It’s certainly no surprise that a new CPU outperforms its direct predecessor, but it’s always nice to get early indications that is indeed the case. Benchmark leaks for the Intel Core i9-14900K are currently showing a good increase in performance compared to the Intel Core i9-13900K. While leaks such as these always deserve to be approached with skepticism, there are some early indications which show the new CPU could have some tricks up its sleeve that help it to exceed the capabilities of last year’s chip.
The leak comes courtesy of @wxnod on Twitter, and showcases a number of different tests. In single thread benchmarks, the Core i9-14900K scores 978, the same as the Core i9-13900K — but in multi thread tests, the Core i9-14900K pulls away, scoring 18,118.5 to 17,167.5, a significant increase.
There’s some point where you can point to the Core i9-14900K’s increased maximum clock speed of 6.0 GHz, compared to the Core i9-13900K’s 5.80 max clock, and that does indeed seem to be the only real hardware difference between the two, since both have eight P cores and 16 E cores. However, the benchmarks also roped in the Core i9-13900KS, which has the same number of cores and the same max clock speed of 6.0 GHz. The result? The Core i9-14900K pulls ahead of even the Core i9-13900KS, which scored 945.5 in single thread and 17,197 in multi thread.
The details as to how the Core i9-14900K can achieve this with similar specs to its ancestor units isn’t known yet, but it seems likely that the new core is capable of either pushing above the formal 6.0 GHz clock speed, or can simply maintain that maximum for longer than both of the previous versions, helping to push those benchmark numbers even higher.
As ever with leaked benchmarks, take these numbers with a big pinch of salt. There’s absolutely no guarantee that these numbers will be replicated in real life scenarios, or even with a release version of the CPU. Instead, think of it as a rough ballpark for expectations.