There's something that I wanted to ask but I'm not sure it warrants an entire thread - particularly having this one dedicated to i9 KS's
I came across this article a couple of hours ago:
Intel Default Profile will lock PL2 to 188W Intel wants all LGA-1700 motherboards to support Default Profile, and there is even a deadline. The 14th Gen Core K-series of unlocked desktop CPUs has been on the market for a few months now, representing a higher clocked version of the Raptor Lake...
videocardz.com
Supposedly Intel wants to adopt a new "baseline profile" for the regular i9 K CPUs that's supposed to be 125/188 W with a 249 A ICCMax, however, upon some research it seems that this power profile is a new idea from Intel and it does not match
anything that is currently written in their latest revision of the processor spec datasheet available at:
WW14.3 Metadata Changes only This describes all publicly disclosed specifications including electrical characteristics, mechanical, and component functionality, a list of major features, a functional description, and an architectural overview.
www.intel.com
It seems to be closest to the 181 W profile intended for
S-Processor 6P+8E 125W, which correlates to the Core i5-13600K. This will obviously cause a performance regression on all SKUs, but I am especially concerned about the i9-13900KS and 14900KS SKUs as they have a different official power specification compared to the regular 13900K and 14900K processors. As you can see they are clearly denominated as
S-Processor 8P+16E 150W on the datasheet, and again - the information from the above post (which I have seen in other places) is a complete and total mismatch to both the -K and -KS specifications on Intel's own documentation.
Reducing a KS SKU to this baseline wattage would cause an even more acute performance regression and simultaneously eliminate any performance gap between a regular and special edition processor, if not make the KS's slower because their clock table is more aggressive and thus, more prone to power throttling (this is a behavior generally observed on the i9-14900K as is when compared to the 13900KS, with its slightly more aggressive boost targets). I understand "who buys a i9 KS to run at stock or follow Intel spec", but it's still not a change to be taken lightly, particularly this late in Raptor Lake's lifecycle.
Intel made a huge mess here and I'm having difficulty following. I've attempted to bring it up on the Intel discord but no one replied, and there was only one person who engaged in the conversation, summing up to "I should have just bought the 13900K back then" - quite disinterested, really.