Intel’s new 14th Gen CPUs arrive on October 17th with up to 6GHz out of the box

Intel is launching its 14th Gen desktop processors this week, promising boost frequencies of 6GHz out of the box for its flagship Core i9-14900K. Known as Raptor Lake Refresh, Intel is maintaining pricing for its 14th Gen Core i9, i7, and i5 processors this year, sticking to the same retail pricing as the 13th Gen when these new chips launch on October 17th.

The 6GHz boost on the new Core i9-14900K makes it the “fastest desktop processor at volume,” according to Intel, referring to its special-edition 13900KS that first broke the 6GHz barrier at stock speeds last year but didn’t ship at volume. The more interesting 14th Gen processor in this refresh could be the Core i7-14700K, though, thanks to a significant bump to its efficiency cores.

This year, Intel is increasing the core count on its Core i7 processor, moving from eight efficiency and eight performance cores to 12 efficiency and eight performance cores. That’s 20 cores in total for the Core i7-14700K, close to the 24 found on the Core i9-14900K. The base clocks on the P-core are 3.4GHz and 2.5GHz on the E-core for the 14700K, the same that we saw on last year’s 13700K. These added efficiency cores should help with creator tasks and even gaming performance for titles that take advantage of multithreading.

Intel has some favorable benchmarks against AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X and even its own previous Core i7 chips for creator tasks, but we’ll have to wait and see how this new Core i7-14700K compares to AMD’s impressive 7800X3D chip for gaming benchmarks.

Over on the flagship side, Intel’s Core i9-14900K adds the 6GHz Thermal Velocity Boost frequency found previously on the $699 special-edition Core i9-13900KS variant. Frequencies for the P-core max turbo are up 200Hz to 5.6GHz this time around, alongside a 100MHz bump on the E-core max turbo side. Even the base frequencies for both the P- and E-cores are up 200MHz.

Intel also has a refreshed Core i5 this year. The i5-14600K includes a total of 20 cores (six P-cores and eight E-cores) and has a base clock of 3.5GHz on the P-core side and up to a 5.3GHz boost.

All of these 14th Gen processors will work in Intel 600- and 700-series motherboards, as Intel is still using its LGA 1700 socket. They also include support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 through a discrete option that motherboard manufacturers can include in refreshed Z790 boards. Intel is also supporting DDR5 5600 and DDR4 3200 memory speeds with its 14th Gen chips.

The Core i9-14900K will be priced at $589, with the Core i7-1700K priced at $409 and the Core i5-14600K launching at $319. All three processors will be available from system builders and retailers on October 17th.