Something to look forward to: The 11700K could perform similarly to electric current flagships, or it could perform better if Intel refines it ahead of release. We don't generally disregard reviewing processors alee of the embargo, as it isn't fair on other publications, just it'south pretty funny when it's for revenge. Furthermore, what some of these numbers evidence, particularly the ability draw and temperature tests is that his engineering sample is merely partially showing what the final CPU will offer.

Four years ago, Intel airtight up shop in Romania. They've continued to sell their processors there but without a local office, their media back up has been woeful, says lab501, a local tech publication. Of the 21 Intel processors lab501 has reviewed since beingness left in the lurch, 5 came from Intel's U.k. office (all arriving after the review embargo had lifted), 12 came from their friends in the industry, one they purchased themselves, and 3 more came from bearding industry sources.

Those three chips, an 8700K, an 8600K, and a 10980XE, caused some trouble for Intel. Once lab501 stopped receiving review samples from Intel, they stopped existence beholden to the review embargoes. When the chips they've reviewed have been provided past their industry friends, they've respected the embargo for their friends' sake. Simply when the fries accept arrived without Intel's permission, they've published their reviews alee of time – much to Intel'southward chagrin.

At present, lab501 has tested an 11700K engineering sample before the processor could exist officially revealed. Admittedly, there'due south not much left for Intel to reveal. It's generally known that the processor will accept eight cores and 16 threads, will utilise a variant of the Cypress Cove compages, and accept a boost clock of effectually 5 GHz. Just there's been peppery debate surrounding the processor's performance.

The rather unusual EVGA Z590 Dark, a side by side-gen motherboard for 11th-gen Intel processors.

On one manus, it's got the same core/thread configuration as the preceding 10700K, and like clocks. On the other hand, it should have an IPC (instruction per clock) advantage over its predecessor, but that could come up at the cost of power efficiency. In lab501's testing, information technology was found that, on average, everything balanced out roughly how you'd expect.

A forerunner to the results of the testing: engineering samples and last release samples are physically different in many ways, so these results aren't indicative of final operation. Futurity microcode revisions and BIOS updates volition too alter performance.

But without farther ado:

In synthetic multi-core testing, the 11700K performed better than its predecessor merely worse than the 10-core 10900K, equally expected. In constructed single-cadre testing, it usually outperformed all previous Intel processors to roughly lucifer the newest AMD processors.

In games, information technology performed similarly to other flagship processors like the 10900K and 5950X. Its performance was very distinct from those other processors– oftentimes, it had oddly high or low minimum framerates, and in some games it struggled unexpectedly. Perhaps explained considering this is once more, an engineering sample. Overall, though, it wasn't better or worse.

To summarize, the 11700K could perform similarly to current flagships, or information technology could perform ameliorate if Intel refines it ahead of release… Non an exciting conclusion, I'll admit, just what did you lot expect?

The power draw and temperature tests prove just how unfinished this processor is: under a Prime95 load, it simultaneously consumed an unprecedented amount of power for an octa-cadre processor while running as cool equally a hexa-cadre. This would seem to indicate that the BIOS and clock table were written too conservatively (in other words, it could've been clock college).

Basically, we've learned nothing, except that reviewers don't like being screwed over. Stay tuned for our review featuring accurate data and meaningful conclusions.