Fast, powerful and a bit boring is not how to describe Jacob Ridley…
SPECS
Socket: V LGA1700
Process: Intel 7 10nm
Cores (P+E): 8+16
Threads: 32
P-cache: 640KB L1, 16MB L2, 36MB L3 (shared)
P-core: 3.2GHz (5.6GHz boost, 6GHz TVB)
E-cache: 1.5MB L1, 16MB L2, 36MB L3 (shared)
E-core: 2.4GHz (4.4GHz boost)
Unlocked: Yes
GPU: Intel UHD 770
clock: 300MHz (1.65GHz max)
Ex units: 32
Display: 4, eDP 1.4b, DP 1.4a, HDMI 2.1
Mem max: 192GB, ECC support, 2-channel
Mem speed: DDR5 5,600MT/s, DDR4 3,200MT/s
PCIe: v5 or v4 20-lanes
Processor base power: 125W
Maximum turbo power 253W
For the fastest chip ever to grace a gaming PC, the Intel Core i9 14900K is about as boring a CPU refresh as one could be. We’ve seen it all before. The massive core count, the architecture, the 6GHz clock speed; the 14900K might do some things better than the 13th gen but it rarely matters for much. That doesn’t make it any less of an awesome chip – it is – it just doesn’t push the needle forward much, if at all.
That’s why PC builders have a tough decision ahead of them: do you buy a 13th-gen chip and save a couple of quid or invest in a shiny new 14th gen for the often intangible performance benefit and bragging rights?
The 14900K comes with the same recommended customer pricing as its predecessor, the Core i9 13900K, at launch. That’s £579, give or take. The big question for any PC builder is whether the 14900K’s distinct brand of bland is worth spending extra money on top versus the Core i9 13900K?
What’s new with the Core i9 14900K? Not all that much. As the flagship processor of a refreshed Raptor Lake generation, it is almost a carbon copy of the Core i9 13900KS. You’re looking at a 24-core processor, split between eight Performance-cores (P-cores) and 16 Efficient-cores (E-cores).
Graphics grumble
The iGPU present on the 14900K is the UHD Graphics 770. Unlike the shiny new Arc Xe-LPG iGPU found on Intel’s new Meteor Lake mobile processors, this iGPU doesn’t pack the punch required of it for 1080p gaming in lieu of a discrete graphics card.
You can use both 600-series and 700-series motherboards with this processor. Naturally, this means you can stick with a DDR4-compatible motherboard with the 14th gen. This will surely be the last chip generation to make this offer, however.
It’s actually in power draw where things become a little more interesting for the 14900K. It has a lower processor base power at 125W compared to the 13900KS’s 150W, despite being marginally faster. The P-cores and E-cores are both faster at max turbo: an increase of 200MHz on
