Intel Core i7-14700K

Core i7-14700K specifications

What these numbers mean for the Core i7-14700K

On our index the Core i7-14700K scores 92.0, which places it 11th of the 83 processors we track and puts it faster than roughly 88% of them.

The nearest part above the Core i7-14700K is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D at 93.0, just 1.1% faster, and a gap of 1.1% is not visible while you are playing, so choosing between them is a price question rather than a performance one.

The Core i7-14700K is a far stronger multithread chip than its gaming rank suggests: 167.0 for throughput against 92.0 for games, a gap of 82% that is the whole reason to buy a Core i7-14700K if you render, compile, encode or stream alongside playing. For gaming alone, a cheaper chip with a gaming index near 92.0 does the same job.

With 20 cores and 28 threads the Core i7-14700K has far more parallel capacity than any game will use. That capacity is worth paying for if you also render or stream on the processor and worth nothing if you only play, which is the whole case for reading its 167.0 multithread score separately from its gaming score.

Released in 2023, the Core i7-14700K is still capable, but its socket is near the end of its life, so an upgrade from here means a new board and probably new memory rather than a drop in replacement.

Core i7-14700K frame rate at each resolution

The Core i7-14700K paired with the GeForce RTX 4090 on the High preset with 16 GB of system memory. The processor is the limit at all three resolutions here, so the Core i7-14700K only drops 50% from 157 fps to 78 fps across them and keeps capacity it is never asked for.

How the Core i7-14700K compares

6 processors sit within 30% of the Core i7-14700K on our gaming index, running from the Ryzen 7 9850X3D at +12% to the Core i9-14900K at +3%, a window narrow enough that price, memory and power decide it rather than raw speed.

What to pair with the Core i7-14700K, and when to upgrade

Best GPU for the Core i7-14700K

Check the Core i7-14700K against your own parts