What's New with Raptor Lake Refresh

At the heart of the 14th Gen Core processors being launched this week, is the new "Raptor Lake Refresh" monolithic processor silicon. This is physically the same silicon as the current "Raptor Lake" silicon powering the 13th Gen Core series. The new 14th Gen Core series is built on a generational increase in CPU core clock speeds for both the P-cores and E-cores, the introduction of the new Intel Application Optimization technology that we'll talk a bit more about later; and bolstering the Core i7 SKUs with four additional E-cores, to improve its multi-threaded performance against segment rivals.


The i9-14900K/KF in particular, features the Thermal Velocity Boost feature, which rewards good CPU cooling with the highest boost frequencies of 6.00 GHz. In addition to these CPU clock speed bumps, Intel says that it has tweaked the memory controllers to support even higher DDR5 memory speeds, particularly when using 12 GB and 24 GB DIMMs. Although the company did not introduce a new chipset with these processors, nearly every motherboard vendor for the LGA1700 platform has introduced new motherboard models based on the 700-series chipset, which come with out of the box support for these processors, and a few new platform features such as Wi-Fi 7. All existing 700-series and 600-series chipset motherboards support these processors, some require UEFI firmware updates provided by motherboard vendors.


"Intel Application Optimization" or just "APO" is an extension of Intel's Dynamic Tuning Technology (DTT) that's game-specific. The feature is available on select 14th Gen Core processor models, such as the i9-14900K/KF, and provides a means for Dynamic Tuning Technology to improve workload allocation to the various hardware resources, such as the P-cores, and back them with the highest possible frequencies. Intel claims that the feature can result in frame-rate improvements that can be as high as 13% in "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege," or even up to 16% in "Metro Exodus." Intel application Optimization works by optimizing the machine's thread scheduling and manages application resource allocation in real-time. APO is supported in just two games at this time. Going forward, Intel promises to test a lot of games and add APO profiles where gains can be found. We asked Intel whether profiles can be created or customized by the user, and whether Linux is supported. The answer was "not at this time" to both questions.


With the latest version of Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), Intel is introducing an exclusive feature for 14th Gen Unlocked K processors, called AI Assist. At launch, this feature is exclusive to the i9-14900K/KF, but Intel is working to extend it to other 14th Gen Core processor models. Adding support for each new processor model entails rigorous testing and validation, which is why the feature isn't globally available for all 12th-thru-14th Gen processors. AI assist is an AI-based automated performance tuning feature that uses a pre-trained AI DNN to understand your machine, and figure out the best possible settings.

Raptor Lake Architecture

The "Raptor Lake" microarchitecture, as we mentioned, is the swansong of monolithic silicon client processors for Intel. Future generations will implement the IDM 2.0 product design, and will be multi-chip modules with chiplets built across various foundry nodes. The "Raptor Lake" silicon is fabricated on the same Intel 7 (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) foundry node as the previous-gen "Alder Lake," although Intel claims to have squeezed out a handful of improvements, such as better electron channel mobility, which can let both the P-cores and E-cores gain increases in clock speeds by as much as 600 MHz over the previous-generation, with minimally higher power. The transistor-density is unchanged, since it's the same the node. The "Raptor Lake" die measures 23.8 mm x 11.8 mm (257 mm² die-area).


The channel mobility improvements on the Intel 7 node in particular lets the chip designers raise the V/F curve, with over 50 mV reduction in iso-frequency (voltage needed for frequency); over 200 MHz iso-voltage (frequency increase at a given voltage); which enables an up to 600 MHz increase in Turbo Boost frequencies, with the increase of maximum turbo power (MTP) to as high as 253 W for the Core i9-14900K and i7-14700K; and as high as 181 W for the Core i5-14600K.

The "Raptor Cove" performance cores (P-cores) come with increased IPC over the 12th Gen, and while the company didn't specify the IPC gain over the previous-generation "Golden Cove" P-core, it mentions an over 15% single-threaded performance uplift. The ISA of the "Raptor Cove" core is identical to that of "Golden Cove," but the company has enhanced the hardware prefetcher dealing with the dedicated L2 cache. Helping the P-core performance uplift are the node improvements that help it sustain higher frequencies, and larger dedicated L2 cache—now 2 MB compared to 1.25 MB for "Golden Cove." The i9-14900K and i7-14700K get eight "Raptor Cove" P-cores, which come with HyperThreading enabled, so 16 threads from the P-cores. The Core i5-14600K gets six of these P-cores, so 12 threads from here.


The "Gracemont" E-cores are architecturally unchanged from "Alder Lake," but are tuned with higher frequencies, and the most important hardware-level change is the L2 cache. Groups of four E-cores are organized as E-core clusters, which share an L2 cache among the cores. Intel doubled this cache size from 2 MB on "Alder Lake" to 4 MB. Much like the P-cores, Intel has updated the L2 cache prefetcher algorithm for E-core clusters. The "Raptor Lake" silicon physically features four E-core clusters, so 16 E-cores in total. The Core i7-14700K is carved out by disabling one of these clusters, giving you 12 E-cores; while the i5-14600K is designed by disabling two E-core clusters, as well as two P-cores, for its 6P+8E configuration.


Intel made several other updates to the cache and memory sub-system from Alder Lake, besides the enlarged L2 caches mentioned above. The shared L3 cache is now as large as 36 MB of the Core i9 SKUs, 33 MB for the Core i7 SKUs, and 24 MB for the Core i5 K/KF SKUs. The Ring Bus interconnect continues to be the town-square for this silicon, and Intel has increased its frequency by 900 MHz, now at up to 5.00 GHz (it ran at up to 4.10 GHz on the i9-12900K). The new Dynamic INI (inclusive/non-inclusive) architecture lets components reserve portions of the L3 cache to themselves to minimize cache misses or DRAM roundtrips if the cache is saturated. The processor supports dual-channel DDR5 and DDR4 memory types (2x 64-bit channels in case of DDR4, 4x 32-bit sub-channels in case of DDR5). The chip supports DDR5-5600 natively (JEDEC spec), while the native DDR4 frequency is unchanged at DDR4-3200.


While it didn't put out detailed architectural block-diagrams of its CPU cores like it did the last time, Intel was kind enough to give us a breakdown of how it achieved its claimed 15% single-threaded performance uplift, and >40% multi-threaded uplift. Generational increases to frequency, cache size and prefetcher improvements, and and memory frequency uplifts, add to these. Multi-threaded performance uplift rides on the back of these; plus the doubling in E-core count. Contributing to not just multi-threaded performance, but also consistency in multi-threaded performance across applications, are a series of updates to Intel Thread Director, the hardware-level middleware that makes Intel's Hybrid architecture work with software, by directing the right kind of workload to the right kind of CPU cores. It collaborates with OS scheduler improvements of Windows 11 22H2, particularly with smarter QoS (performance outlay) for background tasks.

Intel Z790 Chipset

Intel did not introduce any new chipset with the 14th Gen Core family, these processors are supported across 600-series and 700-series chipset motherboards, which may require a UEFI firmware update. Nearly all motherboard vendors have new motherboard models with out of the box support for the new chips, and it stands to reason that the latest batches of their older motherboard models will include this support.

Alongside the six 13th Gen K-series processors SKUs, Intel is debuting the Z790 chipset. Motherboards based on this are guaranteed to come with out-of-the-box support for 13th Gen processors, even though 600-series chipset motherboards support them via a BIOS update, and many premium models feature USB BIOS Flashback. The Z790 sees a rebalancing of the downstream PCIe connectivity in favor of more downstream Gen 4 PCIe lanes, compared to the previous-gen Z690. You will find Z790 motherboards with DDR5 memory support, as well as those with DDR4 support—Intel hasn't restricted motherboard vendors from doing so.