMD in Geekbench 5

CPU
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As spotted by Leakbench, Intel's unreleased Core i7-11700K has been ripped through the Geekbench 5 benchmark tool, and the alleged performance gains over last-gen parts are nothing to scoff at. 

Single-core, the chip jots down a score of 1807 points, with a crypto score of 5423 points. Multi-core, it notes down 10,673 points. For comparison, currently, in our test suite, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X tops the Geekbench 5 Single-core charts with a score of 1713 points, making Intel's Rocket Lake chip about 5.5% faster in single-threaded applications.

But, the catch to note with these scores is that Geekbench 5 uses AVX-512, which makes Intel's scores slightly inflated as only Rocket Lake supports it. Consequently, just because Intel's chip performs 5.5% faster in GeekBench 5, that does not mean it will perform faster than AMD's Zen 3 chips in real-world, single-threaded applications as there are no applications that use this yet -- and this is likely to remain so for quite some time to come. 

In multithreaded loads, AMD naturally takes a significant lead with our testing noting down a score of 14,471 points for the 16-core 5950X compared to the 10,673 pts in this leaked benchmark for the i7-11700K -- but again, the AVX discrepancy means that the real world performance delta between the two will be bigger.

Because of this AVX-512 discrepancy, it also remains to be seen whether Rocket Lake will catch up with AMD's chips for IPC in real-world use cases.

The Intel Core i7-11700K is expected to feature 8 cores and 16 threads on a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and boosting to 4.8 GHz. But, still being a 14nm CPU, despite the new architecture, power consumption is expected to be up there, with a 125 PL1 profile and 250W PL2 rating. 

Official word is that Rocket Lake will come out in Q1 2021, though we don't yet know exactly when.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • Makaveli
    How about comparing 8c to 8c.

    https://hothardware.com/news/intel-core-i7-11700k-ryzen-7-5800x-benchmark-leak
    And 2nd Geekbench numbers mean nothing.
    Reply
  • AsmodeusCAD
    is this like the time you "stress" tested an x570 board with a processor with a 65w TDP? asking for a friend
    Reply
  • PCWarrior
    Makaveli said:
    How about comparing 8c to 8c.

    https://hothardware.com/news/intel-core-i7-11700k-ryzen-7-5800x-benchmark-leak
    And 2nd Geekbench numbers mean nothing.
    The numbers reported by Tom’s Hardware for the 5800X are fine. Here is a list from the Geekbench 5 browser. SC score for the 5800X is around 1700±50 and MC score is around 10500±500.
    These two ES 11700K cpus both had a SC score of over 1800 (1807 and 1810) and MC score of 10673 and 11304.
    Intel-Core-i7-11700K-8-Core-Rocket-Lake-Desktop-CPU-Benchmark-Leak-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-5800X-_1.png (1031×1230) (wccftech.com)
    The Hot Hardware’s numbers about the 5800X (SC: 1816 and MC: 12065) are heavily overclocked results (both core frequency and RAM).

    I also need to say here that the article makes a mistake chalking down Intel’s win to AVX-512. Geekbench 5 is collection of tests weighted to give a single score. Only 1-2 of those tests take advantage of AVX-512. So, this is on the most part a win for Intel without AVX-512. I also don't believe for a second that Intel will release a cpu that will get beaten by an already existing AMD cpu and that of the same core count. Even if IPC wasn't enough they would tweak the frequency so that it edges out what the competition is offering.
    Reply
  • MasterMadBones
    I've been starting to take increasingly more issue with Geekbench average scores. Zen 2 CPUs initially performed unreasonably well because of Geekbench's memory usage. Since then we've repeatedly seen how certain CPUs seem to vastly outperform others because they had dedicated accelerators or instruction sets for exotic use cases. I suppose some of these use cases are more common for phones, but it still makes it extremely hard to compare CPUs in a way that makes sense for the consumer.

    I'm not saying that these things shouldn't be tested, but the weighting seems off, especially for desktop chips.

    EDIT: this is not to mention laptop CPUs, where comparing them is a dumpsterfire on its own.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    PCWarrior said:
    The numbers reported by Tom’s Hardware for the 5800X are fine. Here is a list from the Geekbench 5 browser. SC score for the 5800X is around 1700±50 and MC score is around 10500±500.
    These two ES 11700K cpus both had a SC score of over 1800 (1807 and 1810) and MC score of 10673 and 11304.
    Intel-Core-i7-11700K-8-Core-Rocket-Lake-Desktop-CPU-Benchmark-Leak-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-5800X-_1.png (1031×1230) (wccftech.com)
    The Hot Hardware’s numbers about the 5800X (SC: 1816 and MC: 12065) are heavily overclocked results (both core frequency and RAM).

    I also need to say here that the article makes a mistake chalking down Intel’s win to AVX-512. Geekbench 5 is collection of tests weighted to give a single score. Only 1-2 of those tests take advantage of AVX-512. So, this is on the most part a win for Intel without AVX-512. I also don't believe for a second that Intel will release a cpu that will get beaten by an already existing AMD cpu and that of the same core count. Even if IPC wasn't enough they would tweak the frequency so that it edges out what the competition is offering.

    I will be waiting for reviews over a board range of applications geek bench like user benchmark doesn't hold much weight with me.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    PCWarrior said:
    I also don't believe for a second that Intel will release a cpu that will get beaten by an already existing AMD cpu and that of the same core count.
    Intel had to release something to improve its standing against AMD's lineup regardless of how much ground it makes up since its existing parts are starting to lag behind. I doubt Intel enjoys having to make larger fewer cores CPUs on 14nm to keep up with AMD but on-going issues with 10nm and delays on 7nm are forcing its hand.
    Reply
  • FakeMike
    Finally some good news from Intel. Release of new CPUs will mark the price drop of new Ryzen CPUs and looks like Rocket Lake will be worth the wait, especially given that I cannot purchase recently released GPU.
    Reply