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Is Intel 14th gen worth it – here’s what we think
It might not have been all that big of a leap so what happened?
Updated: Oct 19, 2023 1:17 pm
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The audience goes mild as Intel’s new generation of processors comes out. There isn’t really much hype over the components and with that being the case we’re struggling to understand why it even exists at this point. That’s why Intel should’ve just skipped the 14th Gen.
The release of the 14th Gen came around on the 17th of October, with the announcement of it just the day before. That was already a suspicious course of action considering other launches like to relish in the time to get the most out of it. But with such a quick turnaround we’ve seen quite a bit about the CPUs. We’ve looked at both the 14900K review and the 14600K review, finding that they are strong Intel processors, but not much over the previous offerings.
The problem and reaction with Intel’s 14th gen
Looking at some of the top tech YouTubers, we see quite a quick conclusion as to what to expect from the looks. Gamers Nexus starts with a great skit on the fact that the new generation is barely that. As with just an upgrade to some clocks, it’s more affecting the power than anything else.
In general, the case has been that it really isn’t a new generation. Intels refresh brings some changes to the 14900K specs, but it is mostly the 14700K hardware that changes. But in the performance, that doesn’t really come through with just an incremental improvement in performance it’s not the generational leap we’d expect to see.
All of that comes with an increase in power consumption though in GNs testing, with the 15700K averaging 284W, 5W higher than its predecessor. Let alone comparing it to AMD CPUs, in particular, the X3D chips. Compared to the 7950X3D, it’s a massive power hog. That averaged around 156W and still outperforms the Intel processor.
Intel may have attempted to fight the Ryzen X3D options but has taken a lot to not get close to it. It also may have been attempting to keep its yearly release schedule, and that might hinder what it actually archives. Especially as it was initially rumored to be a new gen and socket, but that seemingly has fallen to the 15th Gen instead.
What was expected of the 14th Gen
As plenty of reviewers suggested, it should have offered a much more improved performance out of the new processors. The 1-2% increase just doesn’t make it a worthwhile upgrade over the 13th gen option considering that can come in cheaper and is socket-compatible.
One Reddit user on the Intel subreddit suggests the 14900K should have been 12p cores and 12e cores. That would change it from the 8, and 16 it came out, expecting an increase in performance. But another user is quick to point out that is not really possible and wouldn’t do much for gaming performance.
You would just find an even higher power draw as the performance cores are bigger than efficiency cores leading to a 12 and 0 make up instead of their sizing. Even then with games not optimized for many more cores, it’s unlikely to really affect anything right away.
Final word
In general, it has been rather disappointing. But it has meant that we do kind of want to see the 15th Gen, which we expect to see in a year’s time too. But this refresh has brought us one thing, and that is Intel breaking its trend of changing the socket every two generations, so now there are three gens to fit into this option and a good upgrade path down the line.
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