Monday, March 11th 2024
Intel Core i9-14900KS Pricing Confirmed to be $749
Pricing of Intel's upcoming enthusiast-segment desktop processor, the Core i9-14900KS, has been confirmed to be $749, according to a MicroCenter listing. This price is identical to what the company asked for the previous generation i9-13900KS and i9-12900KS. As a Special Edition SKU, the i9-14900KS may not be available in all markets you'd normally find the i9-14900K in, also the chip is expected to have higher cooling- and power requirements. Based on the "Raptor Lake Refresh" silicon, this 8P+16E core processor is expected to come with maximum boost frequencies of 6.20 GHz, and generally better overclocking headroom than the regular i9-14900K. The Core i9-14900KS is expected to go on sale this Thursday, March 14, 2024. Whether it beats the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D at gaming is the $749 question we'll answer soon.
Source:
VideoCardz
103 Comments on Intel Core i9-14900KS Pricing Confirmed to be $749
I just tested my main gaming machine which has a Zen 3 5800X3D and 6800 XT but on a B450 with only 3200 MHz CL16 RAM and it idles at 41W. I don't see the 5800X3D's idle total system power at 41W in any of the reviews in this thread which suggests that you can't make specific claims unless you match equipment exactly to the reviewed system. Which people rarely (lol, never) do when building a system.
Looks like Zen 4 idles at higher power but how much higher if you set up your system with idle power in mind? Again comparing to setting up an Intel system similarly.
My Intel i5-8400 idled at 31W total system which dropped to 25W when adding an AMD GPU (same effect as the Dell above). But the R5 2600 used ~45W. 41W with the 5800X3D seems decent in comparison, considering it's increased capability.
5800X3D in particular was very efficient, not true in idle/low load for the rest of the Zen family on AM4 or AM5, including the new X3D parts.
They didn't lose in idle power draw until they went to chiplets.
This is just the easiest way I've seen to directly compare same CPU on different motherboards idle consumption.
There are a lot of other more anecdotal comparisons though. I haven't seen very many that don't show the same trend, just typically you don't know details. For example (7950X review) :
And from techradar - everyone looks at the big bar, but probably spends 95% of their time at the little bar (cpu only):
The 8700G and other APUs still use IF by the way, it's just they're on monolithic silicon.
I do not put much trust in the idle power reporting from any of those websites because it's very clearly dependent on a variety of factors, so which one if any is "real"? And when W1zz does his tests here, who's to say they will match the average user's experience? W1zz's tests will be great as the community here can test and input their findings too and having a large number of people testing may help pin down best practices for minimizing idle power on both platforms.
* As total system idle is what I'm interested in, Intel Power Gadget's (CPU-only) reported reduction in idle power when swapping from Nvidia to AMD GPU was greater than the observed system idle power reduction. My assumption is that the AMD GPU is making up the difference with slightly higher idle power use while the AMD driver (somehow?) puts the Intel CPU into a lower power idle state. I'll take the nice net reduction. Those seem to be numbers I expect, especially from Intel. Almost all Intel CPUs I've used can be coaxed into a sub 2W idle but I don't know enough about the tech details to know how it's done. Another example of this is my i5-8400 would not go below ~13W with any changes I was willing to change in BIOS, however a Dell Optiplex with i5-8500 at work idles at barely over 1 watt.
The CPU can do it and Dell's BIOS is set to do it but I just don't know what changes to make on my machine to implement it. That said I still have never used my 8400 with it's iGPU, maybe only running it that way is the "answer" but I suspect there are other solutions. One bit of funny business I've observed (with Intel Power Gadget reporting) is when the (Nvidia) GPU is being used for light work like watching a video, my 8400 will go to as low as 3.5W but after that demand is removed, in lockstep with the GPU reducing it's power usage the 8400 goes right back to ~13W. It seems some power states are being managed there but I dunno how to invoke them full time.
There's other downsides to the approach they take to achieve this though.
Hey man I'm on team intel here, but it can't just be me who's noticed in the build it yourself community, Intel's reputation has not been doing so great lately. I don't totally get it myself. Sure 14th gen didn't bring much new to the table but it did bring 13900k performance down the i7s which is really fantastic for people like me... who really shouldn't be buying flagship CPUs, but still get nearly that performance for $400. I'm pretty happy with that.
But that being said, there is a huge rush of consumers going straight for amd/x3d chips as of late. You're going to tell me Intel has nothing to worry about in this market? I mean I appreciate the optimism, but it just doesn't sound like reality to me, sorry. Maybe there's a miscommunication somewhere.
Besides, while it's true what you've mentioned about the build it yourself community, that's very much the minority in terms of actual chips sold, e.g. Laptops, business, prebuilts etc. Intel also has what seems to be a contemporary fab business, arguably better than Samsung anyway and maybe competitive with TSMC if things pan out. I'd argue this is a better situation than AMD, which has to fight Apple for second dibs on the second tier TSMC capacity, has some mindshare for CPUs amongst youtubers and techheads, but is a massive minority for GPUs and can't even get AI features/upscaling to work better over three generations than Intel did in one generation.
Intel stock is popular in the private communities I'm in for these reasons and more.
I'm also very impressed with Intel drivers and the pace of their improvement within a single generation, open-source development, their Linux flavour "Clear Linux" etc.
Not to mention a stock Intel chip running at almost 400 W under an AIO still runs cooler than a Zen 4 chip which peaks at 95 C even at 100 W.
www.techpowerup.com/320061/unreleased-intel-core-i9-14900ks-already-de-lidded-10-c-temperature-drop-on-offer
(He tested it before and after delidding).
With both backside power delivery and ribbonFET/gate all around transistors coming with 15th gen, besides a more advanced version of the chiplets AMD has (foveros with tiles), I think Intel is going to be coming out of this perception swinging, with the momentum a company of their heritage can muster.
Anyway, please don't see me as an enemy. I am a friend who wants to see Intel succeed. I've just seem some.... questionable moves in the past so its all up in the air at the moment. But with Intel from what I understand, being one of the first to get ASMLs new machine, if everything going right, they really could push ahead.
I'm wondering if Intel is going to go the AMD route with productivity CPUs and gaming CPUs. I mean, it does kind of make sense from where AMD is sitting. Why have 16 cores when games only need 8? Lets use that extra space for cache that actually matters in games.
At the same time its nice to be able to pick up a 14700k or 14900k or even 14900ks and be like "Yeah, this can do everything."
Idk, we'll have to wait and see.
Miscommunications turn into tension, tensions turns into arguments, arguments turn into flame wars and before you know it's just another red vs green thread. Thats always the end of of a productive conversation lol. ( Kind of kidding, kind of not). Used to be when mustache man made an appearance, now its when red team green team voice their favorites for the upcoming chariot races erm I mean computer components.... yeah that.
Anyway, never meant in the slightest to put intel down aside from mentioning some hard truths that the company ( and the fans for that matter) will have to get over, and I have a feeling they will. Maybe its just marketing type but I feel like intel's about to go on an upward swing... ( or god please don't let this age too bad).
Even "better bin" is a subjective term, when it comes to these. The extra 100-200 MHz these would see can easily be negated by luck of the draw. Or simply variance of case airflow.