BenchPair

Core i7-11700K bottleneck & gaming FPS

Ranked 108 of 201 desktop processors for gaming in our database (46th percentile). It can sustain roughly 119 fps in a typical AAA title regardless of resolution — that ceiling is what decides whether a graphics card is worth pairing with it.

SpecificationsRocket Lake · 2021
ArchitectureRocket Lake
Cores8
Threads16
Boost clock5,000 MHz
L3 cache16 MB
TDP125 W
Released2021
Processor ceiling by game1080p, high

The frame rate this chip could sustain with an infinitely fast graphics card. It is almost the same at every resolution, because rendering more pixels gives the processor no extra work.

GameCPU ceilingWith Radeon RX 6900 XT
Cyberpunk 2077 120 fps 83 fps
Fortnite 152 fps 150 fps
Counter-Strike 2 172 fps 169 fps
Baldur's Gate 3 103 fps 102 fps
Red Dead Redemption 2 135 fps 93 fps
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 68 fps 67 fps
Best matched graphics cards1080p, high

Ranked by how little performance the pairing wastes. Anything much faster than the top entry will sit partly idle at this resolution — though it may still be worth it if you plan to move to 1440p or 4K.

Graphics cardEst. FPSUnused
Radeon RX 6900 XT 117 3.3%
Radeon RX 9070 GRE 113 3.4%
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB 112 4.4%
GeForce RTX 5070 117 4.7%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB 117 5.1%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 117 5.1%

What a Core i7-11700K is good for

This chip is capable at 1080p with a mid-range card, but it will become the limit if you pair it with something substantially faster. If you are considering a large graphics upgrade, check the pairing first — you may find most of the new card sitting idle.

Moving to a higher resolution is the cheapest way to get more out of it, because it shifts work onto the card and away from the chip.

A small cache holds this chip back

16 MB of L3 is modest by current standards, and it costs this chip more in games than its clock speed suggests. Game engines walk large, scattered data structures, so a small cache means more trips to main memory and more stalls on the render thread. Memory speed and timings matter unusually much on a part like this.

Where it sits

Ranked 108 of 201 desktop processors for gaming. Nearest faster: Ryzen 5 5500X3D, Ryzen 9 3900X. Just below: Core i7-11700KF, Core Ultra 3-205. Full method on the methodology page.