Intel Core i7 14700K really brings something new to the table. It offers four more E-cores than the Core i7 13700K and is slightly faster for a few dollars more. With its tangible advantages and almost enough price parity, it can be said that the 14th Gen processor is the only processor worth looking for instead of the 13th Gen for your next PC system.
The 14700K comes with eight Performance cores (P cores) and 12 Efficiency cores (E-cores) bundled for around $418 today. That’s roughly in line with Intel’s recommended customer pricing, but more importantly, it’s just a few dollars more than the $415 Core i7 13700K, effectively eliminating last-gen chip coldness. While the architecture remains the same between the two (both use the Raptor Lake hybrid architecture), the 14700K comes with four more E-cores And 100–200MHz higher clock speeds on both E-cores and P-cores under Boost.
The slight increase in clock speed will only mean a slight increase in gaming, as I’ve seen with the rest of the 14th Gen K-series processors. However, those extra E-cores provide a tangible benefit in applications that prefer a little more horsepower, and you’re clearly better off having extra silicon under the hood.
Faster, low-latency P-cores handle the gaming workload and are the most important when tracking frames. But these extra E-cores can help with gaming in some cases directly through the game engine or, most likely, by offloading background threads or other tasks to free up P-cores. The 14700K/KF and 14900K/KF include a feature called Intel Application Optimization, or APO for short, which has been shown to improve E-core utilization. However, it is extremely limited in scope and not the perfect feature I want it to be.
Core i7 14700K features
Nuclei (P+E): 8+12
Thread: 28
L3 Cache (Smart Cache): 33MB
L2 Cache: 28MB
Unlocked: Yes
Maximum PCIe lanes: 20
Graphics: UHD Graphics 770
Memory support (max): DDR5 5600MT/s, DDR4 3200MT/s
Processor Base Power (W): 125
Maximum Turbo Power (W): 253
Recommended customer price: $409 (today retail price: $418)
Still, the 14700K is very close to the more expensive Core i9 14900K in most of the gaming benchmarks I ran. In Total War: Three Kingdoms, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Metro: Exodus, there’s only a single frame separating the two. Two frames in F1 2021. The biggest delta was nine frames in Far Cry 6, but I’m honestly okay with that kind of difference if it means saving quite a bit of money; At the time of this writing, you’ll save yourself $158.
And that’s a lot of money to pay for four more E-cores (remember: these E-cores have no Hyper-Threading and only count for one thread) and slightly higher clock speeds. It might be an odd way to think about it, but you could argue that Intel would be happy to give you the same kind of boost with the 14700K for free. Instead, if you plan to use your PC for heavier processing applications outside of gaming, the 14700K is still a suitable replacement for the 14900K.
The cheaper chip seriously impresses in multi-threading tests, including scoring significant scores in the Cinebench R23, Blender, and X264 benchmarks. You also need to consider multi-threaded performance to go for this Core i7, as the Core i5 14600K performs incredibly similar in gaming benchmarks.
If you’re a strong believer in multi-threaded performance, this is where Intel’s chip shines against AMD’s excellent 3D V-Cache competition: the Ryzen 7 7800X3D doesn’t come close in many synthetic multi-threaded benchmarks.
The 14700K also frequently competes with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in gaming benchmarks. The advantage of the AMD chip is its high efficiency and low package power consumption; None of these are Generation 14’s strong suits. You can also get one of the red team’s chips for less than the 14700K, but other than that there’s a really good case for the 14700K for multi-threaded performance.
The 14700K really isn’t the coolest or most efficient chip. With a peak wattage of 253W and an average of over 200W, this device almost matches the 14900K to which it closely resembles. It also goes up to 96°C under load; That’s pretty hot, despite our test bench’s thick all-in-one 360mm cooler. The 7800X3D’s 80°C maximum temperature feels icy cold in comparison.
It leaves you with a tough decision: Do you prefer multi-threaded performance or efficient operation? This could come down to a few key factors, but with the two performing as well as they do in gaming performance, the AMD chip’s lower power consumption is starting to sway me towards the red team’s offering.
However, Intel offers much more chip for your money with the 14700K than previous generations. If you’re after multi-threaded power and don’t want to compromise on leading gaming performance, there’s no competition for the same money.