Leaked Intel Core i9-14900KS spec sheet all but confirms 6.2GHz boost clock

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This new chip will be very fast, but at what cost to power and price?

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Several months after initial rumors revealed that the 14900KS might feature a 6.2GHz boost clock, a spec sheet leak from @momomo_us on X (Twitter) has given us a second confirmation that the 14900KS will most likely feature the blisteringly high CPU clock. The i9-14900KS is reportedly an upcoming CPU from Intel that will succeed the previous-gen i9-13900KS and be the first chip to break the stock-clocked 6GHz barrier.

The leak revealed detailed specifications of the i9-14900KS, from its frequencies, down to its temperature limits, cache capacities, and TDP. If this leak is indeed legit, Intel will yet again break a frequency record by having the first CPU ever to break the 6GHz barrier without overclocking. The i9-14900KS is the first chip to sport a turbo boost frequency beyond 6GHz, with the company's older i9-14900K flagship and previous-generation i9-13900KS featuring a turbo boost frequency of 6GHz flat. AMD is well behind in the frequency race, with its highest-clocking Zen 4 CPU hitting 5.7GHz.

Besides clock speed, the leaked spec sheet reveals that the i9-14900KS will sport the exact same specifications as its i9-14900K counterpart, including its "Tetracosa-core" 24-core configuration, 32MB of L2 cache, 36MB of L3 cache, and UHD 770 integrated graphics. This is not surprising, since previous 'KS' models have similarly stuck to the specs of their i9-14900K counterparts.

The 6.2GHz boost clock shows how successful Intel is at squeezing as much frequency out of its CPU architectures. As a reminder, Raptor Lake Refresh is technically a refresh of a refresh, with 13th Gen Raptor Lake being a refreshed version of 12th Gen Alder Lake. From Alder Lake's i9-12900KS to the i9-14900KS, Intel has managed to squeeze 700MHz out of its first hybrid CPU design, with slight tweaks to its P-core design (Raptor Cove) and optimizations to its Intel 7 process node.

However, if we've learned anything we know all of this extra frequency juice comes at the cost of power — and lots of it. Intel's 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs are among the most power-hungry CPUs to date in the hybrid-CPU era. In our testing, we found the i9-14900K can pull up to 50W more watts than the i9-13900K, and that chip already hits well over 200W under heavy workloads. In fact, previous reports have specified that the i9-14900KS could pull up to a whopping 410W under max load.

It's worth mentioning that these chips only pull these crazy high-power numbers with the default profiles in motherboard firmware. If you enforce Intel's specified power limits manually in BIOS, these chips will consume far less power (at the cost of multi-core CPU performance). Enforcing default power limits can not only save power and make the chips run more efficiently, but it can also improve stability for chips that have lost the silicon lottery.

Pricing information was not published in the leaked spec sheet, but previous reports indicate that the new 'KS' chip will share the same $699 MSRP as its predecessor. This means that the i9-14900KS won't have a price increase, but it will still be a very expensive chip regardless. By comparison, the outgoing i9-14900K costs 'just' $549.99 on Newegg at the time of writing. Spending an additional $150 for a measly 200Mhz is a lot for a little, especially when you could probably overclock a 14900K to 6.1GHz or 6.2GHz on your own.

Information pertaining to a release date was also not shown, but previous rumors speculate that the chip could arrive in less than a month. That sounds about right, because Intel is also busy preparing its 15th Gen Arrow Lake-S for launch later this year. Intel has to launch its 14900KS as soon as possible so its sales don't get cannibalized by its next-generation parts.

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rluker5
    It gets tiring to remind:
    1. Number of cores changed +
    2. Amount of cache per core changed +
    3. How the cores communicate with each other changed +
    4. Ring/LLC speed no longer limited by enabled e-core speed
    5. An across the board +500mhz clockspeed increase at the same node
    =/= a refresh if Zen is not on refresh #4
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    rluker5 said:
    It gets tiring to remind:
    1. Number of cores changed +
    2. Amount of cache per core changed +
    3. How the cores communicate with each other changed +
    4. Ring/LLC speed no longer limited by enabled e-core speed
    5. An across the board +500mhz clockspeed increase at the same node
    =/= a refresh if Zen is not on refresh #4
    IT GETS EVEN MORE TIRING TO REMIND
    same IPC as the 12000 series. set them all to 4ghz, and you get the same core performance within 1%
    the 12000 series to 13000 series to 14000 series are all the same chip, just refined process, and more cores.
    claiming this is anything but, is disingenuous to say the least. the difference in performance between these refreshes came from increased core count and increased clocks, not from improved design)

    -----

    Finally zen 1 -> zen 2 == 15% ipc increase
    zen 2 -> zen 3 == 30% ipc increase
    zen 3 -> zen 4 == 30% ipc increase
    zen 4 -> zen 5 == ??? leaks are claiming 30%-50% ipc increase

    thats not a refresh. the lone refresh in there was zen 2.5, when AMD released a small refresh between 2 and 3 (confusingly numbered the 3000 series, zen 3 was 5000)

    finally this new 14900ks is just piledriver 9000 series lunacy. they're pushing 400W through that thing to get those 6ghz clock speeds. it's just a factory overclocked 14900k
    Reply
  • rluker5
    ingtar33 said:
    IT GETS EVEN MORE TIRING TO REMIND
    same IPC as the 12000 series. set them all to 4ghz, and you get the same core performance within 1%
    the 12000 series to 13000 series to 14000 series are all the same chip, just refined process, and more cores.
    claiming this is anything but, is disingenuous to say the least. the difference in performance between these refreshes came from increased core count and increased clocks, not from improved design)

    -----

    Finally zen 1 -> zen 2 == 15% ipc increase
    zen 2 -> zen 3 == 30% ipc increase
    zen 3 -> zen 4 == 30% ipc increase
    zen 4 -> zen 5 == ??? leaks are claiming 30%-50% ipc increase

    thats not a refresh. the lone refresh in there was zen 2.5, when AMD released a small refresh between 2 and 3 (confusingly numbered the 3000 series, zen 3 was 5000)

    finally this new 14900ks is just piledriver 9000 series lunacy. they're pushing 400W through that thing to get those 6ghz clock speeds. it's just a factory overclocked 14900k
    I know you've heard things from AMD sales pitches, but here are the first search results I've found:
    from: https://www.techspot.com/review/2552-intel-core-i9-13900k/ and that is ignoring the architectural changes that made e-cores useable in games, and also ignored the addition of 8 more e-cores. If e-cores were enabled as default and as these CPUs are tested for reviews the difference would be a multiple of what you see here. These differences had to be ignored to isolate the architectural changes to a portion of the chip which ignored the larger architectural changes that happened elsewhere. I know, not that impressive, but you can say the same about Ryzen from: https://www.techspot.com/article/2143-ryzen-5000-ipc-performance/ And this included all architectural improvements, not just a part.
    They both had architectural changes so neither are refreshes. The 14th gen clearly is a refresh. I'm saying the 13th isn't. You can even look at die shots. Why does the 12th, 13th look different if they are the same? It isn't that hard to understand.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    i really am just sighing right now. read your own sources. the problem is you're being bamboozled by graphs designed to exaggerate differences visually...
    here i'll help you with the math.
    259/245 == 5%
    213/208 == 2%
    215/208 == 3%
    190/187 == 1.5%
    165/159 == 3%
    121/115 == 5%
    average IPC uplift (6 games) from 12000 to 13000? 3%

    you cannot seriously consider a 3% uplift in IPC to be anything more than a refresh.

    ------

    now then, though this is an 8 game average, here is the ryzen examples you gave.
    from Zen 2.5 to Zen 3 == 22%
    from zen 2 to zen 2.5 == 14% (and this was the refresh mind you, i'm pretty sure the difference wasn't this big)
    from zen 1 to zen 2 == 2% (and i know for a fact this ipc gain was significantly larger, so i don't know what games they were testing to get just a 2% uplift, must have been a title or two with almost no difference or a significant negative for some reason to get this result)

    so what point are you trying to make? you proved the nearly 0% uplift in ipc from 12000 to 13000, and proved the significantly larger jumps between zen architectures (which you were trying to claim were refreshes), there is something weird about the games they used for the zen comparison though, as those numbers don't look right. for example, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a 15% improvement from zen 2 to 2.5... just as i'm pretty sure the ipc uplift from 1 to 2 was much larger then 2%, like significantly larger. But those are just small details, and in the end they don't matter for the overarching argument.

    I am willing to bet if you hunt down 14000 locked to 5ghz for those same titles you'd see basically the same results as the 13000, with a result within the margin of error. I know this because the result of 3% ipc gain from 12000 to 13000 is basically the same number i saw for 12000 to 14000. it was under 5% for sure (I can't recall the exact number but it was definitely less then 5%)
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    ingtar33 said:
    finally this new 14900ks is just piledriver 9000 series lunacy. they're pushing 400W through that thing to get those 6ghz clock speeds. it's just a factory overclocked 14900k
    IT GETS EVEN MORE TIRING TO REMIND
    that 6.2Ghz is for one single core and they don't need 400W to get one single core to 6.2Ghz.
    The end user needs 400W, if not more, to get all 8 p-cores to 6Ghz+ but that's because it is physically possible to do, unlike ZEN where you just can't do that no matter how much power you put through them,mainly because they catch on fire waaaaay waaaay before reaching 400W.
    Reply
  • NinoPino
    TerryLaze said:
    IT GETS EVEN MORE TIRING TO REMIND
    that 6.2Ghz is for one single core and they don't need 400W to get one single core to 6.2Ghz.
    The end user needs 400W, if not more, to get all 8 p-cores to 6Ghz+ but that's because it is physically possible to do, unlike ZEN where you just can't do that no matter how much power you put through them,mainly because they catch on fire waaaaay waaaay before reaching 400W.
    I'm unable to remind nothing to nobody but... 6.2GHz is the main reason of the 400W, single core or not. The fact that Zen cannot reach such frequencies are a design choice as it is a design choice of Intel to go to 6Ghz.
    I cannot understand your point, are you asserting that Intel have a better CPU of AMD ? Or that 14900 is not so power hungry ? Or that Intel process node is better than TSMC ? (of course I disagree on all the points).
    I often wonder who are the typical buyers of 1x900KS versions, professionals ? gamers ? overclockers ? arctic people ?
    For every category there is a better choice. 😀
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    if intel's history is to go by...you'll rarely ever see these for mroe than 5seconds & only if you delid your cpu.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    ingtar33 said:
    i really am just sighing right now. read your own sources. the problem is you're being bamboozled by graphs designed to exaggerate differences visually...
    here i'll help you with the math.
    259/245 == 5%
    213/208 == 2%
    215/208 == 3%
    190/187 == 1.5%
    165/159 == 3%
    121/115 == 5%
    average IPC uplift (6 games) from 12000 to 13000? 3%

    you cannot seriously consider a 3% uplift in IPC to be anything more than a refresh.

    ------

    now then, though this is an 8 game average, here is the ryzen examples you gave.
    from Zen 2.5 to Zen 3 == 22%
    from zen 2 to zen 2.5 == 14% (and this was the refresh mind you, i'm pretty sure the difference wasn't this big)
    from zen 1 to zen 2 == 2% (and i know for a fact this ipc gain was significantly larger, so i don't know what games they were testing to get just a 2% uplift, must have been a title or two with almost no difference or a significant negative for some reason to get this result)

    so what point are you trying to make? you proved the nearly 0% uplift in ipc from 12000 to 13000, and proved the significantly larger jumps between zen architectures (which you were trying to claim were refreshes), there is something weird about the games they used for the zen comparison though, as those numbers don't look right. for example, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a 15% improvement from zen 2 to 2.5... just as i'm pretty sure the ipc uplift from 1 to 2 was much larger then 2%, like significantly larger. But those are just small details, and in the end they don't matter for the overarching argument.

    I am willing to bet if you hunt down 14000 locked to 5ghz for those same titles you'd see basically the same results as the 13000, with a result within the margin of error. I know this because the result of 3% ipc gain from 12000 to 13000 is basically the same number i saw for 12000 to 14000. it was under 5% for sure (I can't recall the exact number but it was definitely less then 5%)
    First of all not all of the architectural changes were accounted for in the comparison of 12th to 13th gen, the p-cores were isolated. If the e-cores were run the ring would have been 1ghz slower and ram latency about 5ns higher at the same clocks for Alder with e-cores enabled, and the time to communicate to fewer e-cores was much higher in Alder. And you don't get a universal 10% clockspeed increase with just a refresh. You get chips overlapping, like my ordinary 13900kf being able to run stock 14900k speeds if I OC it. There are no Alder chips that can approach their Raptor counterparts without LN2.

    And if physical changes to the number of cores, cache and communication lines don't count? If only IPC counts then Meteor Lake is also a refresh of Raptor Lake, Zen 4 is also a refresh of Alder Lake and Zen 3 is a refresh of a refresh of Skylake.
    Why aren't you claiming that AMD ripped off the Skylake arch with Zen 3? Probably because there are differences other than IPC.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    NinoPino said:
    I'm unable to remind nothing to nobody but... 6.2GHz is the main reason of the 400W, single core or not. The fact that Zen cannot reach such frequencies are a design choice as it is a design choice of Intel to go to 6Ghz.
    I cannot understand your point, are you asserting that Intel have a better CPU of AMD ? Or that 14900 is not so power hungry ? Or that Intel process node is better than TSMC ? (of course I disagree on all the points).
    I often wonder who are the typical buyers of 1x900KS versions, professionals ? gamers ? overclockers ? arctic people ?
    For every category there is a better choice. 😀
    13900ks uses 253W just like the 13900k, just like the 14900k, and the 14900ks will also be 253W.
    Single core 6.2Ghz will be much much much lower than 253W
    The highest you can make the 14900k go in single core is 54W (and it also shows that the 14900k already uses 400W+ if you let it) and even if the KS is going to be higher it will only be by a little bit, it's not going to go from 54W to 400W ........
    Reply
  • CmdrShepard
    Wake me up when Intel changes focus to power efficiency because this is getting ridiculous.

    I suspect I'll need cryo sleep until then.
    Reply