The 11th Generation Intel Core Desktop CPUs: A Mixed Bag

About eight calls in 2021 for a flagship desktop CPU is just not going to make up any ground against AMD, when you're literally up against CPUs with double the core count. However, it's clear that Intel has positioned this CPU as a gaming-focused product, so let's take a look at how it performs in different workloads.

In Adobe Premiere Pro, the new 11900k does show some improvement over the previous gen flagship, specifically when encoding 6K footage using only the CPU. This is something that you'd be much better off leveraging to an RTX GPU for. However, this improvement only makes it two seconds faster than the 12-core 5900x, and in production workloads, it's an absolute bloodbath. We could break down the numbers, but I think you guys get the picture.

For gaming, the 11900k is positioned to be a strong performer, and it shows in Death Stranding at 1080p, where we've got a pretty solid 11% improvement over the 10900k. However, when we drop the resolution to 1440p, they're again pretty much tied with the improvement now over the 10,900k shrinking to about five percent. Another slower-paced single-player game is Red Dead Redemption 2, where the 5900x actually manages a slight lead at both 1080p and 1440p resolution.

It's not very often that you see a new CPU released which is then beaten by the competition in both gaming and production workloads, but that's exactly what is going on here. Switching to Rainbow Six Siege, we see extremely high frame rates north of 400 frames per second, where the new 11900k pretty much matches the previous gen flagship. Realistically, the perceivable performance here is probably going to be the same for almost all CPUs shown on this chart, but it's useful for testing.

At 1440p, frame rates are lower but still above 300 fps, where the 11,900k tops the chart and I don't want to minimize the efforts or gains here and say that it's worthless. However, from a consumer's point of view, it's just not going to make a meaningful difference to the gaming experience. Then we have Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which shows the 11900k about even with the 10,900k in terms of average FPS, but with better frame rate stability on the low end.

When switching to 1440p, they're about the same with a tiny lead here over the 5900x. Lastly, F1 2020 at 1080p is essentially tied with the 10900k with pretty much the same picture at 1440p. At this point, I thought maybe there was something promising hiding under the hood of the 11900k, maybe overclocking would unlock the true potential of this product. Unfortunately, overclocks that were possible on more than a few 10,900k samples that I've tried previously just couldn't be enabled here on the 11900k.

Maybe it's my particular CPU sample or the motherboard, but I am interested to see the overclocking results from other reviewers for now. If you feel deflated after seeing those numbers, I mean I can totally relate. There is just no reason that I can recommend this CPU to you guys in production workloads; it gets absolutely smoked by the Ryzen 5900x and even in gaming, which I guess this is supposed to be a gaming-focused product.

However, it's at best maybe a couple of percent better than the 5900x on average in some games. It does get beaten in many ways, which feels like a step back from the i9 10,900k, which pretty much became irrelevant upon the release of the 5900x. Intel doesn't have anything to offer just yet at the enthusiast end of the desktop CPU market. They've called this thing an i9, but it just does not live up to that tier of product.

I think the mid-range is where the 11th gen CPUs are going to be a little bit more exciting, especially when paired with a 500 series motherboard which can enable memory overclocking, so that should be a little bit more exciting than what we've got right here. Stay tuned for the 11,600k review going up tomorrow around the same time as always.

A huge thanks for watching and I'll see you all in the next one.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enare intel actually releasing a flagship desktop cpu in 2021 with just eight cpu calls apparently so and that's exactly what we're going to be reviewing today this is the new i9 11 900k and as part of intel's new rocket lake 11th gen desktop cpu lineup and i want to see how fast this thing is versus the 12 core 5900x from amd and also the previous gen from intel the 10900k so what exactly does intel have to offer here let's take a look so first off let's take a look at what's new with rocket lake well thankfully it's not just another sky leak iteration although it is still 14 nanometer it's derived instead from intel's 10 nanometer ice lake parts just backported to a larger process in terms of what that looks like in terms of products specs and pricing it's actually pretty similar to what we've seen from last gen except for that i9 11900k that we'll be reviewing instead of the 10 cores that you'd find on the previous gen 10 900k we've now downgraded to just eight with clock speeds honestly looking pretty similar as well and pricing actually seems to have gone up versus the 10 900k all right then so really the only advantage here over the 11 700k is that you get some additional clock speed out of the box you get a higher default memory spec if you're interested in that and potentially a better binned product if you're looking to push some manual overclocking in my opinion the most interesting products in this entire stack are the i5 10600k that we'll be reviewing tomorrow and also the 160 dollar i5 11400f the reason for that is that memory overclocking is now completely unlocked across all of intel's new 500 series motherboards now that is a step in the right direction now as typical when it comes to intel's higher end desktop cpus and the ones that typically consume a little bit more power there is this discrepancy and debate of which power limit settings to use and test with and this isn't just a debate between reviewers and consumers but also between motherboard vendors as well what is considered a stock power limit on an asus motherboard for example is going to be a different experience on an msi or a gigabyte or an asrock board the discrepancy is typically when it comes to this limit here the long duration power limit and whether this will be enforced to intel spec of 125 watts or be completely unlocked or maybe even be set to some value in between as you can see intel's spec of 125 watts sustained has the 11900k sitting below 4 gigahertz flat for all cores in blender but not imposing that limit has it sitting significantly higher at 4.8 gigahertz strangely enough that unlocked power limit is actually what is considered stock here on the msi z590 ace motherboard that i used for testing that is simply loading up the bios and loading optimize defaults that's automatically what is loaded as stock so to be consistent with my previous testing i'll be running the 11900k here with the limits unlocked if you consider that overclocking that's completely up to you but it is the out of the box experience here that you'll get on a lot of z590 motherboards and before you actually pick a side of whether this is overclocking or not just know that it seems that intel themselves can't decide which values to use for these power limits in a recent media briefing they compared the 10900k at 125 watts to the new 11900k at 250 watts but even with the limits completely unlocked shoving over 200 watts into the new 11900k isn't enough to beat the previous gen 10 900k in cinebench due to that 20 core and thread reduction even just with this single benchmark you can probably tell how this review is going to pan out but switching to a single working thread only it's a bit more interesting there's a huge gain now over the 10 900k and now we've actually caught up to the single threaded performance of the top tier ryzen 5000 cpus in cinebench at least other than that for real heavily multi-threaded cpu workloads eight cores in a flagship part is just not enough when amd are offering 12 calls and 24 threads in the 5900x which should be about the same price as this new 11900k i mean there really is just no comparison the new 11900k gets slaughtered in pretty much everything here one application where the 11900k did poke through though was in adobe premiere pro when encoding 6k footage only using the cpu to be realistic this is something that you'd be much better off leveraging to an rtx gpu for same with blender if i'm honest but for cpu only encodes in adobe premiere pro there does seem to be an improvement here worth noting still though that improvement only makes it two seconds faster over the 12 core 5900x so for production workloads it is an absolute bloodbath and we could sit here and break down the numbers but i think you guys get the picture eight calls in 2021 for a flagship desktop cpu is just not going to make up any ground against amd when you're literally up against cpus with double the core count however it is clear that intel have positioned this cpu as a gaming focused product so let's see what the picture looks like there well kicking things off with death stranding at 1080p we've got a pretty solid 11 improvement here over the 10900k but at the same time that's only enough to basically tie the 5900x when we drop the resolution to 1440p they're again pretty much tied with the improvement now over the 10 900k shrinking to about five percent another slower paced single-player game here is red dead redemption 2 where the 5900x actually manages a slight lead at both 1080p and 1440p resolution it's not very often that you see a new cpu released which is then beaten by the competition in both gaming and production workloads but that's exactly what is going on here switching to rainbow six where we see extremely high frame rates north of 400 frames per second the new 11900k pretty much matches the previous gen flagship also realistically the perceivable performance here is probably going to be the same for almost all cpus shown on this chart but it is useful for testing at least at 1440p frame rates are lower but still above 300 fps where the 11 900k tops the chart and i don't want to minimize the efforts or gains here and say that it's worthless but from a consumer's point of view it's just not going to make a meaningful difference to the gaming experience then we have assassin's creed odyssey which shows the 11900k about even with the 10 900k in terms of average fps but with better frame rate stability on the low end and then switching to 1440p they're about the same with a tiny lead here over the 5900x then lastly f1 2020 at 1080p it's essentially tied with the 10900k with pretty much the same picture at 1440p so at this point i thought just maybe there was something promising hiding under the hood of the 11900k maybe overclocking would unlock the true potential of this product after all this is supposed to be a better bin 11700k but unfortunately overclocks that were possible on more than a few 10 900k samples that i've tried previously just couldn't be enabled here on the 11900k maybe it's my particular cpu sample or the motherboard but i am interested to see the overclocking results from other reviewers for now i can't really enable anything worth testing in terms of overclocking all right so if you feel deflated after seeing those numbers i mean i can totally relate there is just no reason that i can recommend this uh to you guys in production workloads it gets absolutely smoked by the ryzen 5900x and even in gaming which i guess this is supposed to be a gaming focus product but it's at best maybe a couple of percent better than the 5900x on average in some games it does get beaten in many ways this feels like a step back from the i9 10 900k which is a cpu that pretty much became irrelevant upon the release of the 5900x it's clear at the enthusiast end of the desktop cpu market intel doesn't have anything to offer just yet they've called this thing an i9 but it just does not live up to that tier of product i think the mid-range is where the 11th gen cpus are going to be a little bit more exciting especially when paired with a 500 series motherboard which can enable memory overclocking so that should be a little bit more exciting than what we've got right here stay tuned for the 11 600k review going up tomorrow around the same time as always a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next oneare intel actually releasing a flagship desktop cpu in 2021 with just eight cpu calls apparently so and that's exactly what we're going to be reviewing today this is the new i9 11 900k and as part of intel's new rocket lake 11th gen desktop cpu lineup and i want to see how fast this thing is versus the 12 core 5900x from amd and also the previous gen from intel the 10900k so what exactly does intel have to offer here let's take a look so first off let's take a look at what's new with rocket lake well thankfully it's not just another sky leak iteration although it is still 14 nanometer it's derived instead from intel's 10 nanometer ice lake parts just backported to a larger process in terms of what that looks like in terms of products specs and pricing it's actually pretty similar to what we've seen from last gen except for that i9 11900k that we'll be reviewing instead of the 10 cores that you'd find on the previous gen 10 900k we've now downgraded to just eight with clock speeds honestly looking pretty similar as well and pricing actually seems to have gone up versus the 10 900k all right then so really the only advantage here over the 11 700k is that you get some additional clock speed out of the box you get a higher default memory spec if you're interested in that and potentially a better binned product if you're looking to push some manual overclocking in my opinion the most interesting products in this entire stack are the i5 10600k that we'll be reviewing tomorrow and also the 160 dollar i5 11400f the reason for that is that memory overclocking is now completely unlocked across all of intel's new 500 series motherboards now that is a step in the right direction now as typical when it comes to intel's higher end desktop cpus and the ones that typically consume a little bit more power there is this discrepancy and debate of which power limit settings to use and test with and this isn't just a debate between reviewers and consumers but also between motherboard vendors as well what is considered a stock power limit on an asus motherboard for example is going to be a different experience on an msi or a gigabyte or an asrock board the discrepancy is typically when it comes to this limit here the long duration power limit and whether this will be enforced to intel spec of 125 watts or be completely unlocked or maybe even be set to some value in between as you can see intel's spec of 125 watts sustained has the 11900k sitting below 4 gigahertz flat for all cores in blender but not imposing that limit has it sitting significantly higher at 4.8 gigahertz strangely enough that unlocked power limit is actually what is considered stock here on the msi z590 ace motherboard that i used for testing that is simply loading up the bios and loading optimize defaults that's automatically what is loaded as stock so to be consistent with my previous testing i'll be running the 11900k here with the limits unlocked if you consider that overclocking that's completely up to you but it is the out of the box experience here that you'll get on a lot of z590 motherboards and before you actually pick a side of whether this is overclocking or not just know that it seems that intel themselves can't decide which values to use for these power limits in a recent media briefing they compared the 10900k at 125 watts to the new 11900k at 250 watts but even with the limits completely unlocked shoving over 200 watts into the new 11900k isn't enough to beat the previous gen 10 900k in cinebench due to that 20 core and thread reduction even just with this single benchmark you can probably tell how this review is going to pan out but switching to a single working thread only it's a bit more interesting there's a huge gain now over the 10 900k and now we've actually caught up to the single threaded performance of the top tier ryzen 5000 cpus in cinebench at least other than that for real heavily multi-threaded cpu workloads eight cores in a flagship part is just not enough when amd are offering 12 calls and 24 threads in the 5900x which should be about the same price as this new 11900k i mean there really is just no comparison the new 11900k gets slaughtered in pretty much everything here one application where the 11900k did poke through though was in adobe premiere pro when encoding 6k footage only using the cpu to be realistic this is something that you'd be much better off leveraging to an rtx gpu for same with blender if i'm honest but for cpu only encodes in adobe premiere pro there does seem to be an improvement here worth noting still though that improvement only makes it two seconds faster over the 12 core 5900x so for production workloads it is an absolute bloodbath and we could sit here and break down the numbers but i think you guys get the picture eight calls in 2021 for a flagship desktop cpu is just not going to make up any ground against amd when you're literally up against cpus with double the core count however it is clear that intel have positioned this cpu as a gaming focused product so let's see what the picture looks like there well kicking things off with death stranding at 1080p we've got a pretty solid 11 improvement here over the 10900k but at the same time that's only enough to basically tie the 5900x when we drop the resolution to 1440p they're again pretty much tied with the improvement now over the 10 900k shrinking to about five percent another slower paced single-player game here is red dead redemption 2 where the 5900x actually manages a slight lead at both 1080p and 1440p resolution it's not very often that you see a new cpu released which is then beaten by the competition in both gaming and production workloads but that's exactly what is going on here switching to rainbow six where we see extremely high frame rates north of 400 frames per second the new 11900k pretty much matches the previous gen flagship also realistically the perceivable performance here is probably going to be the same for almost all cpus shown on this chart but it is useful for testing at least at 1440p frame rates are lower but still above 300 fps where the 11 900k tops the chart and i don't want to minimize the efforts or gains here and say that it's worthless but from a consumer's point of view it's just not going to make a meaningful difference to the gaming experience then we have assassin's creed odyssey which shows the 11900k about even with the 10 900k in terms of average fps but with better frame rate stability on the low end and then switching to 1440p they're about the same with a tiny lead here over the 5900x then lastly f1 2020 at 1080p it's essentially tied with the 10900k with pretty much the same picture at 1440p so at this point i thought just maybe there was something promising hiding under the hood of the 11900k maybe overclocking would unlock the true potential of this product after all this is supposed to be a better bin 11700k but unfortunately overclocks that were possible on more than a few 10 900k samples that i've tried previously just couldn't be enabled here on the 11900k maybe it's my particular cpu sample or the motherboard but i am interested to see the overclocking results from other reviewers for now i can't really enable anything worth testing in terms of overclocking all right so if you feel deflated after seeing those numbers i mean i can totally relate there is just no reason that i can recommend this uh to you guys in production workloads it gets absolutely smoked by the ryzen 5900x and even in gaming which i guess this is supposed to be a gaming focus product but it's at best maybe a couple of percent better than the 5900x on average in some games it does get beaten in many ways this feels like a step back from the i9 10 900k which is a cpu that pretty much became irrelevant upon the release of the 5900x it's clear at the enthusiast end of the desktop cpu market intel doesn't have anything to offer just yet they've called this thing an i9 but it just does not live up to that tier of product i think the mid-range is where the 11th gen cpus are going to be a little bit more exciting especially when paired with a 500 series motherboard which can enable memory overclocking so that should be a little bit more exciting than what we've got right here stay tuned for the 11 600k review going up tomorrow around the same time as always a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next one\n"