i7-11700 vs Ryzen 7 5800X: CPU performance comparison

The presence of the Intel Core 12 in the market has overshadowed the previous generation CPUs, which were released a few months ago, from our attention. Because it is very likely that you will find them at a much lower price in stores. That is why we have decided to make a comparison between the Core i7-11700 with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X.

i7-11700 vs Ryzen 7 5800X

Both Intel’s i7-11700 and 5800X are 8-core, 16-thread CPUs. That is why it is interesting to make a comparison between the two. Although at the time of writing this article we have the i7-12700 based on Alder Lake architecture available in stores, we must not forget that if we are users of a motherboard with an LGA1200 socket and, therefore, with a 400 series chipset or 500 from Intel then we can upgrade to the eleventh generation of Intel for a lower price than to upgrade to Core 12.

A simulate situation is that of the Ryzen 7 5800X, where we can use a motherboard with an AM4 socket, yes, you are going to be limited to AMD’s 400 or 500 series motherboards as options. For the former you will need a firmware update and the latter have direct support without changes of any kind.

Intel Core i7-11700: technical characteristics

CPU Intel Core i7 11700K

The Intel Core i7-11700 is a CPU based on Intel’s Rocket Lake-S architecture. Its base clock speed is 2.5 GHz and can reach a Turbo or Boost of 3.8 GHz with all its cores at the same time and 4.9 GHz with a single core. As for its configuration, it is an 8-core configuration with the ability to run 2 threads per core, thanks to HyperThreading technology.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X: technical characteristics

AMD-Ryzen-7-5800X

As for AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, we are also facing an 8-core CPU with multithreaded, but this time making use of AMD’s Zen 3 architecture, so it uses SMT technology to also reach 16 cores. Its base clock speed is 3.8 GHz, so it has a higher clock speed than the Core i7-11700. Its Boost speed for the 8 cores is 4.40 GHz, while with only one core receiving the speed increase it can reach 4.7 GHz.

Intel Core i7-11700 versus AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

Once the participant presentations have been made, it is time to put them to the test and for this we will use several different benchmarks to measure the performance of each of these two processors and get an idea of what the performance is in each of them, since they measure specifications. different for each CPU.

For the comparison we have chosen two different benchmarks from the start.

  • On the one hand, Cinebench R23 that is responsible for executing the rendering of a 3D image through the Cinema 4D rendering engine and, therefore, we are talking about a performance test designed to get the most out of the CPU, both in single-core and multi-core mode.
  • The other benchmark for which we have opted for Geekbench 5 , which has the particularity of being executed from the system’s RAM instead of being done from memories closer to the processor, in such a way that it also serves to measure the performance of the memory controller. Integrated, today an integral part of any CPU.

Cinebench R23

The first comparative test between the 5800X we have done in the two variants of Cinebench R23, in the single-core we can see a score of 1538 points in the case of the Intel CPU, while that of AMD gets 1,627 points . So the differential in favor of the CPU with Zen 3 architecture is 5.7%, which is a very small figure. It’s in the multi-core benchmark where the 5800X smashes the i7-11700, with the Ryzen 5000 scoring about 15,245 points compared to 11,072 points for the Intel Core 11 . Which is a 37% difference in favor of the AMD option.

Let’s not forget that this benchmark is based on rendering an image, so the performance with several cores in parallel working to reach the final result sooner will be much more important. The lower performance of the 11700 compared to the 5800X makes us think that the communication ring used is less fast and has a higher latency. The other explanation is the higher TDP margin of the Intel CPU, which allows it to achieve a higher clock speed in the single-core test.

Geekbench 5

Geekbench 5 11700 5800X

The Geekbench 5 is a benchmark that stands out for two things, the first of which is that when running in RAM, its performance will depend entirely on the RAM that we have installed in the system, since in modern processors the memory controller its performance varies depending on the speed of the installed RAM. The second is due to the fact that it is a benchmark that is agnostic of the instruction set, but this is the same in this case, because we are comparing two x86 architectures.

Under the Geekbench 5 single-core test the 11700 scores 1,721 points and the 5800X scores 1632 points, which completely contradicts the results in Cinebench R23, however. Let’s not forget that Zen architecture is vulnerable to the result obtained by the speed of the memory we are using. In any case, the differential is only 5.5%, so we are facing a situation similar to the previous one, although in reverse.

However, it is in the test where several cores participate where again we see that the pattern is repeated and the delta between the 5800X and the 11700 returns to get ahead to give an advantage to the AMD processor that obtains a score of 11,078 points compared to the 9,872 that of Intel and, therefore, a result 12% higher.

5800X and i7-11700 in other benchmarks

Below we leave you a series of performance tests in which both processors have been compared.

11700 5800X Cinebench

The first one is with the CPU-Z benchmark, in which the i7-11700 has obtained a very slight advantage over the Ryzen 7 5800X in the single-threaded test, while in the multi-threaded test the advantage is of 3.59% also in favor of the Intel processor.

As for the Cinebench benchmarks, there is a very close battle between the two processors. In the Cinebench R15 and R20 single-threaded and multi-threaded tests we find that the Ryzen 7 5800X takes advantage of Intel’s CPU. And it’s not the only benchmark where AMD’s CPU has an advantage, as it also does in the 7-Zip tests, the Handbrake video encoding test, and V-Ray. While Intel’s wins in the performance test with Blender.

In any case, we cannot forget the different optimizations that are made in the applications for each of the different brands, especially given the fact that some are crucial as they are key in entire markets.

Regarding the performance of both processors in gaming, it seems that it depends on the game and there are situations in which the AMD CPU wins and in others the Intel CPU. It is the same situation as with applications, since we have games sponsored by Intel and others by AMD, where a poorly optimized game for a CPU can make it worse than one with a worse performance.

In conclusion, we have reached the era where performance depends not only on the architecture, but also on the application.