Intel Core i7-14700K

The Core i7-14700K is the best value of Intel's refreshed "Raptor Lake" CPUs, bringing marked improvements at no extra cost. It's an attractive upgrade for older LGA 1700 systems.

Intel’s Core i9-14900K still offers some of the best performance around — albeit at a similarly beastly power draw — but offers negligible performance improvement over its direct predecessor, the 13900K. New support for Wi-Fi 7, Thunderbolt 5, and performance-boosting AI features are a nice touch, though.

Gaming on the Core i7-14700K works extremely well and is pretty much indistinguishable from the Core i9-14900K when not looking at FPS counters. We measured only a tiny 3% difference, 1% at 4K. What makes the 14700K a great choice for gaming is that it has the most P-Cores possible, eight, just like the 14900K. Compared to AMD's offerings, the 14700K is able to beat every single Ryzen processor out there, with the exception of the X3D models.

The Intel Core i7-14700K is possibly the only great processor from the Raptor Lake Refresh launch lineup, thanks to a few upgrades that lift it up to i9-13900K levels of performance. It's still only marginally better than its predecessor though, which really highlights how good the 13700K is.

The Intel Core i7-14700K has some improvements over last generation, including higher boost clocks and four more E-cores. Otherwise, it's just more of the same.

So overall, I would consider the Intel Core i7-14700K to be a strong contender in the $400-$420 US segment if you are looking at its great multi-threaded and the gaming performance. The Intel Core i9-14900K puts up a good fight against the 7950X3D and beats the 7950X across multiple workloads but it is a very hot and power-hungry chip to tame.

The Intel Core i7-14700K offers excellent performance for gaming and intensive tasks, but it's a modest upgrade over the previous generation, making it less essential for those already using last year's model. If you can find a good deal on the 13700K, it's a viable option for gamers, as the differences between the two are minimal.

Intel's Core i7-14700K CPU is certainly the winner this generation, getting a rather large overhaul and even better, a price drop.