Intel Core i9-14900KS Review: The Swan Song of Raptor Lake With A Super Fast 6.2 GHz Turbo

Test Bed and Setup: Moving Towards 2024

As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's highest officially-supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the highest official frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance.

While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC-supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

The Current CPU Test Suite

For our Intel Core i9-14900KS testing, we are using the following test system:

Our CPU 2024 Suite: What to Expect

We recently updated the CPU test suite to our 2023, but we've decided to update it again as we head into 2024. Our new suite has a more diverse selection of tests and benchmarks, focusing on real-world instruction sets and newer encoding and decoding libraries such as AV1, VP9, and HVEC. We have also included a range of AI-focused workloads and benchmarks, as we're seeing a direct shift from manufacturers to incorporate some form of on-chip AI processing, such as Ryzen AI and Intel's Meteor Lake AI NPU.

While we've kept some of the more popular ones, such as CineBench R23, we've added Maxon's latest CineBench 2024 benchmark to our test suite. We have also updated to the latest versions (at the time of incorporating the suite) in benchmarks such as Blender, V-Ray, and y-Cruncher.

With our processor reviews, especially on a new generational product such as Intel's Core i9-13900K/14900K, we also include SPEC2017 data to account for any increases (or decreases) to generational single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. It should be noted that per the terms of the SPEC license because our benchmark results are not vetted directly by the SPEC consortium, it is officially classified as an ‘estimated’ score.

We've also carried over some older (but still relevant/enlightening) benchmarks from our CPU 2023 suite. This includes benchmarks such as Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Dr. Ian Cutress's 3DPMv2 benchmark, Blender 3.3, C-Ray 1.1 rendering, SciMark 2.0, and Primesieve 1.9.0. We've also kept UL's Procyon suite as a more holisitc system-wide test.

As for gaming, we're currently still revamping our CPU 2024 games suite, and as a result, we've tested gaming against our CPU 2023 suite. You can rest assured that our CPU 2024 games suite will be uploaded to the latest titles and will include even more technical aspects in play, such as Ray-Tracing, as this directly impacts CPU performance and frame rates. We will also include a similar methodology in terms of resolutions, including 720p/lower, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

The CPU-focused tests featured specifically in this review are as follows:

Power

• Peak Power (y-Cruncher using AVX)
• Power analysis with yCruncher Multi-Threaded and F1 2023

Office & Web

• UL Procyon Office: Various office-based tasks using various Microsoft Office applications
• LibreOffice: Time taken to convert 20 documents to PDF
• JetStream 2.1 Benchmark: Measures various levels of web performance within a browser (we use the latest available Chrome)
• Timed Linux Kernel Compilation: How long it takes to compile a Linux build with the standard settings
• Timed PHP Compilation: How long does it take to compile PHP
• Timed Node.js Compilation: Same as above, but with Node.js
• MariaDB: A MySQL database benchmark using mysqlslap

Encoding

• WebP2 Image Encode: Encoding benchmark using the WebP2 format
• SVT AV1 Encoding: Encoding using AV1 at both 1080p and 4K, at different settings
• Dav1D AV1 Benchmark: A simple AV1 based benchmark
• SVT-HEVC Encoding: Same as SVT AV1, but with HEVC, at both 1080p and 4K
• SVT-VP9 Encoding: Same as other SVT benchmarks, but using VP9, both at 1080p and 4K
• FFmpeg 6.0 Benchmark: Benchmarking with x264 and x265 using a live scenario
• FLAC Audio Encoding: Benchmarking audio encoding from WAV to FLAC
• 7-Zip: A fabled benchmark we've used before, but updated to the latest version

Rendering

• Blender 3.6: Popular rendering program
• CineBench R23: The fabled Cinema4D Rendering engine
• CineBench 2024: The latest Cinema4D Rendering engine
• C-Ray: A popular render
• V-Ray: Another popular renderer
• POV-Ray: A persistence of ray-tracing benchmark

Science & Simulation

• y-Cruncher 0.8.2.9523: Calculating Pi to 5M digits, both ST and MT
• 3D Particle Movement v2.1 (Non-AVX + AVX2/AVX512)
• Primesieve 1.9.0: This test generates prime numbers using an optimized sieve of Eratosthenes implementation
• Montage Astro Image Mosaic Engine: Benchmarking of an open-sourced mosaic engine via California Institute of Technology
• OpenFOAM: A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) benchmark using drivaerFastback test case to analyze automotive aerodynamics.
• Dwarf Fortress 0.44.12: Fantasy world creation and time passage
• Factorio v1.1.26 Test: A game-based benchmark that is largely consistent for measuring overall CPU and memory performance
• 3D Mark CPU Profile: Benchmark testing just the CPU with multiple levels of thread usage

AI and Inferencing

• ONNX Runtime: A Microsoft developed open source machine learning and inferencing accelarator
• DeepSpeech: A Mozilla based speech-to-text engine benchmark powered by TensorFlow
• TensorFlow 2.12: A TensorFlow benchmark using the deep learning framework
• UL Procyon WIndows AI Inference: A benchmark by UL measuring total inference counts across multiple libraries

We are currently using our games from our CPU 2023 suite. Our current games in our CPU testing and those featured in this review are as follows:

• Civilization VI: 480p, 1080p, and 4K (both avg and 95% percentile)
• World of Tanks: 768p, 1080p, and 4K (both avg and 95% percentile)
• Borderlands 3: 360p, 1440p, and 4K (both avg and 95th percentile)
• Red Dead Redemption 2: 384p, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K (both avg and 95th percentile)
• F1 2022: 720p, 1080p, and 4K (both avg and 95th percentile)
• Hitman 3: 720p, 1080p, and 4K (both avg and 95th percentile)
• Total War Warhammer 3: 720p, 1080p, and 4K (only avg fps measured)

As mentioned, we are updating our CPU 2024 suite with new games, including some of the latest titles. We are currently testing them, and they will be ready as we review the next generation of CPUs from AMD and Intel. 

While we normally analyze Core-to-Core latency on new CPUs, the fact that Intel's 14th and 13th Gen are identical architecturally, we opted to omit this from our testing. This also goes for the Core i9-14900KS we are reviewing today, as technically, it is the same architecture and silicon under the hood.