Intel Core i5 14600K & Intel Core i9 14900K Linux Benchmarks

Ultimately it comes down to how you'll be engaging your system with what Linux workloads for whether the AMD Ryzen 7000 series or intel Core 14th Gen CPUs make more sense.

Across 173 different CPU/system benchmarks carried out, the Intel Core i9 14900K was in first place 60 times while the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X racked up 72 first place finishes and the 3D V-Cache enabled Ryzen 9 7950X3D racked up another 24 wins.

Or to better show the positioning, here is the geometric mean for all the benchmarks where all the tested CPUs successfully completed the benchmarks. Overall the Core i9 14900K was about 5% faster than the Core i9 13900K while the Core i5 14600K was about 3% faster than the Core i5 13600K. The Core i9 14900K performance overall was midway between the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X/7950X3D. The Core i5 14600K meanwhile matched the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, which is quite respectable and both CPUs currently retail in the $340~350 USD space.

Lastly is a look at the CPU power consumption across the entire span of benchmarks conducted with the Core i9 14900K by far consuming the most power of the CPUs tested with a 172 Watt average and a recorded peak of 349 Watts, compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X at 146 Watts with a 235 Watt peak.

Ultimately it comes down to what workload(s) are most important to you for how well the Intel Core 14th Gen CPUs compete or outperform the AMD Ryzen 7000 series. The Core i9 14900K and Core i5 14600K were great for gaming/graphics, web browsers, if running many single-threaded Python or PHP scripts, creator software like GIMP and Darktable, etc. Or for SOHO/development small servers like for PostgreSQL, Memcached, and Node.js the Intel 14th Gen CPUs worked out well as good options. When it comes to more of the HPC-type workloads and other heavily multi-threaded tasks the positioning of Raptor Lake Refresh against Zen 4 varied based on particulars of the software under test. Those wishing to see the nearly 200 benchmarks in full along with their associated CPU power consumption and performance-per-Watt/dollar pricing can do so via this result file. Thanks to Intel and AMD for providing the processors used for this review.