Intel Core i7-14700K, 8P+12E/28T, 3.40-5.60GHz, tray

The Intel Core i7-14700K … WINS! And that’s normally how you would say it in Mortal Kombat. Although Intel’s latest 14th Gen processor in all essence, is a “refresh” of the Raptor Lake, it does offer a slight boost in performance thanks to the ability to support higher memory speeds, plus it has a higher core count as well having more threads. Looking at the benchmarks, the Core i7-14700K suprisingly beats its predecessor the 12th Gen, and in some cases even the 13th Gen. But wait, did I mention that we used the Core i9 series for 12th and 13th Gen during our tests?! In Cinebench R23, there’s a 7-13% improvement on both single core and multi-core performance over the older 12th Gen Core i9-12900KF, and easily surpasses the Ryzen 9 7900X. With that said, if you want the latest 14th Gen processor from Intel that offers better performance over its predecessor, then the Core i7-14700K truly offers the best bang for your buck! But I would love to see what the flagship Core i9-14900K can really do! And one other good news is that, because Intel’s 14th Gen processor uses the same LGA 1700 platform (socket) as it predecessor, it should work on most existing Z790 motherboards with the latest BIOS update. Like all 12th and 13th Gen processors, the Core i7-14700K does not have AVX-512 instructions. According to Intel, this wasn’t enabled due to the inclusion of two different architectures (E-cores + P-cores). However, I heard that some motherboard manufacturers allow users to enable AVX-512 after disabling the E cores in the BIOS. Interesting.

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