Intel’s 14th-gen desktop CPUs are a tiny replace even by way of fashionable requirements

Intel’s new desktop processor generations have not all the time include important generational enhancements in recent times, as the corporate has struggled with new manufacturing tech that permits large leaps in efficiency and tool potency. For each and every primary bounce—the Twelfth-generation CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake, spring to mind—you normally get a number of sooner however less-than-thrilling iterations.

Intel is formally launching its 14th-generation desktop processors lately, and they are firmly in that iterative, non-thrilling staff, even in comparison to final 12 months’s Thirteenth-generation chips. The excellent news for price-conscious PC developers is that they’re going to proceed to paintings in all present 600- and 700-series motherboards after a BIOS replace, and Intel is not launching a chain of latest motherboards to accompany them—there don’t seem to be many compelling causes to improve from a Twelfth-gen setup to a 14th-gen one, however it is an to be had possibility.

Even the branding Intel is the use of right here means that the processors are a throwback—next-gen Meteor Lake chips for laptops and all of Intel’s different chips are dropping the generational and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding in prefer of “Core” and “Core Extremely.” By means of Intel’s admission, the final gasp of the 14th-generation branding here’s a nod to how an identical they’re to the Thirteenth-generation chips that preceded them (and, for that topic, the Twelfth-gen ones ahead of that).

The i9-14900K, i7-14700K, and i5-14600K

The Thirteenth-generation refresh, codenamed Raptor Lake, made small however notable adjustments to the Alder Lake structure. Within the high-end chips, Intel boosted the utmost selection of E-cores and added further L2 and L3 cache, along with small clock velocity will increase. Energy budgets normally went up just a little, too. (For some lower-end chips, essentially non-overclockable chips on the i5 tier and beneath, Intel stored the Alder Lake structure totally intact, including a couple of E-cores and boosting clock speeds however no longer in fact converting the silicon.)

The 14th-generation CPUs are simply Raptor Lake once more—no further E-cores on the high-end, no further cache, no build up in formally supported reminiscence speeds, and no build up within the default energy necessities. Base and Turbo clock speeds around the P- and E-cores build up by way of 100 or 200 MHz, however that is it. The built-in Intel UHD 770 GPU may be unchanged.

Intel is launching its new desktop CPUs because it normally does: beginning on the most sensible. It is launching six unlocked and overclockable processors lately: 3 Ok-series CPUs with built-in GPUs and 3 in a different way an identical KF-series CPUs and not using a GPUs that price $25 much less.