Intel Core i7-11700K vs AMD Ryzen 7 3800X: 1080p, 1440p and 4K gaming

Introduction

ASUS reached out to me a few weeks ago asking if I wanted to check out their latest ROG Maximus XIII HERO motherboard and Intel's new Core i7-11700K processor. I said sure, send it over -- and thought about what I'd do with it when it got here.

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Well, here we are -- I'm doing a comparison between the new Intel Core i7-11700K processor and my current GPU test rig that is powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor. Intel has stepped up with the new Z590 packing PCIe 4.0 support, matching the AMD B550 and X570 series motherboards with PCIe 4.0 technology.

Intel's new Core i7-11700K processor is an 8-core, 16-thread CPU that boosts up to 5GHz, while the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X is also an 8-core, 16-thread CPU but boosts up to 4.5GHz -- fairly closely matched CPUs so I thought I would run a few graphics cards between the two CPUs and see what kind of performance fight we have.

• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review
• Read more: AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Review
• Read more: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review

Both chips are 8C/16T with varying levels of boost, with Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSDs inside. I've used Sabrent's very latest and greatest Rocket 4 Plus Advanced PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD in the huge 4TB capacity inside of the ASUS ROG Maximus III HERO motherboard.

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I've run NVIDIA's two high-end GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics cards as well as AMD's two high-end Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards through my entire stack of synthetic and gaming benchmarks at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K on both the Core i7-11700K and Ryzen 7 3800X systems.

There's some interesting results along the way, so let's dive right into it -- first off we'll go into the hardware used for this suite of testing thanks to some great supporters of TweakTown.

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Detailed Look + GPUs Tested + Quick Tests

ASUS sent over their ROG Maximus XIII HERO motherboard and Intel Core i7-11700K processor, our friends at Sabrent sent over their wicked-fast Rocket 4 Plus 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, while I personally purchased the 32GB kit of G.SKILL Trident Z DDR4-3200 memory and the Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix CPU cooler.

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The ASUS ROG Maximus XIII HERO motherboard looks great, has the LGA1200 socket and new PCIe 4.0 connectivity. It's one of the best Z590 motherboards that money can buy, and the perfect board ready for your new Rocket Lake-S processor all the way through to the flagship Core i9-11900K.

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The LGA1200 socket is populated by the new Intel Core i7-11700K processor, an 8C/16T chip at up to 5GHz.

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Keeping it cool is the Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix CPU cooler, rocking a 360mm radiator and triple 120mm fan setup it is a great AIO cooler to keep the Core i7-11700K processor cool during all-night gaming and benchmarking sessions.

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Sabrent has one of the very fastest SSDs on the planet with its Rocket 4 Plus SSD, with the 4TB drive fitting into the motherboard and keeping our Windows 10 installation and game installs running as fast as possible. We're talking up to 7.5GB/sec from this bad boy. Incredible stuff.

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PCIe 4.0 is finally on an Intel platform... which doesn't do too much for the GPU side of things, but you do get some insane speeds on PCIe 4.0-based SSDs like Sabrent's stupid-fast Rocket 4 Plus SSD.

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Man, does the Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix CPU cooler look awesome... right?!

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360mm radiator + 3 x 120mm fans should be enough to keep the 14nm++++++ Rocket Lake-S processor cool enough, right?

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Once again, this time from the top.

GPUs Tested

I've used 4 of the latest GPUs -- 2 from each camp on Team Green and Team Red. I've included the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, and AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6800 XT. If I've got the time I will run the rest of my stack of cards through the Core i7-11700K system and then post a follow-up article.

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition (24GB GDDR6X)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition (10GB GDDR6X)
• AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT reference (16GB GDDR6)
• AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT reference (16GB GDDR6)

Quick Tests

Once I got the system up and running then it was time to perform the usual Windows Updates, check that the CPU, RAM, SSD, GPU, networking and everything else is all working and stable. I performed 24 hours of stress testing on the Core i7-11700K system to ensure it was able to withstand the punishment it was about to receive.

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Intel's new 11th Gen Core i7-11700K processor all ticking away with its 8 cores and 16 threads, you can see here my network connection is pumping away at 500Mbps downloading all the necessary games needed to benchmark the system.

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I started playing around with the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSD now that I've got PCIe 4.0 connectivity on the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII HERO motherboard and Intel Core i7-11700K processor. At first I was getting something like 2-3GB/sec but with some tweaking and updates I was pumping away at 6.5GB/sec without a problem. So damn good to see that.

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Some more SSD benchmarks before I dive into the GPU benchmarks.

Test System Specs

The standard GPU test system specs -- powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor.

Latest upgrade:

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ASUS provided a rather large upgrade to my GPU testing lab -- or rather, I kept the ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ gaming monitor after my review on it. The 43-inch 4K 144Hz panel is just glorious to look at -- it's huge, the DPI for Windows 10 when set perfect for your viewing distance is kiss-fingers-emoji good. It's just amazing -- for work, and gaming.

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Sabrent sent over their huge Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new Games install SSD inside of my main test bed.

I'll be making some changes over the coming months to the GPU test bed here for TweakTown, to both the Ryzen 9 5900X and then Intel's new Core i9-11900K to do some proper PCIe 4.0 testing between the chipsets for GPUs + super-fast load times into games on these new super-fast Sabrent SSDs.

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Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

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Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB 32GB (4x8GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)
• Monitor: ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

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3DMark TimeSpy

Benchmarks - 1080p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Starting off with Assassin's Creed Valhalla we the Radeon RX 6900 XT pulling ahead, even more so on the Intel Core i7-11700K system. Across the board AC:V performs much better on the Intel Core i7-11700K processor, where with the Radeon RX 6800 XT you're looking at a 10FPS difference at 1080p.

The winning doesn't stop there, as Intel's new Core i7-11700K processor beats AMD and their Ryzen 7 3800X in Shadow of War at 1080p as well -- with the GeForce RTX 3090 streaking ahead with 195FPS average, compared to 160FPS average on the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor.

Metro: Exodus is no different, with the GeForce RTX 3090 once again scaling ahead with 106FPS average on the Core i7-11700K while the Ryzen 7 3800X + RTX 3090 combo = 100FPS average.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Things start to even out a little more at 2560 x 1440 with the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card still coming out ahead in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla -- 103FPS average for the Core i7-11700K and 102FPS average for the Ryzen 7 3800X processor. Not bad at all.

166FPS average for the Core i7-11700K + GeForce RTX 3090 combo in Shadow of War at 1440p, versus 151FPS average (15FPS more for the Intel system). This is a great result too, with Metro Exodus performance between the Core i7-11700K and Ryzen 7 3800X processors pretty neck and neck at 1440p on the 4 x GPUs that I tested.

Benchmarks - 4K

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

4K gaming on the Intel Core i7-11700K is pretty kick ass, with the Radeon RX 6900 XT swinging out the same 64FPS average in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla as the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor. Performance is virtually identical in Shadow of War at 4K -- with the GeForce RTX 3090 coming out ahead with 120FPS on the Core i7-11700K and 117FPS average on the Ryzen 7 3800X + RTX 3090 combo.

Final Thoughts

Well there you have it -- a comparison between Intel's new 11th Gen Core i7-11700K processor and the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII HERO motherboard and the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X and ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO motherboard. Both systems rock super-fast Sabrent PCIe 4.0-enabled SSDs and gloriously-fast, but juicy-looking G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB memory.

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At the end of the day performance between the two processors is near identical as they're both kick ass CPUs in 2021, offering 8 cores and 16 threads at 4.5GHz to 5GHz depending on the chip. Game performance at 1080p and 1440p is what you're here for -- I would have no qualms recommending either CPU and motherboard combo to gamers at these resolutions, including high refresh 120/144/165Hz gaming monitors.

I don't know if I'd rush out and buy the Intel Core i7-11700K processor and accompanying Z590 motherboard over the AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPUs -- especially that mid-range rocker in the Ryzen 5 5600X or Ryzen 9 5900X. Mix that in with a B550 or X570 motherboard and PCIe 4.0 SSD and you're ready to rock and roll.

I've got the Ryzen 9 5900X system here so I might run the GPUs across that new Zen 3-based CPU and compare it against the new Rocket Lake-S + Zen 2 processors used in this test. That'll be interesting to see, too.

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But if you're in the market for a new gaming PC and for whatever reason you didn't want to grab an AMD Ryzen CPU -- or maybe it's not available and the Core i7-11700K is sitting there staring at you, then don't hesitate -- you're going to have a kick ass gaming CPU that is ready for everything of today, and into the years to come.

It's good to see Intel finally jumping onto the high-speed PCIe 4.0 lane with Z590, with our Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSD spinning out 6.5GB/sec reads inside of the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII HERO motherboard. The CPU will run much hotter than the AMD Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series CPUs, but I'm sure you know that by now.

Now I definitely would like to see Intel's new flagship Core i9-11900K going up against the Core i9-10900K and Ryzen 9 5900X or Ryzen 9 5950X processor -- so let me know in the comments below if that's something that you would like to see happen. Especially at the higher-end scale of things at 8K gaming (7680 x 4320).