Overview
So how do I sum this up? It’s not good, but it’s not bad, it’s just somewhere in between, and that’s probably the fairest way to put it across. Whether you’re looking at the i5, the i7 or the i9, you’re going to be pleased no matter what, and I honestly believe Intel are treating the 14th gen as a headline-grabbing exercise. As I said earlier, they haven’t shouted from the roof tops about this launch as there really isn’t anything to shout about, though in terms of gaming, you could argue they are king, even though they match with AMD’s 7950X3D because the 1% lows are slightly better, and the overall cost per frame is lower on the 14900K so either AMD need to sit with that being the fact, or they need to do some sizable price cuts to bring things a little more in line.
So the big question of should you buy a 14th-generation CPU, no matter which model you’re looking at? I’d say that if you’re already on 13th gen or are on AMD’s latest platform, then no, there really isn’t enough to warrant the change, unless you’re able to sell your current hardware for a good price and get a pretty special cost to change. That aside, of course, buying the latest of anything will set you back a premium, but compared to Ryzen’s 5000 series, or Intel 12th gen or below, you’re going to see a large increase in performance, but unless you are on 12th gen Intel, you are going to have to buy new memory, and a new motherboard, depending on the chipset, and then you’re stepping into a territory that just keeps adding on the dollars at every single turn.
With that in mind, I think it’s only fair that Intel be given our innovation award, because while the performance wasn’t ground-breaking, it was never meant to be, but they’ve still managed to create a bit of a stopgap until the new generation comes along, and with it comes some, though not much, innovation.
