Intel has unleashed the corporate’s new 14th-generation desktop processors. We take a look at the Core i9-14900K flagship CPU and its little sibling, the Core i5-14600K.
There was one stand-out characteristic that Intel revealed through the confidential 14th-generation CPU press briefing just a few weeks in the past. Breaking with custom, Intel’s new CPUs would nonetheless run on motherboards with 600 and 700-series chipsets. There can be no 800-series motherboard chips to go together with Intel’s 14th-generation CPUs. As an alternative, distributors launch Z790 refresh motherboards in time for the CPU launch. From a shopper point-of-view, that is good and unhealthy.
It is good in which you could pop considered one of these new processors in your two-year-old Intel 600-series-based LGA1700 motherboard, both changing a Twelfth or Thirteenth-generation CPU or upgrading from an i5/i5 to an i7/i9 and off you go. Comfortable days. The unhealthy information is that which means that there’s probably not a lot in the way in which of innovation over final 12 months’s Thirteenth-gen CPUs.
Sure, the 14th Era Intel CPUs are a “Raptor Lake Refresh” which implies that a 12 months or so of producing refinements has resulted in CPUs that bin a bit higher than earlier than.
Facet by aspect, final 12 months’s Core i9 CPUs are similar with the identical eight “efficiency cores”, 16 “environment friendly cores”, 36MB sensible cache, 32MB L2 cache, 125W base energy, and 255W increase energy. The identical goes for the Core i5, which additionally has the similar six “efficiency core” and eight “environment friendly cores” as its predecessor, in addition to the identical accessible cache and energy necessities.
The distinction is with the upper frequencies that the 14th-generation CPUs run at. The max turbo increase speeds of the Core i9-14900K have been elevated from the i9-13900 Okay’s 5.8GHz to six.0GHz, equally, the brand new i9’s efficiency cores prime out at 5.6GHz and the environment friendly cores 4.4GHz, a rise over final years 5.4GHz and 4.3GHz, respectively.
With the Core i5-14600K, it is a numbers sport of very small increments.
The brand new Core i5 has similar base frequencies and max turbo frequencies as its predecessor. For this 12 months’s i5, Intel has simply squeezed a bit extra out of the efficiency and environment friendly core max frequencies, from 5.1GHz and three.9GHz to 4.0GHz and 5.3GHz.
With the Core i9-14900K, pushing the single-core increase frequency to 6GHz is a advertising and marketing win, however you may inform that the CPU is arising in opposition to some limitations, primarily thermal, as we will see. The i5’s 5.3GHz max increase frequency restrict appears to be set, however the CPU’s thermal headroom has allowed for some additional multi-core clock speeds. Over the previous couple of years, Intel has been pushing the i9s to the restrict out of the manufacturing facility, however the i5s are arriving with extra scope for a little bit of informal overclocking.
The Intel 14th-gen media equipment arrived earlier than a brand new Z790 refresh board. With my take a look at rig occupied with one other take a look at, I made a decision to open up the overview rig and substitute the Core i9-13900K with the i9-14900K. The overview rig has not been upgraded with a Z790 board. As an alternative, it nonetheless rocks an MSI Z690 Carbon WIFI – which has finished job in accommodating the i9-13900K. The rig additionally has 64GB of DDR5 working at 6000Mhz and an RTX 4090 GPU. While performance-wise, just a few fast exams did not see any discernible enchancment over the Thirteenth-gen CPU, this did verify that the brand new chips do, certainly, work with motherboards primarily based on Intel’s 600-series chipset.
ASUS Australia kindly stepped in and equipped a TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI motherboard to correctly take a look at the brand new Intel CPUs. The TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI is a brand new model of Asus’s TUF Gaming Z790 DDR5 ATX motherboard. It was launched along with Intel’s 14th-generation CPUs, however additionally it is appropriate with Twelfth-gen and Thirteenth-gen CPUs.
Each the Core i9-14900K and Core i5-14600K had been examined utilizing some commonplace benchmark software program: PCMark 10, Crossmark, and Cinebench R23. I additionally included Procyon’s video enhancing benchmark, which makes use of Adobe Premiere in a real-world take a look at.
Working the Intel Excessive Tuning Utility to emphasize take a look at the Core i9 underneath a light overclock (5.7Ghz), I observed fairly a little bit of thermal throttling, confirming that the CPU was being pushed to its limits. It’s basically the identical die because the Thirteenth-generation CPU, able to larger frequencies, reasonably than a brand new CPU. The brand new i5, then again, carried out effectively underneath the chip’s TJmax temperature of 100ᴼ Celsius, even with an affordable Asus AI overclock.
The multi-core Cinebench and Procyon video enhancing take a look at had the 14900K flagging behind its predecessor. The i5-14600K scored equally to the Cinebench take a look at, with a rating lower than its predecessor. I examined a number of instances, so this could possibly be simply an anomaly frequent in artificial benchmarks. I had an identical bizarre end result with PCMark 10 and the Thirteenth-gen take a look at final 12 months.
The Asus TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI does its personal factor with AI optimisation, and I let it have a go. A few of my efficiency beneficial properties could also be partly all the way down to Asus’s new motherboard, however my earlier exams had been on previous iterations of the identical board, albeit utilizing DDR4 RAM.
The i9 and i5 CPUs ran stably through the benchmarking, stress exams, and through common computing use. Operations utilizing Adobe Inventive suite, together with video rendering, had been responsive and fast. Workplace functions, as you’d count on, ran flawlessly. From a sensible perspective, there have been no issues with both of the CPUs performing day-to-day work and taking part in video games.
Intel’s advertising and marketing has gone to nice lengths to advertise each the one-click overclocking capabilities of its Intel Excessive Tuning Utility and the Intel Software Optimization app accessible from the Microsoft Retailer. These software-based optimisations appear to be overlaying up a perceived efficiency difficulty with the brand new CPUs. The XTU’s new Velocity Optimizer 2.0 could get extra out of the CPUs, however I had no luck putting in the Intel Software Optimization app.
I do have issues that my cooling answer within the take a look at rig is being examined an excessive amount of by the i9, which is pushing the Intel 7 semiconductor expertise to its limits. We must see what end result we get with the Intel 4 expertise the corporate is utilizing for its Meteor Lake cell CPUs after they launch subsequent month.
The outcomes achieved confirmed the brand new CPUs provided some enchancment over the Thirteenth-generation CPUs. Granted, a few of this can be all the way down to the “refreshed” Asus Z790 motherboard and the DDR5 RAM, however in any case, a brand new PC primarily based on the Intel Core i9-14900K ought to see a few 10% efficiency achieve over final 12 months’s Core i9-13900K working in a DDR4 system. It isn’t an enormous enchancment, maybe rather less than for the Core i9-12900 to the i9-13900, but it surely’s one thing.
I do not wish to come throughout as some kind of Intel apologist, however there’s nothing that surprises me concerning the efficiency of the Core i9-14900K and the Core i5-14600K. Sure, we’d all like an enormous increase year-in-year-out. And maybe these can be higher labelled the Core i9-13950 and the Core i5-13650, however we have had these refreshed CPUs previously. The CPUs are extra like this 12 months’s mannequin of a automobile reasonably than a brand new automobile. There are optimisations and advantages available, however most likely not well worth the improve from final 12 months.
The Intel Core i5-14600K presents the most effective bang on your buck relating to common PC use and gaming. The chip’s thermals imply you needn’t fear a few top-end cooling answer. As a gaming CPU, the i5 performs very effectively. The Asus motherboard managed to spice up the i5 to five.9GHz for single-core and 5.7GHz for multi-core, so there’s the potential to get greater than you paid for out of the CPU.
For the Core i9-14900K, you maybe should be a bit extra specific together with your cooling system, particularly in case you are going for optimum efficiency. I had little pleasure attempting to overclock the CPU, arising in opposition to thermal throttling each time I attempted. However with extra cores and extra threads, the i9 higher fits creators and multi-media functions that make good use of multi-core operations.
Each the Core i9-14900K and Core i5-14600K carried out effectively. While I can say I had no bother working the CPUs with a Z690 motherboard, I feel a refreshed DDR5 Z790 board might be the way in which to go. These will not be CPUs that I might advocate for upgraders until they’re coming from an Intel Twelfth-gen CPU and stuffing the improve of their outdated 600-series motherboard as a stop-gap. These constructing a brand new Intel PC ought to completely be getting considered one of these, ideally paired with a Z790 refresh motherboard.
