Intel Core i7-14700K "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPU Review

TweakTown's Rating: 95%

The Bottom Line

Intel's Core i7-14700K CPU is certainly the winner this generation, getting a rather large overhaul and even better, a price drop.

Pros

• In socket upgrade
• Additional E-Cores
• Improved power consumption
• Price drop
• Performance increase over Core i7-13700K

Cons

• None

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon for $332.42 USD

Buy at Newegg for $332.44 USD

Buy at Amazon for $478.98 CAD

Buy at Newegg for $479 CAD

Buy at Amazon for £316.98

Introduction and Pricing

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With the 14900K now taking the top spot in Intel's desktop CPU lineup, we continue our series of reviews for today's launch with the Core i7-14700K. This CPU has received more attention when it comes to the portfolio. Intel has done more with it to even out its lineup by adding four E-cores to the SKU, offering less parity between it and the Core i5 offering.

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Above, we look at the launch stack, the 14700K and KF occupying the center two lines. Off the top, comparing the 14700K to its predecessor, we now have those four additional efficiency cores to give this CPU a total of 28 threads. The breakdown includes eight performance cores and twelve efficiency cores, which increases the cache naturally, with the 14700K moving up to 28MB of L2 and 33MB of L3. Clocks, too, have changed with this refresh, with the base clock now standing at 3.4GHz for the P-cores and 2.5GHz for the E-Cores. Boosts ramp up to 5.6GHz and 4.3GHz, respectively.

Memory support includes DDR5 5600 and DDR4 3200 officially, with a maximum capacity of 192GB, like the Core i9. Power numbers for the 14700K give us a 125W base power alongside a max turbo power of 253W. The MSRP of the Intel Core i7 14700K comes in at $409, $40 lower than last year's 13700K.

Best Deals: Intel Core i7-14700K "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPU

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$332.42 USD	$346.04 USD	$359.99 USD	Buy
	$332.44 USD	$332.44 USD	$359.99 USD	Buy
	$478.98 CAD	$478.98 CAD	$498.98 CAD	Buy
	$479 CAD	$479 CAD	$499 CAD	Buy
	£316.98	£329.81	£348.80	Buy
	$332.42 USD	$346.04 USD	$359.99 USD	Buy
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Test System and the 14700K

Test System

• Motherboard: GIGABYTE AORUS Z790 Master X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: AMD Radeon 7900 XTX - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: Patriot Viper Xtreme 5 7600MHz CL36 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: EKWB Nucleus 240 - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Crucial T700 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Corsair HX1500i - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Core i7 14700K

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The 14700K keeps the LGA1700 form factor and the same layout as the 13th Gen.

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The backside offers 1700 pins, the same layout as the 13th Gen.

Cinebench, Crossmark and AIDA64

Cinebench R23

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to showcase their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload utilizing one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test which uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU.

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R23 is where we begin for this 14700K, single core performance reaching a score of 2198, while multi-thread touches 36047.

Cinebench 2024

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Cinebench 2024 is the newest installment in the series. Our 14700K landed at 133 points single core and 2041 multi-core.

Crossmark

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CrossMark gave us an overall score of 2745, with creativity picking up most of that.

AIDA64

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AIDA64 showed some solid gains in memory performance at 7600MHz. 117 GB/s read, 116 GB/s write and 114 GB/s copy. The latency with this CPU finished at 61.7ns.

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AES came in at 263605.

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7825 was our SHA3 score.

WEBXPRT4 and UL Benchmarks

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Our first real-world workload was WebXPRT4, which landed us with a score of 407 for the 14700K.

UL Procyon

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Photo Editing was next, the 14700K picking up 9914 in Procyon.

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Switching to 3DMark, CPU Profile is our first workload. Single thread landed at 1210 while sixteen threads offered us 12047.

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Time Spy finished with an overall score of 29037, 25K points for the CPU.

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Speed Way scored 6029.

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VRMark Blue pulled a solid score of 9301, slightly higher than the 14900K.

Comparisons

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Getting into the comparisons, this is where the fun starts, first with R23, the 14700K living just behind the 13900K.

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Moving to nT, the 14700K squeezes itself between the 7950X3D and 7900X.

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In CB 2024, the 14700K slips by the 13700K in single thread.

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We see a similar result here to R23, the 14700K slipping between the 7950X3D and 7900X.

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CrossMark lands the 14700K just below the 13900KS.

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In AIDA64 AES workloads, the 14700K does quite well compared to its predecessor, beating it by 38K.

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SHA3 pits the 14700K between the two 7900 SKUs.

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WebXPRT4 lands the 14700K in the second spot, just a few points back off the 14900K.

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Switching to real-world workloads, Procyon Office gives the 14700K the fourth spot, making the top five CPUs in Procyon all Intel.

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Our 14700K lands in the fourth spot in CPU Profile, actually doing better than the 14900K at sixteen threads.

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Time Spy finished with a 25655 CPU Score, second in our charts.

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Speed Way results gave the 14700K a touch over 6000 points, fifth in our charts.

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VRMark Blue put 14700K at the top of our charts with a score of 9301.

Gaming Performance

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Above are our settings and results in Phantom Liberty. The 14700K was the best gaming CPU we tested, with 195 FPS at 1080p, 4K still being the equalizer, with nearly every CPU at 67 FPS.

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14700K was the best we tested again, with 124 FPS at 1080p and a 2 FPS lead over the entire pack at 4K.

Power Consumption, Value, and Final Thoughts

Power

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Like the 14900K, the 14700K is also more power efficient, though we note this CPU has four additional E-cores and more cache than the 13700K but only draws 15 watts more.

Value

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Looking at Performance per Watt in gaming, the 14700K is far better than the 14900K and behind the 14600K by 1.1%.

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IPC for the Raptor Lake-R was a single point higher than last year's 13th Gen.

Final Thoughts

Intel's Core i7-14700K comes away with the most going for it in this 14th Gen lineup. With the addition of the four E-cores, increased cache, and higher clocks, this CPU is the best gaming CPU that Intel currently offers. In addition, Intel has lowered the pricing of the Core i7 SKU by $40 compared to last year's 13700K.

Performance in every metric has increased over last year's 13700K as well, likely due to the overhaul of the chip. Comparing this CPU to its predecessor, we picked up nearly 11% in R23 single thread and almost a 40% increase in multi-threaded performance. If we swap quickly to CrossMark, we noted an 8% performance uptick, while WebXPRT4 also showed a 40% increase.

Gaming workloads from 3DMark included an 8.5% increase in performance in Time Spy, Speed Way picked up a nice 2% overall, and VRMark, where the 14700K topped the chart, also picked up nearly 2%. In Phantom Liberty and Starfield, we noted the dominance of Intel's CPUs, the 14700K being the top dog, offering 195 FPS in CyberPunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra and 124 FPS at 1080p Ultra in Starfield.

Power consumption, too, was quite good on this CPU, taking note of the rather large overhaul Intel has done to this i7 SKU. While watts did go up, we only measured 15 watts more than the 13700K, making it the fourth-best CPU in performance per watt.