Intel has yet to respond to AMD’s excellent 3D V-Cache processors like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but its updated 14th-gen processors going on sale today aren’t there yet. AMD continues to dominate on the gaming side, and it looks like that will continue for the rest of 2023. However, the flagship Core i9-14900K is still the star of the show, with a 6GHz boost at standard speeds, 24 cores and 32 cores. threads.
Intel hasn’t made any big promises about better single-threaded performance compared to previous generations this time around, nor any promises about better multi-threaded performance. There’s no increase in core count like we saw from 12900K to 13900K, but Intel has tweaked the frequencies to squeeze more performance out of this Raptor Lake Refresh.
The P-core max turbo frequencies increase from 200 Hz to 5.6 GHz this time on the 14900K, along with a 100 MHz increase on the E-core max turbo side. The base frequencies for the P and E cores increase by 200 MHz.
But this time these small changes are not enough to drastically change performance in games or creative tasks. And they’re definitely not enough to push Intel over to AMD’s X3D chips on the gaming side.
Since the 14900K is just an upgrade, it means you don’t need to worry about a new motherboard if you already have a 12900K or 13900K. Intel still uses its LGA 1700 socket here, and existing Z690 and Z790 motherboards are fully compatible with the latest 14th generation chips. You will need to install a BIOS update on the motherboard, but it is a simple process on most modern boards.
There are no new motherboards or chipsets this year, but motherboard makers have been updating some of their Z790 offerings to include the Wi-Fi 7 support provided by the Core i9-14900K. For my tests, I installed the chip in MSI’s MAG Z790 Carbon WiFi. You have everything you need to take advantage of the 14900K, including four M.2 slots supporting PCIe Gen 4 speeds and a single M.2 slot for PCIe Gen 5 (or lower).
The 14900K is still based on Intel’s Process 7 and its hybrid x86 performance architecture. That means there are performance cores (P cores) and efficiency cores (E cores) that split workloads using Intel’s Thread Director, a microcontroller built inside the CPU that monitors threads and ensures they are running in the correct cores.
The core count hasn’t changed this year, but Intel now supports DDR5 5600 and DDR4 3200 memory speeds. Unlike AMD and its move to AM5, Intel continues to maintain DDR4 support for motherboard manufacturers that include DDR4 support instead of DDR5.
I tested a variety of workloads, synthetic benchmarks, and games on Intel’s Core i9-14900K, comparing it to previous-generation chips and AMD competitors. All tests were run on the latest Windows 11 updates with VBS security disabled, Resizable BAR enabled, and MSI Game Boost disabled. All games were tested at 1080p with high or ultra settings.
Intel’s new Core i9-14900K handily outperforms AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X and 7950X3D in all the creator tasks I tested. Anyway, last year’s 13900K was already outperforming AMD in most of these build tasks, but the 14900K extends that lead slightly. I say slightly because all the improvements here are below 5 percent, and even the gains in games are also slight.
Geekbench 5 and Cinebench 2024 single-threaded performance show the 14900K outperforming the 13900K by 4 percent, and the Pugetbench Premiere Pro and Photoshop tests increased just 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively. If you’re looking for the best chip for creator duties, then the 14900K delivers, but there’s little reason to upgrade from a 13th-gen model. If you have a 12th gen chip you’ll get huge performance benefits from moving to a 13th gen and a little better than a 14th gen, but if you can find a 13900K for less than the cost of the 14th nd generation, there is little reason to spend more.
We also perform a standard video test on The edge, where we exported a five-minute 4K video using Adobe Premiere Pro. I used the latest version of Premiere Pro 2023 for this along with the RTX 4090 and it exported in two minutes and 31 seconds. That’s just a few seconds’ improvement over the two minutes and 39 seconds I clocked when I tested the 13900K last year, further reflecting the small performance boost you get with the 14th-gen flagship chip.
I used Nvidia’s RTX 4090 to test games on all Intel and AMD chips. Surprisingly, the 14900K lost to AMD’s 7800X3D in all the gaming tests I ran. We saw the same thing with the 13900K missing all gaming benchmarks earlier this year, and Intel’s 14900K still doesn’t respond to the superior performance offered by AMD’s 3D V-Cache.
The gap between the 14900K and the 7800X3D is around 4 percent in most games, and some managed surprisingly good performance on the 7800X3D thanks to the 3D V-Cache improvements. Like the creators’ benchmarks, the performance increase offered by the 14900K over the 13900K is minimal. In most games, it’s less than 5 percent better, with the exception of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, where the 14900K manages to offer scores that are much more competitive than those of the 7800X3D.
While there is a small generation-over-generation performance gain with the 14900K, there are no thermal or efficiency gains. The 14900K still runs as hot and consumes as much power as the 13900K. During a Cinebench R23 multithreaded test, I recorded temperatures of 105°C. That’s the same temperature I saw on the 13900K and 2C higher than the standard 13900K.
AMD’s 7950X managed to hit 96C during the same test, and the 7900X maxed out at 92C during the Cinebench test. The 7950X3D managed to reach a maximum of 88C during the same test. While the 14900K still outperforms the 7950X3D by almost 9 percent during this Cinebench R23 multithreaded test, the fact that AMD manages to come close to nearly 20°C cooling shows how much Intel is pushing the limits here.
Those limits also extend to energy use. In the same Cinebench test, the 14900K maxes out at 324 watts, but the 7950X3D only hits 147 watts. That’s a big difference in power consumption, as Intel consumes 120 percent more power for a performance improvement of almost 9 percent. And when you look at the gaming side, the 7800X3D and 7950X3D simply run much cooler most of the time and use much less power than the 14900K.
It’s hard to recommend the 14900K this year unless you really want the best creator performance out there and don’t care about your power bills or the heat it produces. AMD’s 7800X3D is simply a better choice for gaming, particularly because it’s easy to find for under $400 compared to the $589 (and probably more) price of the 14900K.
Intel still needs an answer to AMD’s 3D V-Cache and it’s unclear when it will arrive. Rumors point to an Intel Arrow Lake desktop CPU launch next year, with a socket switch to LGA 1851. 14th Gen feels like the end of LGA 1700, and with it, a whine of performance improvements .
Meanwhile, Intel is losing performance on the gaming side, but continues to dominate in creative tasks. That will make the choice difficult for those who need both gaming and creative app performance. But for those who are just looking for games, the choice is obvious.
Photography by Tom Warren/The Verge
