Are you getting Deja vu? 14900KS releases and breaks the clock speed record at 9.1GHz

[filpo]

Summary

Intel has officially launched its 24-core i9-14900KS processor, offering higher clock compared to the i9-14900K. The CPU is launching at the lower price compared to the predecessor. The KS variants are part of the "Special Edition" series designed for enthusiasts and overclockers. These CPUs come at a premium price, which in the case of 14900KS is $699 retail price. That's the same price as Core i9-13900KS and $40 cheaper than the i9-12900KS at launch.

Test bench for benchmarks below:

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Specifications with comparison

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The Core i9-14900KS is a beast when it comes to its stock clock speeds. Its 8 performance cores (P-cores) come with a base frequency of 3.20 GHz, just like the i9-14900K, but boost all the way up to 6.20 GHz, for two of the best P-cores. This is a 200 MHz increase over the i9-14900K. The Turbo Boost Max 3.0 frequency for the P-cores sees an increase to 5.90 GHz, compared to 5.80 GHz on the i9-14900K. There's something even for the 16 E-cores, which now boost up to 4.50 GHz, a 100 MHz increase over that of the i9-14900K. The processor base power is 150 W, compared to the 125 W of the i9-14900K, and while the maximum turbo power is the same 253 W, this is only the Performance Power Delivery profile, and won't enable the advertised speeds—the 320 W Extreme Power Delivery profile, will.

Power consumption and efficiency

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Productivity performance

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Rendering

Game and software development

Artificial Intelligence/Machine learning 

Performance in games

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1080p

1440p

4K

99th percentile fps

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1080p

1440p

Gaming performance per dollar

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Claimed Performance Uplift in games vs 13900KS, 7950X3D and 7800X3D

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Cl

My thoughts

I personally wouldn't recommend this to anyone apart from pro overclockers and maybe some enthusiasts for rendering and some productivity but not many if any gamers, that's for sure. But it was expected that this chip would have high clocks, high temps and especially high power so I'm not too bothered by it

 

Sources

Intel launches Core i9-14900KS processor with up to 6.2 GHz clock at $689 - VideoCardz.com

Intel Core i9-14900KS has been overclocked to 9117 MHz claiming new world record - VideoCardz.com

Intel Core i9-14900KS Review - The Last of its Kind | TechPowerUp

ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore Breaks Four World Records | TechPowerUp

Intel Launches the Core i9-14900KS Special Edition Processor for Enthusiasts | TechPowerUp

[porina]

I haven't looked at any of the coverage yet but I'm going to guess there are no surprises there. It's slightly faster than the non-S and for the three people that will get one (outside of media), great.

[Forbidden Wafer]

While it is cool (or actually, really hot), the E-Cores are complete garbage.

[starsmine]

I can never hate on the ks versions of chips. I think they are just dumb fun. Negative opinions on it always seem to just miss the point hard. its not there to try to beat ryzen, its just there to see how hard you can push it. Competition literally does not mater here. I dont even understand the "dont recommend" statements like that needs to be explicitly said. no one asking the question of what PC to buy is even looking at that budget, the same way you dont recommend a porshe 918. 

like a Dodge Demon hellcat, stupid fun, completely unusable. 

[AndreiArgeanu]

9 minutes ago, starsmine said:

I can never hate on the ks versions of chips. I think they are just dumb fun. Negative opinions on it always seem to just miss the point hard. its not there to try to beat ryzen, its just there to see how hard you can push it. Competition literally does not mater here. I dont even understand the "dont recommend" statements like that needs to be explicitly said. no one asking the question of what PC to buy is even looking at that budget, the same way you dont recommend a porshe 918. 

like a Dodge Demon hellcat, stupid fun, completely unusable. 

Yeah, but as unreasonable as it would be to get one for the average consumer it still will lead to people to say brand X is faster than brand Y or brand X is better than brand Y in a general manner just because of a single product in their entire stack that stands above the rest. Even though neither brand stands truly above the other given the various budgets and requirements people have.

[filpo]

2 minutes ago, starsmine said:

like a Dodge Demon hellcat. 

Intel should've added super tight front tyres, a fuel you can't even buy, a new air intake and then something to remove the dashboard! (might take multiple hours to add)

 

11 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

the E-Cores are complete garbage.

for productivity they're not total garbage

[starsmine]

1 minute ago, filpo said:

Intel should've added super tight front tyres, a fuel you can't even buy, a new air intake and then something to remove the dashboard! (might take multiple hours to add)

 

for productivity they're not total garbage

I love the separate ECU. like the KS has a separate profile

[YoungBlade]

24 minutes ago, porina said:

I haven't looked at any of the coverage yet but I'm going to guess there are no surprises there.

To me, the most surprising part of the coverage, is that Hardware Unboxed waited for embargo lift to basically do a video that just says "Hi, it's Tim. I woke up in the middle of the night Aussie time to tell you that Steve's on vacation, and this part isn't worth his time to test right now. Not only because the price is stupid, but because best-case, it still won't beat the 7800X3D across a range of games."

 

That's more telling than them doing yet another "it's hot, impractical, overpriced, and hardly faster" review.

[porina]

1 minute ago, YoungBlade said:

"this part isn't worth his time to test right now"

They've had bad takes in the past but this is pretty spot on. I have der8auer's video on my 2nd screen right now since it appeared in my feed. I'm not exactly giving it much attention as I write this reply! Basically it isn't terribly interesting to me either. At most I might look at the summary chart on TechPowerUp later.

 

Let's see what Arrow Lake brings.

[Naijin]

34 minutes ago, filpo said:

Summary

Intel has officially launched its 24-core i9-14900KS processor, offering higher clock compared to the i9-14900K. The CPU is launching at the lower price compared to the predecessor. The KS variants are part of the "Special Edition" series designed for enthusiasts and overclockers. These CPUs come at a premium price, which in the case of 14900KS is $699 retail price. That's the same price as Core i9-13900KS and $40 cheaper than the i9-12900KS at launch.

Test bench for benchmarks below:

Quotes

Specifications with comparison

Power consumption and efficiency

Productivity performance

Performance in games

99th percentile fps

Gaming performance per dollar

 

Claimed Performance Uplift in games vs 13900KS, 7950X3D and 7800X3D

Cl

My thoughts

I personally wouldn't recommend this to anyone apart from pro overclockers and maybe some enthusiasts for rendering and some productivity but not many if any gamers, that's for sure. But it was expected that this chip would have high clocks, high temps and especially high power so I'm not too bothered by it

 

Sources

Intel launches Core i9-14900KS processor with up to 6.2 GHz clock at $689 - VideoCardz.com

Intel Core i9-14900KS has been overclocked to 9117 MHz claiming new world record - VideoCardz.com

Intel Core i9-14900KS Review - The Last of its Kind | TechPowerUp

ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore Breaks Four World Records | TechPowerUp

Intel Launches the Core i9-14900KS Special Edition Processor for Enthusiasts | TechPowerUp

I just read the TPU article, this is hilarious.

This CPU just doesn't make sense, a huge power draw and on top of that, to get that performance, you need a big and powerful cooler.

 

Intel probably knows it made some wrong decisions in R&D and hope they will be back in the game soon. The 7800X3D is still gaming king, which is the case for a lot of buyers. It's much more efficient as well. They need to cut power by 1/2 or even to 1/3 of the 14900KS while keeping the same performance. That's going to require some redesigns for sure. Remember the Ryzen 1000 release? The 1800x was crushing Intel and they got scared, rapidly increasing core counts in the i7/i9 8000 and 9000 series.

 

It's like AMD is leading and Intel is kind of clueless trying to keep up. Not going to deny, the 14900KS, even others as well, are impressive, but for some buyers the power draw and/or temperatures matter. Not every user wants to spend extra on beefy cooling, but if you don't with this chip, you'll leave a lot of performance on the table.

[jaslion]

The main thing that really jumps out for me besides the 14900ks being 1-2% faster than a 14900k or 13900ks is that amd has nailed it this generation.

 

Like if you need to have a ton of cores for work but also want to game the 7950x is right there, you dont need to build a whole cooling system around it and if all you do the 7800x3d is the top end gaming chip.

 

Nice to see competition going on.

[porina]

1 minute ago, Naijin said:

This CPU just doesn't make sense, a huge power draw and on top of that, to get that performance, you need a big and powerful cooler.

The target customer is someone who wants the best CPU performance at any cost. 7800X3D might on average get ahead in most gaming, but not everywhere else. If it has customers, it isn't senseless.

 

1 minute ago, Naijin said:

Intel probably knows it made some wrong decisions in R&D and hope they will be back in the game soon. The 7800X3D is still gaming king, which is the case for a lot of buyers. It's much more efficient as well. They need to cut power by 1/2 or even to 1/3 of the 14900KS while keeping the same performance. That's going to require some redesigns for sure.

The bad decisions were made perhaps 10+ years ago now. Their approach to fab progression fell apart. It isn't something you can fix overnight. They knew what they needed to do, and they're still doing it. The next year or two sees Intel returning to a competitive process node and Arrow Lake should be a major step forwards on the desktop as they get over two node uplift on top of updated core design.

 

1 minute ago, Naijin said:

Remember the Ryzen 1000 release? The 1800x was crushing Intel and they got scared, rapidly increasing core counts in the i7/i9 8000 and 9000 series.

Remember the original Ryzen series didn't do great at gaming too? If all you ran was Cinebench or similar, it was great. Ryzen wasn't really great in gaming until Zen 2 (3000 series), which was their first architecture to pass Skylake levels overall. It was so painful with the AMD fanboys talking about Cinebench like it was the only thing that mattered.

[RejZoR]

I mean, clocks are impressive, but I'd still take 7800X3D any time. It's the ultimate gaming chip and still plenty fast for general compute of any sort. Just because cooling all that heat from the chip just isn't fun even if you have water cooling.

[starsmine]

31 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Nice to see competition going on.

I swear 90% of the time I see this in relation to hardware, its not what is the driving factor outside of say, price. The engineering is. These companies do not generally sandbag when ahead unless forced to by some other factor. While yes there are choices they can make inside of a design inside of 2 years, those don't pan out until they pan out if they pan out. Computer engineering is a long dev process per architecture because of how many factors need to line up time wise, with many back up plans. Self cannibalization is not really a factor. 

Thats why there was such a long gap between bulldozer and zen. 
thats why when the initial 10nm fabs failed to have appropriate yields, skylake lasted for more then two generations. 

AMD was not sitting with their thumb up their ass after bulldozer, zen was 5 years in the making when zen 1 launched, as they did a hard pivot when bulldozer did not live up to the whiteboard. 
Intel was not sitting on their bum because they were king with skylake, they were working on things like tigerlake and ice lake still, but there was no node to put it on unless they spent two years backporting it (which they eventually did)

RDNA/CDNA came to exist when AMD saw what GCN did and the complications of quad pumping for gaming made drivers hard (hence fine wine, as they slowly got drivers more optimized for that) but compute worked amazing. 

yes competition plays a role on the business side to a minor extent, but the engineers literally could not give a fuck, they are trying to do the best they can with a given budget constraint on a given node. 

And for this product class, competition is a null factor in purchasing decisions.

[Naijin]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

The target customer is someone who wants the best CPU performance at any cost. 7800X3D might on average get ahead in most gaming, but not everywhere else. If it has customers, it isn't senseless.

 

The bad decisions were made perhaps 10+ years ago now. Their approach to fab progression fell apart. It isn't something you can fix overnight. They knew what they needed to do, and they're still doing it. The next year or two sees Intel returning to a competitive process node and Arrow Lake should be a major step forwards on the desktop as they get over two node uplift on top of updated core design.

 

Remember the original Ryzen series didn't do great at gaming too? If all you ran was Cinebench or similar, it was great. Ryzen wasn't really great in gaming until Zen 2 (3000 series), which was their first architecture to pass Skylake levels overall. It was so painful with the AMD fanboys talking about Cinebench like it was the only thing that mattered.

Correct on all those points, so I hope to see some good results soon. Right now there's no CPU that does every single task best, it's either THIS or THAT. It will be an interesting few years to come

[Monkey Dust]

Is this chip for gaming? Or district heating?

[filpo]

9 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

Is this chip for gaming? Or district heating?

THAT’S why they call it multi purpose computers

[Forbidden Wafer]

3 hours ago, filpo said:

for productivity they're not total garbage

If you mean office, multitasking, sure. If you mean real work, no. They're garbage. They gimped them up by cutting the number of load/store ports and registers, so they're naturally memory bottle necked, even if you use as many channels as you want with very fast memory.

[dizmo]

4 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

If you mean office, multitasking, sure. If you mean real work, no. They're garbage. They gimped them up by cutting the number of load/store ports and registers, so they're naturally memory bottle necked, even if you use as many channels as you want with very fast memory.

If you're doing "real work", wouldn't you be after a Xeon anyway? 

[filpo]

9 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

If you mean office, multitasking, sure. If you mean real work, no. They're garbage. They gimped them up by cutting the number of load/store ports and registers, so they're naturally memory bottle necked, even if you use as many channels as you want with very fast memory.

If you look at the benchmarks above you’ll see intel at the top of rendering, software and game development. They’re not better value but they are better for the consumer market

 

5 minutes ago, dizmo said:

If you're doing "real work", wouldn't you be after a Xeon anyway? 

threadripper? 

[dogwitch]

1 gpu and 1 m.2... your out of pci lanes....

[Salted Spinach]

Breaks the clock speed record and lose to a $370 Ryzen processor in gaming.

 

AMD must be so afraid right now

[suicidalfranco]

4 hours ago, dogwitch said:

1 gpu and 1 m.2... your out of pci lanes....

Perfectly reflects majority of how people build their rigs now days

[dogwitch]

9 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Perfectly reflects majority of how people build their rigs now days

oddly not really. if you deep dive on this sku chip. their is zero lanes for chipset....

[porina]

1 hour ago, dogwitch said:

if you deep dive on this sku chip. their is zero lanes for chipset....

Not sure what you're trying to say here. If it is there are 0 PCIe lanes between CPU and chipset, that is correct and normal. Intel use their own protocol connection. You still use chipset lanes like normal.