Intel Core i9-14900KS Review: The Fastest Desktop CPU Yet
Intel Core i9-14900KS Review: CPU, System, And Browser Benchmarks
When configuring our test systems for this review, we first made sure all firmwares were up to date, then we entered each system's respective BIOS / UEFI and set the board to its "Optimized" or "High performance" defaults. We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to the maximum officially supported speed for the given platform (without overclocking). The SSDs were then formatted, and Windows 11 Pro was installed and fully updated.
Considering its similarity to other 14th Gen chips, along with its higher-clocks, you're going to notice a common theme throughout all of our benchmarks. In Geekbench, the Core i9-14900KS put up the highest single and multi-threaded scores we have seen to date. Its higher peak frequencies allow it to edge out the existing Core i9-14900K by a couple of percentage points, putting it in the pole position in this benchmark.
PCMark 10's varied mix of workloads also ran well on the Core i9-14900KS. Intel's newest limited edition flagship landed in the top spot once again, resulting in the highest score we've seen from a desktop system to date.
When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers necessary for our components, disabled Auto-Updating and Windows Defender, and installed all of our benchmarking software. When that process was done, we performed a disk clean-up, cleared any temp and prefetch data, processed idle tasks, and optimized all of the SSDs using Windows' built-in utility. Finally, we enabled Windows Focus Assist to minimize any potential interruptions and let the systems reach an idle state before invoking any tests.
HotHardware's Test Systems:
Geekbench v5.4.1 CPU Benchmark With Raptor Lake
The GeekBench CPU tests stress only the processor cores in a system (not the graphics card/GPU), with both single and multi-threaded workloads. The tests are comprised of encryption processing, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations and other general purpose compute processing workloads.
Considering its similarity to other 14th Gen chips, along with its higher-clocks, you're going to notice a common theme throughout all of our benchmarks. In Geekbench, the Core i9-14900KS put up the highest single and multi-threaded scores we have seen to date. Its higher peak frequencies allow it to edge out the existing Core i9-14900K by a couple of percentage points, putting it in the pole position in this benchmark.
UL PCMark 10 Benchmarks
Next, up we have some full-system testing with PCMark. We're reporting all test results from the PCMark 10 benchmark suite, including the Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation and and total PCMark score. The Essentials test covers workloads like web browsing, video conferencing and app start-up times, while Productivity tests everyday office apps from spreadsheets to word processing. Finally, the Digital Content Creation test evaluates performance of a machine with respect to photo and video editing, as well as rendering and visualization.
PCMark 10's varied mix of workloads also ran well on the Core i9-14900KS. Intel's newest limited edition flagship landed in the top spot once again, resulting in the highest score we've seen from a desktop system to date.
Browser & Web App Benchmarks: Jetstream 2 And Speedometer 2
Next up, we have some numbers from the Speedometer 2.0 and Jetstream 2 tests available at browserbench.org. The Speedometer Benchmark Suite uses a wide array of latency and throughput benchmarks to evaluate web application performance and Jetstream evaluates Javascript and WebAssembly performance; both tests take all of their individual results and tabulate them into a final score.
These benchmarks measure performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
The browser-based Jetstream and Speedometer tests showed the Core i9-14900KS outpacing the Core i9-14900K -- the previous leader -- by a couple of percentage points in both tests, which was enough to put it KS at the top of the charts again.
These benchmarks measure performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
7-Zip Data Decompression Tests
The 7-Zip benchmark measures compression and decompression performance using the LZMA method, which leverages the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm to perform lossless data compression. The benchmark produces a final rating in GIPS (giga instructions per second).
Although the Core i9-14900KS was able to overtake the Core i9-14900K in both the single and multi-threaded tests yet again, the Zen 4-based AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and 7950X3D take the top two spots in 7-Zip's decompression tests.
Although the Core i9-14900KS was able to overtake the Core i9-14900K in both the single and multi-threaded tests yet again, the Zen 4-based AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and 7950X3D take the top two spots in 7-Zip's decompression tests.
