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6.2 GHz Intel Core I9-14900KS Review
- heroprotagonist 3y agoI hate P-cores and E-cores. It feels like they're not trying to improve performance, and instead are just searching after the marketing for ever-higher numbers of cores. This of course backfires once people realize it doesn't matter if you have 64 cores when most of them run like crap and cause you to have to constantly self-manage whitelisting processes to run only on performance cores. I'd rather have fewer cores of all the same higher performance that don't cause a hassle.
- userbinator 3y agoI suspect that's the outcome of trying to optimise for some specific efficiency benchmark.
- wtallis 3y agoIt's the outcome of trying to optimize for cost while trying to maintain good performance on two very different categories of workload, and hurriedly throwing together a product based on the components they had on hand (the Core and Atom families of CPU core designs).
- ants_a 3y agoFor well scaling workloads optimizing for efficiency is optimizing for performance. For serial workloads even one P-core is enough. There aren't too many workloads in the middle that scale but only to a few cores.
- glimshe 3y agoP-Cores and E-Cores make engineering sense, that's why they do it. Having every core with the same feature set and maximum clock wastes energy and heat for no measurable gain in the majority of real-world workloads.
- jltsiren 3y agoI believe Intel E-cores are all about maximizing performance. Each E-core has 40-50% of the performance of a P-core, but it only takes ~1/4 of the space. You need a few fast cores for tasks that don't parallelize well, but beyond that, you really want to maximize performance per die area and/or power efficiency. It's a bit inconvenient that all cores are not identical, especially in real-time applications such as video games. Some schedulers may also not be able to use them well automatically. But if you care mostly about throughput, E-cores are superior to P-cores.
- jeffbee 3y agoEven the P cores are not identical. On a 14900K there are two cores with +2 speed bins (6GHz) vs all the others (5.8GHz). And there are local thermal effects, because the 8 P cores are arranged in two rows of four. Some of them get heated from all sides, some don't. Optimal scheduling on such a system is not easy.
- Dalewyn 3y ago[flagged]
- wtallis 3y agoPlease try not to take perceived criticism of Intel as a personal attack, and please don't accuse others of being partisan without stopping to consider whether the bias you perceive is present in the comment itself or only in your reading of it. Jeffbee's comment can be reasonably read as simply pointing out the futility of asking for all cores to be identical: the existence of minor but measurable variations between nominally identical cores is the unavoidable reality that undermines any attempt to insist on complete symmetry between cores on the same chip. This fact is not an attack on Intel; it applies just as much to chips made by AMD, and nobody tried to present this as a unique downside for Intel, and jeffbee doesn't seem to actually be asking for the idealized chip that can be optimally managed by the simplest schedulers.
- majke 3y agoI write low level code. I need to profile it. It's enough pain to try to understand performance in the turbo boost model. Then Intel was adding avx512 throttling. Now the P vs E cores and some P cores having different max ghz from others. AMD adds its own set of problems with the slower (ghz) CCD with x3d. As a developer I don't mind the P/E on my laptop. I actually enjoy the apple silicon version of it. On a desktop though, where cooling and power are not a problem, I would strongly prefer a uniform, predictable architecture.
- yinser 3y agoAnd this “backfiring” is it in the room with us now? Keeping low priority tasks from blocking other work that needs the performance is a great feature.
- pengaru 3y agoe-cores would be fine if there's on the order of a hundred+ of them in exchange for a p-core's die area, and the memory bandwidth to keep them fed.
- Panzer04 3y agoWe have those, but we call them GPUs. E cores are meant to make a much milder tradeoff of performance and features than would be required to jam that many computing units into that area.
- imtringued 3y agoI don't care about any of these things. Just give me more memory channels.
- drain 3y agoBut having E-cores does seem to offer the benefit of greater multi-threaded performance and reduced power consumption - something intel has struggled with [1][2]. I find this innovation from intel much more refreshing than their typical route of clocking CPU's beyond diminishing returns with regard to power consumption. I imagine this higher degree of power consumption flexibility makes a lot of sense for laptops also. Though I don't have experiencing using these CPUs so I don't know how well management of processes is implemented (probably only going to improve from now though). Sure, marketing might play a bit into it. Less savvy buyers might make the mistake of comparing core counts across different brands / architectures rather than checking benchmark comparisons. Makes me think of the class action that happened with the Bulldozer architecture [3]. As long as they advertise the cores as distinct P and E cores, I think it is fair enough. [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-12900k-and-core-i5-12600k-review-retaking-the-gaming-crown/3 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-12900k-an... [2] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html#section-multi-threaded-cpu-benchmarks-rankings-2024 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)#False_advertising_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)#...
- wtallis 3y ago> when most of them run like crap That's not even close to an accurate description of Intel's E cores. They have the same performance per clock as the Skylake cores they shipped in all their desktop processors from 2015 until just three years ago, and the E cores run at similar speeds. They may be descended from Intel Atom, but they're not crap. The general idea of the E cores is sound: for tasks that can scale to more than a handful of threads, the E cores provide better performance per mm^2 of silicon and better performance per Watt. Going beyond the current 6-8 P cores in a consumer processor makes no sense; extra silicon budget should be spent on more E cores (and maybe more cache per E core).
- kllrnohj 3y agoExcept as AMD is showing you can have both and not be at the mercy of hoping your OS's scheduler is able to consistently figure out what to do.
- wtallis 3y agoAMD's main advantage is that their P cores are much more reasonably-sized than Intel's P cores, so they don't need a heterogeneous solution as badly as Intel. But even so, AMD has an entry-level consumer chip that is heterogeneous, though not as severely as Intel's consumer chips.
- mmaniac 3y agoAMD has the advantage of Zen 4c being functionally the same as Zen 4 in every way except its frequency profile. The cache hierarchy and IPC between Phoenix 2's heterogeneous cores is identical. It's much easier to make scheduling decisions than on Intel.
- Dylan16807 3y agoAMD "c" cores are about 65% as big as the normal ones. Intel "E" cores are about 30% as big as the normal ones. AMD avoids the scheduling issues, but does not get the density benefits.
- yourusername 3y ago
- dagmx 3y agoE cores make a significant difference to most common computer use cases. The case where you have many lower workload tasks or system processes, and a few high workload tasks. This allows for maximizing throughput for the majority of users, while also optimizing for silicon usage and power draw. Perhaps for your use cases, E cores don’t benefit you, but there’s been over a decade of proof of the use of heterogenous cores across mobile, laptops and now desktops.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 3y agoThat is a way to increase core count at manageable cost, given that having threads sharing the same core wasn't a good idea after all.
- shmerl 3y agoI'd prefer more cores evenly scaled, not a few cores with some crazy frequencies.
- aurareturn 3y agoDepends on what you do. This is still a consumer cpu so having fewer faster cores benefit the average consumer application more.
- shmerl 3y agoI don't agree. Average consumer application these days should be parallelized like any other. So more cores should be better. It's not last century anymore.
- aurareturn 3y agoI disagree. Any CPU you get nowadays has a minimum of 4 cores which is plenty for the average consumer application. The most basic things people do are still bottlenecked by ST more than MT such as email, browsing, messaging. Even most AAA gaming doesn't scale more than 8 cores.
- zuhsetaqi 3y agoIt’s not about a single application scaling to all cores but modern OSes do A LOT in the background
- seritools 3y agoAnd those background tasks can be scheduled onto the slower cores.
- Dylan16807 3y agoEven on my decade old CPU, all those background OS processes fit into a single core.
- 3y ago
- dsp_person 3y agoWhen did CPUs break 5-6GHz? It feels surprising to see that high GHz number after being conditioned that "clock speed can't go up anymore, so number of cores go up" and not seeing anything much higher than 4GHz
- qwezxcrty 3y agoMaybe never? Bram Nauta's ISSCC 2024 talk covered this and worth watching.
- sapiogram 3y agohttps://youtu.be/THJP_HB5HEk?si=gmdl6vIBVREc5rpA https://youtu.be/THJP_HB5HEk?si=gmdl6vIBVREc5rpA Link for the lazy
- re-thc 3y agoA long time ago. AMD was famously first with 5ghz 10 years ago and then Intel not too long later.
- zokier 3y agoAMD got 5GHz with Raphael in 2022, Intel hit it few years earlier with Coffee Lake in 2018. (no, fx-9590 does not count)
- adastra22 3y agoJust today there was news of a 9GHz overclocking record. It was cooled with liquid helium though.
- LorenDB 3y agoIIRC 9 GHz was broken a year or so ago: https://www.pcmag.com/news/intels-core-i9-13900k-processor-gets-overclocked-to-9ghz https://www.pcmag.com/news/intels-core-i9-13900k-processor-g...
- ls612 3y ago
- tdoggette 3y agoA great gift for the Stellaris fan in your life!
- r2_pilot 3y agoYou mean you get that far that CPU matters without some random catastrophe waltzing through your empire like you were dust?
- serf 3y agoplay on a large map with lots of civilizations, doesn't take long. add multiplayer into the mix for an even worse experience.
- r2_pilot 3y agoFair enough. My friend and I play relatively small galaxies and both have somewhat beefy processors, so we haven't really noticed it slowing down outside the "hey where'd the weekend go" amounts of time it consumes.
- gamepsys 3y agoIntel is still the king in single threaded performance. However, single threaded performance will end up being the bottle neck for fewer and fewer workloads. I have to wonder, with a $690 price tag and a 320 watt power budget who is this chip for? Team red wins most of the benchmarks with cheaper silicon.
- Kluggy 3y agoIsn’t most games still dominated by single thread performance?
- kevingadd 3y agoTo a degree, but it's typically more like 'this workload uses 2-4 cores and wants peak performance on all of them', not really 'this workload uses a single core' on modern games. And then some games will happily use 8+ cores now The user-mode video driver and kernel mode driver both use other cores as well
- dralley 3y agoMost games love cache. AMD's X3D CPUs tend to be either better, or at worst extremely competitive with Intel's top chips for games, at a far lower power budget.
- aloknnikhil 3y agoBut with all the background OS activity, will this chip ever sustain turbo to 6.2 for noticeable periods? Pure benchmarking win imo.
- RobLach 3y agoNeeds to be $140 cheaper.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- huytersd 3y ago6.2 GHz? When did that happen?
- mrandish 3y agoWhen it happens, it only happens for less than a minute as thermal throttling kicks in, unless you're doing heroic cooling things that cost extra $$$.
- huytersd 3y agoSounds like they’re saying it’s the base rate.
- ChoGGi 3y agoBase clock is 3.2 for the p cores. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/237504/intel-core-i9-processor-14900ks-36m-cache-up-to-6-20-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/237504/...
- fragmede 3y agoWith cloud, why aren't more heroic things done? aka LN2 cooling for CPUs to sustain 6 GHz.
- kyrra 3y agoCloud cares about performance per watt (when you are effectively running a small powerplant). Threadripper absolutely dominate in this space. https://youtu.be/yDEUOoWTzGw?si=RoA5HLGRSPzrsamX&t=6m https://youtu.be/yDEUOoWTzGw?si=RoA5HLGRSPzrsamX&t=6m
- derefr 3y agoAre there workloads bottlenecked only by single-threaded perf per watt, where having multiple cores awake in the same box would be antithetical to the point? Some kind of scale-out HFT liquidity strategy, perhaps?
- TOMDM 3y agoIf we're going to benchmark single core optimised CPU's on games, I'd love to see sim games on the list instead of just the current AAA titles. How many TPS can I get on my Factorio megabase.
- kllrnohj 3y agoThe 7800X3D is in a completely different universe for Factorio from the 14900KS, it's like 60% faster which is just absurd. Factorio absolutely loves that extra L3 cache. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-7-7800x3d-smashes-core-i9-14900k-in-factorio-gaming-benchmark https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-7-7800x3d-smashes-co... https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/12ckmc3/hardwares_unboxeds_7800x3ds_factorio_benchmark_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/12ckmc3/hardwares... (this doesn't have the 14900K(S) but given that it's the same thing as the 13900K you can guess where it'll end up, and it ain't close to the X3D's)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChoGGi 3y agoWhen the cache is filled up then they're pretty much tied. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0oALfgsyOg4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0oALfgsyOg4 Excluding the massive power difference...
- muro 3y agoWhy is the 7800X3D so much faster in that benchmark than 7950X3D? The 7950X3D seems to boost on paper to even higher frequency. Is the cache different per core?
- MindSpunk 3y ago7950X3D only has the 3D stacked cache on one of the two chiplets, so as far as gaming is concerned you only want to use 8 of the 16 cores. 7800X3D would boost harder for gaming because the 7950X3D has a second vestigial (as far as gaming is concerned) chiplet that eats power that could be better spent in the v-cache enabled die.
- mukundmr 3y agoI am finding it hard to come to terms with the power and thermal figures. The CPU draws 320watts and likes to operate at 100 degrees Celsius. The CPU uses adaptive boost technology to pull more power to get to the 100C temperature mark. Again, from the review, most enthusiast motherboards default to limits near 4096W of power and 512A of current. Compared to house hold appliances, with 4000watts of power, you can run 3 microwaves (at 1200 watts), more than 5 refrigerators (at 800 watts), a reasonably sized central air conditioning unit (though 5KW models aren't that rare), etc. These power and thermal figures make me wonder why Intel is not moving towards Apple's design philosophy behind the M1, M2, M3 series of chips.
- hardware2win 3y agoThey do, check Lunar Lake
- nicolaslem 3y ago> Most enthusiast motherboards default to limits near 4096W of power and 512A of current. No, that's just a way to set no upper limit. A very beefy desktop power supply is 1600W, and that's typically over-specced to handle brief surges of power.
- Nonoyesnoyes 3y agoThey have a broad line up. The provide laptop chips, desktop, high-end enthusiast desktop and server chips. Why should they just copy apple?!
- close04 3y agoManufacturers try to reuse as much as possible for efficiency's sake but one size does not fit all. If you try to have the same underlying blocks powering your super low-power ultra-portables, as well as the high power server chips, and everything in between (including the monstrosity in the article) the definition of efficiency starts to need a very subjective understanding.
- xinayder 3y agoNot sure whether it was AMD or Asus but a few months ago Asus pushed a firmware update to their recent AMD motherboards preventing users from undervolting their CPU in the motherboard because it would fry the motherboard. I can't find the article now but it happened last year.
- throwaway4good 3y agoSuppose Apple created a larger M-series cpu that had the same power draw (320 W) and operating temperature (100 C). How well would it perform against this?
- nicolaslem 3y agoFor single core, it wouldn't perform as well as you think because performance per watt is not linear. It would push this hypothetical CPU well into the zone of diminishing returns. For multi core you can just look at AMD Epyc CPUs which achieve great performance by using many (up to 128) relatively low power cores. An all core load pulls around 400W of power.
- fransje26 3y ago> and operating temperature (100 C) Like the new MacBook Air, you mean?
- fnands 3y agoZing!
- throwaway4good 3y agoHaha. It would have active cooling and sit in a pretty silver pizza box in a dark dungeon. But why is this such a silly idea? A rebirth of the Apple x-server. They make excellent performance cores, they have half of TSMC dedicated to them, and developers love them.
- timlod 3y agoI do like the Task Energy plot towards the end (second to last plot). It shows how wasteful these new Intel processors are compared to their direct competition.
- GTP 3y ago> This allows it to hit the previously unheard of 6.2 GHz on two cores Does this mean that only two cores can be simultaneously at that speed?
- wutwutwat 3y agoIntel chips are already running extremely hot and take a lot to properly cool down, there’s not enough thermal headroom to boost all cores to those voltages in the latest generation of chips. 2 cores is probably pushing it.
- kllrnohj 3y agoYes, that's "Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0" https://www.tomshardware.com/reference/intel-favored-cpu-cores-turbo-boost-max-technology-3.0 https://www.tomshardware.com/reference/intel-favored-cpu-cor... The CPU has 2 golden cores that can hit max boost, and the others can't (at least not consistently enough to market it)
- arrjayh 3y agoWhat in the actual, 6.2 GHz!? The power draw must be insane.
- xela79 3y ago15 years ago we made a Celeron run at 8Ghz, things have really stagnated http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/937/LN2-Overclocking-At-Alternate-Hello-8Ghz-CPU http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/937/LN2-Overclocki...