Will Raptor Lake Refresh be a winner for Intel? New leaks show a robust mid-range CPU

The season of leaks is getting into full swing for Intel’s next-generation desktop processors, as another benchmark has been released for a mid-range Raptor Lake Refresh CPU.

VideoCardz I noticed a tweet from Harukaze5719 highlighting a Geekbench result (originally discovered by Benchleaks) for the Core i5-14600KF. (The K indicates an unlocked CPU that can be overclocked, and the F indicates a chip with no integrated graphics – but that makes no difference to the benchmark results here).

The 14600KF scored 2,794 points for single-core performance and 17,190 for multi-core performance, which is 5% to 17% faster than its predecessor, Intel’s 13600K.

This was in a testbed with an Asus Z790 motherboard plus 32GB of DDR5-6000 system RAM. The benchmark also shows the 14600KF’s boost speed to be 5.3GHz.

Analysis: A positive sign for Raptor Lake Refresh

This speed increase confirms previous rumors that the 14600K would be clocked at 5.3GHz, which is a 200MHz increase over the 13600K. In theory, the entire Raptor Lake Refresh range will be boosted by 200MHz in clock speeds this way, with perhaps one or two exceptions (some may only get a 100MHz boost), again if the screw is right.

As for the Geekbench result itself, given that the 14600K changes nothing over the 13600K except a slightly faster boost, a 17% increase in multi-core performance seems surprisingly compelling (with all the usual seasoning and leak skepticism). .

Indeed, when you consider that the 14th generation chips are just a simple upgrade of Intel’s current processors, the strength of this result perhaps suggests that something else is going on under the hood to boost performance. While, of course, we shouldn’t get too carried away with a single benchmark result (especially a leaked one), this bodes well for the Raptor Lake Refresh securing some high rankings in our roundup of the best processors.

This is certainly a much more positive leak than the benchmarks released yesterday, which indeed looked quite shaky, but there were good reasons for it.

The projected launch date for Raptor Lake Refresh is October 2023, likely later in the month than before. The chips present an opportunity for Intel to reclaim some desktop CPU territory, because AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors have been quite dominating the roost lately (and Ryzen 5000 models, too).