Intel's Upcoming Core i7-14700KF Nearly Hits 6 GHz in New Benchmark

Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake Refresh Core i7-14700KF CPU has been spotted on Geekbench by @BenchLeaks on X (Twitter), hitting clock speeds of nearly 6 GHz. The chip's performance in Geekbench is significantly faster than that of its predecessor, with a score roughly the same as Intel's flagship Core i9-13900KS.

In the single- and multi-core benchmarks of Geekbench 6, the Core i7-14700KF scored 3092 points and 21713 points, respectively, making it 9% quicker than the Core i7-13700K in the single-core benchmark and 18% quicker in the multi-core benchmark. The Core i7-14700K's score in the multi-core test is close to that of the Core i9-13900KS, with just a 2.4% performance margin between the two. But the Core i9-13900KS still has the upper hand in the single-core test, where it's 9% faster (likely due to the memory differences between i7 and i9 chips).

The highlight is the Core i7-14700K's clock speed, which reportedly reached a maximum frequency of 5.985 GHz during the test. The extremely high clock speed matches that of the Core i9-13900KS, which is the only Intel CPU to date that packs a turbo frequency of 6 GHz without the aid of overclocking.

The fact that we're seeing nearly 6 GHz on the Core i7-14700K/KF suggests that Intel had more headroom in its Raptor Lake Refresh than originally expected. Previous reports estimated the minor architectural refresh would peak at 6 GHz at most — including the Core i9-14900K, meaning the Core i7-14700K/KF was expected to clock a lot lower to prevent internal competition between the two chips.

The Core i7-14700K's reported clock speed suggests we could see speeds well above 6 GHz on the Core i9-14900K/KF/KS. Even the Core i5-14600K might be able to achieve 6 GHz with overclocking. MSI was recently spotted making 6.3GHz overclocking profiles in its motherboard BIOS for the Raptor Lake Refresh, providing even more evidence that we can expect the chips to break the 6 GHz barrier.

Having additional frequency headroom would be very useful for Intel's upcoming 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh parts, which are reportedly getting a price hike over Raptor Lake. Intel's new parts will need to be noticeably quicker if it wants its 14th-gen chips to entice buyers.