Intel Core i9-14900K gaming performance edges out AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D by a narrow margin

midian182

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What just happened? We're less than one week away from the launch of Intel's 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh processors, which means more benchmarks are being leaked. The latest of these is said to be an official slide from Intel comparing the Core i9-14900K's 1080p gaming performance against AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D. The results are close, but Intel's chip takes the win with a small 2% lead.

The slide, shared by prolific leaker HXL (via VideoCardz), comes from a Chinese Intel presentation comparing Intel's upcoming flagship with AMD's and its 3D V-Cache technology.

The 24-core Intel CPU has the edge in 14 of the tested games, while AMD's card is ahead in 10. One game, Company of Heroes, is a tie.

Some of the games where Intel's chip really shines include Metro Exodus and Starfield, both of which saw 23% gains over the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, while Total War: Warhammer 3 was 22% ahead. AMD's chip saw better performance in Cyberpunk 2077, DOTA 2, and Fortnite.

Performance figures Core i9-14900K vs. Ryzen 9 7950X3D

  • DOTA 2: 77%
  • Fortnite: 82%
  • Cyberpunk 2077: 89%
  • League of Legends: 94%
  • Horizon Zero Dawn: 94%
  • Final Fantasy 14: 95%
  • Red Dead Redemption 2: 96%
  • Forza Horizon 5: 98%
  • Assassin's Creed Valhalla: 99%
  • Galaxy Breaker: 99%
  • Company of Heroes 3: 100%
  • Far Cry 6: 103%
  • Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord: 103%
  • COD: MW2: 103%
  • GTA5: 105%
  • Hitman 3: 106%
  • Rainbow Six Siege: 107%
  • World of Tanks Encore RT: 108%
  • Serious Sam 4: 108%
  • Civilization 6: 109%
  • Counter Strike Global Offensive: 114%
  • Ashes of the Singularity: 115%
  • Total War Warhammer 3: 122%
  • Starfield: 123%
  • Metro Exodus: 123%

According to the results, which are from Intel so likely based on best-case scenarios, the Core i9-14900K outperforms the Ryzen 9 7950X3D by an average of 2%.

The biggest unknown factor here is the price. We'll have to wait and see if Intel prices the Core i9-14900K less than the 7950X3D, which is available for around $599. There's also the cheaper Ryzen 7 7800X3D to consider. Available for $399, we found it compared almost identically to the 7950X3D in our 12-game average benchmarks at 1080p.

We previously heard that the Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs could cost 15% more than their predecessors while offering only small performance boosts.

Last month saw the Core i9-14900K appear in the Geekbench database with a record-breaking single-core of 3,140 points and reaching almost 6 GHz. That score is a 6% improvement over its 13th-gen equivalent chip and 1% more than the Core i9-13900KS. Its multi-core score was lower than the Core i9-13900KS, the i9-13900K, and the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, though.

Intel will launch the first Raptor Lake Refresh processors, expected to be the Core i9-14900K, Core i7-14700K, and Core i5-14600K, on October 17, with the review embargo lifting on October 16.

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Intel cpus were already overall better vs zen with 12th gen then onwards.
problem is absurd power draw.
They need to fix that.
It does not matter if 14900k is 10% faster vs 7950x3d in gaming while consuming 100+ watts more.
7900xtx is same as 4080 in raster but consumes 100+ watts more depending on the game. Even though it costs less people still buy 4080 cause of far better efficiency + the other stuff.
 
Competition is good for us consumers, it's good to have choices.

Some praise AMD but when Comet Lake was taking a beating from Zen 3, the 5950X was $800+ dollars at Microcenter and elsewhere. AMD wasn't exactly friendly to user's wallets when it was out in front. But then when Alder Lake came out and toppled the mighty 5950X, Zen3 prices declined dramatically. And then with Zen4 vs Raptor Lake, AMD did not charge $800 for the 7950x / 7950x3d.

Competition pushes Intel and AMD forward, and in the end, we the consumer, win. Soon, AMD will follow up with Zen 5, and then Intel will follow up with Arrow Lake.
 
Who would buy these for gaming especially when the ideal gaming cpu 7800X3D fell to $349 doesn't require a $150 plus cooling solution, as well as running air conditioning in long gaming sessions in the summer time and uses only 50 watts of power on average. Intel make it make sense!
The 7800X3D is also ideal for itx builds without throttling.
 
Competition is good for us consumers, it's good to have choices.

Some praise AMD but when Comet Lake was taking a beating from Zen 3, the 5950X was $800+ dollars at Microcenter and elsewhere. AMD wasn't exactly friendly to user's wallets when it was out in front. But then when Alder Lake came out and toppled the mighty 5950X, Zen3 prices declined dramatically. And then with Zen4 vs Raptor Lake, AMD did not charge $800 for the 7950x / 7950x3d.

Competition pushes Intel and AMD forward, and in the end, we the consumer, win. Soon, AMD will follow up with Zen 5, and then Intel will follow up with Arrow Lake.
You are conflating the impact of Alder Lake release with the normalisation of the computer industry after the 2020-2021 COVID-induced price craziness, when every man and his dog upgraded their PC's in the space of a year leading to huge shortages and associates price increases. Alder Lake desktop was released in Oct 21, 18 months into COVID when things were starting to normalise. Zen 3 desktop was released in Nov 20, only 7 months into Covid when PC demand was still through the roof.
 
I wonder how much more both of these worth for 95% of users over 5800X3D or 7800X3D in case of a new build after you fried ur 2600K
 
Oh goody let's pay a pretty penny - get it first - my 4K gaming is going to be so fast /s

Let's see how wunderbar it will be - 222 fps at 1080p x 1.02 - OMG OMG - 2.26 !!!! wow just wow !!!

I gonna win so many online games - as long as other players don't cheat and change their GPU settings to eke out another easy 100 fps

Really folks buy it for this as a bonus not the raison d'etre
 
If you're buying a 7950x3d solely for gaming then that is not the right buy, even if you have all the cash on the world, 7800x3d is a much better fit, but this cpu is meant to be if you want gaming performance that is nearly as good as the 7800x3d, while having the extra cores and performance for cpu heavy tasks that aren't gaming, compiling programs, cad, photoshop, video / image editing and so on
 
Who would buy these for gaming especially when the ideal gaming cpu 7800X3D fell to $349 doesn't require a $150 plus cooling solution, as well as running air conditioning in long gaming sessions in the summer time and uses only 50 watts of power on average. Intel make it make sense!
The 7800X3D is also ideal for itx builds without throttling.
My 12900k doesn't need a 150$ plus cooling solution. It's running on a small air cooler, im playing dirt 2 right now maxed out at 120 fps with 22 watts power draw. That's how much the 7800x 3d draws being IDLE. So yeah, right.
 
My 12900k doesn't need a 150$ plus cooling solution. It's running on a small air cooler, im playing dirt 2 right now maxed out at 120 fps with 22 watts power draw. That's how much the 7800x 3d draws being IDLE. So yeah, right.
I love power limit and energy efficiency. It's not that I don't trust your claims but techpowerup has a different objective data like 55 watts on idle for your cpu. Can you show us a picture or something backing these claims for everyone.

 
I love power limit and energy efficiency. It's not that I don't trust your claims but techpowerup has a different objective data like 55 watts on idle for your cpu. Can you show us a picture or something backing these claims for everyone.

That's system idle not just the CPU. Ill post a video playing dirt 2, no problem
 
I love power limit and energy efficiency. It's not that I don't trust your claims but techpowerup has a different objective data like 55 watts on idle for your cpu. Can you show us a picture or something backing these claims for everyone.

This is how much the CPU draw while browsing the web and streaming 2 videos while being on a discord call. 5 to 8 watts.No power limits
powerdraw.JPG.9ff165d6ab89932ee184b761a20d8343.jpg
 
less than the 7950X3D, which is available for around $599

I'm not seeing the 7950X3D going for $600. Amazon has it for $646 and NewEgg has it for a slightly higher price. 13900K/KF are selling below $600, $536 for the KF on Amazon. If the 14900 comes in at $600, then it's a win for Intel. However, having said that, if you're building a high-end system, I might suggest a 12900K/KF which will be priced $200 less and give you good performance outside of gaming. Take that $200 and put it into your GPU and I guarantee you will be happier, especially since you'll be able to upgrade to the 14900 down the road when the price drops a couple hundred bucks. If you're just going for a gaming build, as others have pointed out, the 7800X3D is probably the way to go though the 12900K does cost a little less and performs well in non-gaming workloads.
 
I'm not seeing the 7950X3D going for $600. Amazon has it for $646 and NewEgg has it for a slightly higher price. 13900K/KF are selling below $600, $536 for the KF on Amazon. If the 14900 comes in at $600, then it's a win for Intel. However, having said that, if you're building a high-end system, I might suggest a 12900K/KF which will be priced $200 less and give you good performance outside of gaming. Take that $200 and put it into your GPU and I guarantee you will be happier, especially since you'll be able to upgrade to the 14900 down the road when the price drops a couple hundred bucks. If you're just going for a gaming build, as others have pointed out, the 7800X3D is probably the way to go though the 12900K does cost a little less and performs well in non-gaming workloads.
FYI Microcenter is having a sale on Intel cpus.


Intel® Core™ i9-13900K
MSI Z790 MAG Tomahawk WiFi MB
32GB DDR5
3-in-1 Combo
SAVE $136
$799.99

Intel® Core™ i7-13700K
ASUS Z790-P Prime WiFi MB
32GB DDR5
3-in-1 Combo
SAVE $228
$499.99

Intel® Core™ i9-12900K
MSI Z690-A PRO WiFi DDR5 MB
32GB DDR5
3-in-1 Combo
SAVE $298
$399.99

That's $399 for the cpu motherboard and 32 gigs of ddr5 ram.
Finally.

update although the z790 i7 is probably more future proof.
 
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