Intel Core i9-14900K, 8P+16E/32T, 3.20-6.00GHz, tray

Intel Core i9-14900K Raptor Lake-S CPU Test! Im ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi Video sind wir bereits auf die Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs eingegangen und heute sehen wir uns die schnellste Intel Core i9 CPU der 14. Prozessor-Generation auf OCinside.de im Detail an. Wir testen und übertakten den Intel Core i9-14900K LGA1700 Prozessor auf einem ASRock Z790 Refresh DDR5 Mainboard und dürfen sehr auf die Ergebnisse gespannt sein.

Die Refresh-Generation ist, wie der Name schon verrät, ein Lückenfüller mit geringfügigen Upgrades. Angesichts der geringfügigen Preisunterschiede im Vergleich zu den aktuellen Vorgängerpreisen lohnt sich der Kauf, wenn man ohnehin in ein LGA1700-System investieren wollte.

The Intel Core i9-14900K is an absolute beast of a processor, topping almost all of the benchmarks I could throw at it. However, it also represents the absolute limit of what’s possible with the Rocket Lake architecture, with temperatures and power draw being off the charts. If you’re looking for a versatile chip, capable of handling anything you throw at it, the Core i9-14900K is the one for you.

Intel Core i9-14900K Raptor Lake-S CPU review! In the ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi video we have already mentioned the Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs and today we take a closer look on OCinside.de at the fastest Intel Core i9 CPU of the 14th processor generation. We test and overclock the Intel Core i9-14900K LGA1700 processor on an ASRock Z790 Refresh DDR5 motherboard and are very excited about the results.

During the 14 nm era, Intel processors outshone AMD products by offering remarkable power efficiency in addition to superior performance, but this didn't last for long. AMD's recent success thanks to the wonderful Ryzen architecture, means that to maintain a meaningful bleeding edge over AMD Intel has had to resort to extremely high power limits, especially for the overclocked K models. In the case of the new Core i9-14900K "Raptor Lake Refresh" the power limit is as high as that of its predecessor, at 253 W maximum turbo power and PL1=PL2. Intel motherboards from decent vendors have had BIOS options for many years to control the power limits of these processors, and so we decided to see just how much performance is at stake if you tried to lower the power limits. If you're having a sense of Déjà vu reading this article, it's because we've already done such a battery of tests with the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake," in which we found some interesting answers to the questions we're raising here.

Intel's "Raptor Lake Refresh" 14th-gen CPUs are here, reprising the designs and prices we saw on 13th-gen models, but bumping up clock speeds - up to 6GHz for the flagship 14900K. These minor changes come thanks to manufacturing improvements and more generous binning, but are they enough to break the deadlock and give Intel the fastest gaming CPU title once more? We've received the 14900K and 14600K to find out, as we put Intel's latest against our usual barrage of game benchmarks and content creation workloads. It'll be a tough challenge even with (modestly) higher clocks, as AMD's Ryzen 7000 CPUs are capable from the top to the bottom of the stack while often drawing less power too. This is particularly true of the current fastest gaming CPU by our measurements, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. This high-end CPU punches well above its weight in gaming and often eclipses the 13900K, thanks to its 3D V-Cache - which boosts gaming performance substantially in many titles. You can see how the 14900K and 14600K fit into Intel's Socket 1700 lineup in the table below. As a reminder, each of these CPUs benefits from a range of advances over their 11th-gen counterparts, with asymmetric designs which combine performance and effiency cores built on a 10nm "Intel 7" process node. There's also a choice of DDR5 or DDR4 RAM and PCIe 5.0 support, courtesy of a wide range of Z690 and Z790 motherboards.

Judging from the performance numbers above, I would say the Core i9-14900K is indeed another powerful CPU by Intel but is it a worthy upgrade and should you buy it? I’m still rocking on the Core i9-12900K on my main system and I don’t really see myself upgrading to the Core i9-14900K right now. Also, you’ll need a really good CPU cooler for the Core i9-14900K as well if you’re going to let it run on stock settings because it’s going to run hotter unless you manually adjust the PL1, PL2, and ICCMax accordingly, which will have some impact to the performance depending on the values entered.

Averaged over the 45 tests in our application test suite, the Core i9-14900K confirms that Raptor Lake is extremely impressive. It achieves performance that's always near the top of our charts. The differences are small though. Compared to the 13900K the performance uplift is 3%, the 13900KS is a tiny bit faster, but a 0.5% difference is close enough to call it even. This means that Intel has only achieved minimal gen-over-gen gains, which in all fairness is not unexpected, and the "refresh" naming suggests this, too. Still, this means that if you're on a 13th Gen high-end CPU like 13900K or 13900KS there is no reason to even think about an upgrade. AMD's offerings are close behind—the Ryzen 9 7950X is only 3% slower, the 7950X3D is 5% behind. The gaming-focused AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is over 40% slower in applications—but much more affordable at the same time. The two-generation old Core i9-12900K trails the 14900K by 26%, sizable but probably not enough to justify an upgrade.