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Intel’s Raptor refresh

New world’s fastest desktop processor. Possibly…

BY THE TIME you read this, Intel will have released the first of its new 14th generation Raptor Lake refresh processors. This initial batch will consist of three versions, with two variations of each. We have, in order of power, the Core i9-14900K, i7-14700, and i5-14600, each in “K”, and “KF” configurations (all unlocked, but the Fs lack integrated graphics). As usual, Intel has opted to release the best first. That best has eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, plus a base P clock of 3.2GHz. Memory support runs to DDR5-5600— not the rumored 6400 that some had hoped for.

The rest of the range is expected in the new year, and will expand the range to 26 versions in all, including two that don’t even warrant i3 status, as they only contain two performance cores. These appear to be taking the role of Intel’s Pentium Gold and

Celeron brands. The core counts are the same as the previous generation of Raptor Lake, except for the i7’s, which get an extra four efficiency cores, taking them to a 8+12 configuration. There are speed tweaks across the board, in the order of 100MHz for the most part. DDR5 memory speeds drop to 4800 at the i5 and below. All models retain DDR4-3200 support, so new memory isn’t required.

“Intel’s gearing up for the launch of its 14th gen CPUs

As we get close to release, engineering samples will do the rounds, and inevitably unofficial benchmarks leak, too. It’s early days, but one fairly reliable source has put the top chip, the Core i9-14900KF, through Geekbench 6 and achieved 3,347 on the singlecore test. This is 13 percent faster than the i9-13900K, and 15 percent faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X. It also scored 23,051 on the multi-threaded test—15 percent better than the 13900, and 20 percent over the Ryzen. The test reportedly used DDR5-7000 memory, so some tweaking was going on, but it is an encouraging start.

Much of the credit goes to its high boost clock of 6GHz. It remains to be seen if we will get a faster KS version, although we suspect if Intel could have made it faster, it would. Still, if this test is accurate, it makes the i9-14900K the fastest desktop processor to date. This accolade is contested, and no doubt this chip was binned to make sure Intel can keep making that claim. We’ll see when we put the chip through its paces soon. Gaming performance is a separate issue. Here, AMD and Intel will be near neck and neck.