Intel Core i9-11900K And i5-11600K Review: Rocket Lake-S Liftoff

Name: Intel Core i9-11900K
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 09:27 AM EDT

Intel Core i9-11900K And i5-11600K Review: Audio, Video, And 3D Rendering

In our custom LAME XP MP3 encoding test, we convert 16, large WAV files to the MP3 format, which is a popular use case for many end users, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. The LAME engine is an open-source MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications.

LAME XP

Audio Conversion and Encoding

In this test, we created 16-copies of our own 223MB WAV file (an 11 minute Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME XP tool. Processing times are recorded below, listed in minutes:seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance.

This time around, despite its much better single-threaded performance, the Core i9-11900K is not able to make up for its two-core deficit and ends up trailing the Core i9-10900K by a couple of seconds. The Core i9-11900K smokes the 8-core Ryzen 7 5800X (which has a similar core count), but the 16-core 5950X leads the pack. The 11th Gen Core i5 outran its 10th Gen counterpart though, and beat the Ryzen 5 processor as well.

X265 Benchmark

Video Encoding Test

The multi-threaded HWBOT x265 Benchmark is based on the open source x265 encoder that leverages modern CPU instructions to speed video encoding. We tested the CPUs represented here with the 64-bit encoder using the default 1080p and 4K workloads.

The 8-core Core i9-11900K ends up trailing the 10-core Core i9-10900K here, at both resolutions, and finishes well behind the Ryzen 7 5800X, let alone the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X. The Core i5-11600K also trailed the Ryzen 5 5600X, but clearly outpaced its 10th Gen counterpart.

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test

8K RAW Image Decode

The Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that tests the speed of decoding full-resolution Blackmagic RAW frames. The tool can be used to evaluate the performance at various resolutions and bitrates on the CPU or using NVIDIA CUDA on a GPU. We're reporting two results here, both using 8K resolution, but at differing bitrates.

blackmagic raw intel 11th gen rocket lake

In this video encoding test, the Core i9-11900K takes a definitive win over the Ryzen 7 5800X and is, once again, able to make-up for its two core deficit and beat the Core i9-10900K. The Core i5-11600K also outguns the 6-core Ryzen 5 5600X and dominates the Core i5-10600K.

Y-Cruncher

MT Pi Calculator

Y-Cruncher is a multi-core-capable tool that calculates the value of pi to a specified number of digits. In this case, we ran the tool on all threads and had the application calculate the value of pi to 1 billion digits. The values below are the time required to perform the calculation expressed in seconds. As a result, lower values indicate better performance.

The Core i9-11900K can't quite catch the Ryzen 7 5800X here, but it outpaces the 10th Gen Core i9-10900K. The Core i5-11600K performed relatively well though, and managed to beat both of the Intel 10th Gen processors and the Ryzen 5 5600X.

Cinebench

3D Rendering Benchmark

Cinebench rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D from Maxon. Cinema 4D is a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of system processor resources and can utilize any number of threads, which make is an excellent gauge of computational throughput. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders and animates 3D scenes and tracks the length of the entire process. The rate at which each test system was able to render the entire scene is represented in the graphs below.

Intel's Core i9-11900K's performance is somewhat mixed in Cinebench. Here, the Core i9-11900K puts up the best single-threaded score of the bunch, but it ends up losing the multi-threaded battle against the 10th Gen Core i9-10900K -- it did beat the Ryzen 7 5800X, though. The Core i5-11600K ends up trailing the Ryzen 5 5600X, but the two processes finish right on top of each other in both the single the multi-threaded tests.

POV-Ray Performance

Ray Tracing Benchmark

POV-Ray, or the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer, is an open source tool for creating realistically lit images. We tested with POV-Ray's standard 'one-CPU' and 'all-CPU' benchmarking tools on all of our test machines and recorded the scores reported for each. Results are measured in pixels-per-second throughput; higher scores equate to better performance.

pov ray intel 11th gen rocket lake

POV-Ray tells a somewhat different story then Cinebench. In POV-Ray, the Core i9-11900K drops down a rung and trails both the Ryzen 7 5800X and Core i9-10900K in the multi-threaded test, though its single-threaded score leads the pack. The Core i5-11600K finishes in the same position as it did in Cinebench, but the Ryzen 5 5600X has a more significant lead overall.

Blender

3D Rendering Benchmark

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. It has a purpose-built benchmarking tool that will track the time it takes to complete rendering a particular model. We used the CPU-focused bmw27 and fishy_cat models for these tests...

The 8-core Core i9-11900K trailed the 10-core Core i9-10900K with both models in the Blender Benchmark, but it was able to outrun the Ryzen 7 5800X. The Core i5-11600K fares much better versus its previous-gen counterpart and it beats the Ryzen 5 CPU too.

STARS Euler3d

Computational Fluid Dynamics

STARS Euler3d is a computational fluid dynamics benchmark which uses a CFD grid that contains 1.23 million tetrahedral elements and 223 thousand nodes. The benchmark executable advances a mach 0.50 Advisory Group for Aerospace Research, or AGARD, flow solution for an aeroelastic test wing. The benchmark score is reported as a CFD cycle frequency in Hertz.

This benchmark is multi-threaded, but is also dependent on platform bandwidth, and cache and memory latency, so the final results are not determined by compute performance alone. Cache sizes and memory bandwidth affect the score as well...

There's no overcoming the additional cores and memory bandwidth afforded by Intel's HEDT platform and the Core i9-10980XE in this benchmark, but the Core i9-11900K clearly outpaced the Core i9-10900K and Ryzen 7 5800X. The Core i5-11600K showed a major uplift versus the 10600K as well. And it handily beat the Ryzen 5 5600X.