Intel’s newest 14th-gen Core desktop processors, “Raptor Lake Refresh,” eliminate the AI NPU and sophisticated tiling system contained in the current 14th-gen “Meteor Lake” cellular chips. But AI is getting used right here, particularly to help what avid gamers care about: bettering sport efficiency and CPU clock speeds.
As anticipated, Intel’s “refreshed” Raptor Lake chips provide modest efficiency enhancements over their predecessors, whereas ushering in eventual platform upgrades like Thunderbolt 5. But there are boosts, similar to a tweaked Intel 7 course of that pushes turbo clock speeds as much as 6GHz with the brand new Core i9-14900Okay and a brand new “Application Performance Optimization (APO)” function that seems to optimize the CPU for a selected sport.
But — and that is essential, given inflation — Intel is holding pricing (nearly) regular. Prices in Intel’s 14th-gen Core desktop S-series line will vary from $589 for the 24-core, 32-thread Core i9-14900Okay all the way down to the $294 14-core, 20-thread Core i5-1400KF, for a complete of six new processors. This is the third straight technology wherein Intel has left its processor costs just about unchanged, together with the 13th-gen Raptor Lake and the 12th-gen Alder Lake chip, whose slowest chip was priced at $264.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Intel’s not providing many direct generation-over-generation comparisons with its personal processors, although it chosen just a few content-creation benchmarks to focus on with its Core i7-14700Okay. There, efficiency enhancements vary from 3 p.c (Adobe Lightroom) to 18 p.c (Autodesk). According to Roger Chandler, vice chairman and normal supervisor of Intel’s fanatic PC and workstation enterprise, the Core i7 options the most effective multithreaded efficiency on a Core i7 ever.
Intel executives mentioned the chipmaker had about 130 companions and prospects for the 13th-gen launch, and anticipate the identical for the debut of the 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh chips.
Intel’s 14th-gen Core desktop: Slight velocity, core rely will increase
Like Raptor Lake, Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh is an Intel 7 chip. Otherwise, it’s the identical. Raptor Lake Refresh makes use of the identical die and revision as Raptor Lake; the one distinction is the core rely.
However, Intel has “optimized and refined both our silicon and our process, which has enabled us to get higher frequencies out of the box,” Aarohi Patel, an Intel product advertising and marketing engineer, mentioned throughout a press briefing.
Here’s a brief abstract of the brand new 14th-gen desktop Core processors. The barely cheaper -F variants forego the built-in GPU for these prospects who plan to make use of a discrete GPU anyway. All of the brand new these new 14th-gen Core chips run at a processor base energy of 125W.
- Core i9-14900Okay (8 P-cores, 3.2GHz/5.6GHz; 16 E-cores, 2.4GHz/4.4GHz): $589, $564 for -F variant
- Core i7-14700Okay (8 P-cores, 3.4GHz/5.5GHz; 12 E-cores, 2.5GHz/5.5GHz): $409, $384 for -F variant
- Core i5-14600Okay (6 P-cores, 3.5GHz/5.3GHz; 8 E-cores, 2.6GHz/4.0GHz): $319, $294 for -F variant
Both the 14th-gen Core i9 and Core i7 processors enhance over the 13th technology, albeit in numerous methods. All of the Raptor Lake Refresh chips embody the identical UHD 770 built-in GPU because the prior technology.
It’s not stunning that Intel chosen the Core i7-14700Okay as some extent of comparability, as that chip exhibits essentially the most marked architectural enhancements over the 13th-gen Alder Lake. (“It was where we had the biggest opportunity to add additional cores, so we did,” Chandler mentioned.)
The Core i9-14900Okay/F stays unchanged at 24 cores and 32 threads; so does the Core i5-14600Okay, at 14 cores and 20 threads. The new 14th-gen Core i7-14700Okay/F, nonetheless, contains 20 cores and 28 threads. That’s a bonus in comparison with the 13th-gen Core i7-13700Okay/F, which in-built 16 cores and 24 threads. All of the brand new Core i7-14700Okay/F cores are E-cores.
But the Core i9-14900Okay/F are the one two chips with an elevated clock velocity in comparison with their 13th-gen counterparts: The Core i9-14900Okay’s P-core clock velocity elevated from 3.0GHz to 3.2GHz, whereas the E-core frequency elevated from 2.2GHz to 2.4GHz.
Here’s an Intel-supplied diagram of the six new 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh processors with extra element.
Intel
Remember, Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 identifies the processor’s quickest cores and routes duties to them, particularly very particular single-threaded jobs. Intel Thermal Velocity Boost can apply 100MHz of extra enhance clock if the chip’s thermal tolerance can take it — for instance, in case your PC was shut down in a single day and has simply booted. It’s a “bursty” function, although, so it would shortly activate and switch off.
As famous above, the PL1 state (or the quantity of energy the chip consumes usually) is 125W. In its turbo/enhance or PL2 state, the chip consumes 253W, the identical as Alder Lake.
Platform enhancements are on the way in which
These new 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh chips shall be backwards suitable with present 600- and 700-series motherboards, so you need to be capable to slot them into present motherboards with minimal adjustments, apart from the standard BIOS updates. “Generally, it should be a seamless upgrade,” Chandler mentioned.
However, Intel’s Chandler recognized two key forthcoming additions to the 14th-gen platform: Wi-Fi 7, and Thunderbolt 5. Wi-Fi 7 will allow wi-fi speeds that exceed wired throughput at over 40Gbps, and the primary Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) routers are already rolling out. (It’s value noting that Wi-Fi 7 remains to be a “draft” commonplace, which hasn’t been completely ratified, so this can be a barely dangerous buy.) Specifically, Wi-Fi 6e shall be built-in, whereas motherboard makers who want to add Wi-Fi 7 choices can achieve this however with a discrete part. (Ditto for Bluetooth; Bluetooth 5.3 is built-in, whereas Bluetooth 5.4, which presents improved one-to-many communications options, requires a discrete chip.) Intel shall be utilizing its “Killer” branding on these.
Thunderbolt 5 isn’t fairly right here but, both, but it surely too will provide speeds in extra of 80Gbps — and even as much as 120Gbps — probably changing HDMI and DisplayPort show connectors, and connecting to exterior SSDs and graphics playing cards. It’s anticipated to debut in 2024, nonetheless, after the primary 14th-gen desktop methods have shipped.
Mark Hachman / IDG
What’s attention-grabbing is that Intel apparently expects 20Gbps USB 3.2 (Gen 2×2) to go mainstream as effectively. Though Intel launched this function with Raptor Lake, it’s nonetheless a relative rarity: USB-C ports often provide 10Gbps and that’s it. Why do you have to care about 20Gbps USB-C? Because that’s just about the standard for external gaming SSDs, which is usually a very enticing product to purchase in case your gaming rig has ever run out of house on the principle drive.
Memory assist stays for each DDR4 and DDR5, with as much as DDR5-5600 and DDR4-3200 assist for the Core i5, i7, and i9 merchandise, an Intel spokesman mentioned by way of e-mail.
Perhaps essentially the most intriguing addition, although, is what Intel calls Application Performance Optimization, or APO. Remember Intel’s Dynamic Tuning Technology? That 2018 expertise dynamically juggled energy between the CPU and the GPU, to eke out as a lot efficiency as potential. APO sits inside that framework, in keeping with Intel, and alongside the Thread Director technology that assigns duties to the E-cores and P-cores. (Unlike Meteor Lake, Thread Director returns to the behavior of assigning new duties to the P-cores because it did in Raptor Lake, by the way.) Intel refers to APO as a “scheduling policy.”
What’s the distinction? It’s a bit obscure. APO can “detect exact application instantiation, and direct and control the thread type,” in keeping with Patel. Thread Director operates at a better degree, taking path from the working system.
Here’s the underside line: APO is basically like a GPU driver improve for the CPU, permitting what executives known as a “nice performance bump” in video games like Metro: Exodus (16 p.c improve) and Rainbow Six: Siege (13 p.c improve), in keeping with Chandler. While it’s enabled by default, it may be disabled, although it’s not clear what advantages you’d see from doing that.
Intel executives mentioned that there aren’t any adverse results from turning on APO. Unfortunately, it’s being tuned for particular video games, and never non-gaming purposes like Photoshop. (That might occur, however there aren’t any ensures.) It will even want particular assist from Intel, so video games simply gained’t be enhanced by default. “We see this as an opportunity to actually boost the performance for individual games without having an overall performance impact on other applications,” Chandler mentioned.
Oh, and APO gained’t work with benchmarks, both — or should you or another person adjustments the title of the executable file, Chandler mentioned.
Intel 14th-gen desktop efficiency: Don’t anticipate an excessive amount of
Since that is “Raptor Lake Refresh,” there aren’t any architectural enhancements; the design of the chips stays the identical, so any enhancements arrive simply in improved clock velocity. That signifies that efficiency enhancements must be minimal.
Intel
“There is no architecture change,” Patel mentioned. “So the IPC [instructions per clock] is exactly similar to what we had before.”
Intel, surprisingly, didn’t launch gen-over-gen comparisons for any video games performed on the 14th-gen Core. According to Chandler, the advance could be within the “mid single digit, maybe upper single digit” vary, excluding the results of APO. Instead, Intel centered on comparisons to the competitors, AMD, and tried to indicate the starker demarcation between its 12th- and 14th-gen processors as a substitute.
Intel
Intel additionally provided its personal analysis of how its 14th-gen Core i9-14900Okay compares to the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, with modest enhancements throughout the board. It did the identical with a number of Ryzen 9X and 9X3D chips, as effectively.
As far because the generational enhancements are involved, Intel restricted them to the slide seen under. There’s all the time a certain quantity of cherry-picking that goes on with benchmarks, however this seems fairly particular.
Although Intel didn’t instantly evaluate the 13th-gen and 14th-gen chips, we are able to do the maths: That’s a 3.6 p.c improve within the Autodesk workload on the far left, rising to 17.6 p.c (Autodesk) and 15.6 p.c (Adobe After Effects) on the far proper. Most of the generational enhancements, nonetheless, seem a lot nearer.
Intel
Overclocking makes use of AI as a weapon
With Raptor Lake, Intel continued to tune its Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), including one-click overclocking, improved visualizations, and eXtreme Memory Profile 3.0. Now, with Raptor Lake Refresh, XTU is getting private. Intel is including what it calls “AI Assist,” the place AI meets overclocking. AI Assist is a preview function inside XTU, which may be downloaded from Intel’s website.
AI Assist will primarily scan your system, understanding the person parts, voltages, and energy settings and recommending overclocking settings by way of a “simple step-by-step UI” which are tailor-made to your system. There is one catch: XTU with AI help shall be supplied first for Core i9-14900Okay/KF processors, with assist increasing to different 14th-gen unlocked processors sooner or later. It won’t be added to older chips. (On the opposite hand, Intel Speed Optimizer will proceed to be supplied alongside AI Assist, in keeping with Dan Ragland, a principal engineer in Intel’s overclocking lab — which would be the instrument 14th-gen Core i7 and i5 patrons can use as a substitute.)
The AI Assist instrument was skilled by machine studying, inferencing tons of of CPUs, plus mixtures of motherboards, coolers, and even customized liquid cooling. All that’s used as a base for its suggestions — although your personal experiences could differ, Intel executives mentioned.
Intel can also be providing elevated overclocking frequencies for P-cores and E-cores, increased DDR5 XMP speeds in extra of 8,000 megatransfers per second, P-core thermal throttling, and a third-party overclocking instrument, FoundationTK.com, that’s based mostly on XTU as effectively.
Ragland, an admitted overclocking fanatic, mentioned that he most popular XMP 6600 and two DIMMs per channel for pairing with the brand new Raptor Lake Refresh chips, and patrons will be capable to discover new XMP modules on Intel’s website at launch. Hopefully, they’ll be as excessive as XMP 8000, he mentioned.
What’s subsequent?
Is Intel doing something greater than treading water? We’ll have to attend for our personal evaluation to see.
However, Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh doesn’t seem that rather more than simply that — a refresh — however with some attention-grabbing approaches to eking out additional efficiency enhancements via AI. Whether or not this leaves the door open for AMD to reply is one thing we’ll must be taught within the coming months.