The new special black box is coming, and the specifications have been improved very little
In 2022, Intel launched the i5-12490F processor exclusively for the Chinese mainland market for the first time, and the stronger performance and better cost performance made many players give up the 12400F of the same generation and chose the exclusive "black box" when installing the machine. Last year, in addition to continuing to bring the i5-13490F to the i5 product line, Intel also brought the i7-13790F special processor with a higher positioning, which also brought excellent cost performance for mid-to-high-end players. It can be said that the black box processor exclusively for Chinese mainland, with excellent performance and good cost performance, has become an excellent choice that cannot be ignored by domestic DIY players when installing their machines.
With Intel having previously released a new 14th generation Core desktop processor, this generation of exclusive models for Chinese mainland has also been released, still launching i5 and i7 products. The all-new i7-14790F does not follow the footsteps of the 14th-generation i7-14700K KF F to increase the number of small cores, the number of cores is still the same as that of the 13790F, with 16 cores and 24 threads design, but the maximum turbo frequency has been increased to 54GHz, the cache has also been increased to 36MB, which is also in line with everyone's impression of the 14th generation of "squeezing toothpaste".
The new i5-14490F processor has a limited range of improvements, maintaining 10 cores and 16 threads while only increasing the maximum frequency to 49GHz, and at the same time, the base frequency has also been increased, so it can be said that the toothpaste is a little squeezed, which also makes many people wonder if this processor can bring visible improvements. At the same time, the two processors are still in an LGA 1700 standalone package, which is compatible with Intel 700 600 series motherboards.
In terms of test platform, the test platform used the STRIX Z790-F Gaming WiFi II motherboard from ROG, and the CPU cooler was ROG Ryujin II 360 all-in-one liquid cooler. The graphics card is Colorful iGame RTX 4080 Ultra W OC; The memory adopts Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 4800 MT S memory; The hard drive is powered by Crucial T700 Pro PCIe 50 SSD; Powered by a ROG Strix 1000W Aura Edition Gold power supply. The operating system uses Windows 11 Pro X64 (version 23H2), and all hardware drivers use the manufacturer's official public drivers.
Benchmark performance test performance can be improved with limited limit
First of all, let's take a look at the theoretical performance of the i7-14790F and i5-14490F processors through the commonly used benchmark software. (*The following test results only represent the results of the current hardware configuration and software version in the PCHOME lab environment).
In CPU-Z (version v2.)08) In the test, the i7-14790F scored 870 for single core and 12558 for multi-core, which is quite limited compared to i7-13790F, and the single-thread and multi-thread scores are improved between 3% and 4%, and the overall performance is basically the same as that of the previous generation i7-13700K. The i5-14490F ran a single-core score of 772 and a multi-core score of 7023, which is only nearly 2% higher than the single-thread score of the previous generation i5-13490F, and the multi-thread score is only about 3% higher.
Super PI is a software used to calculate the number of positions after pi, and the output time is often used to evaluate the computing performance of the processor. In this test, we chose to calculate the 1 million digits (1m) after the decimal point of pi for the test, and the completion time of the i7-14790f was 6136 seconds, 0 seconds faster than the i7-13790F239 seconds, there is still a certain improvement. However, the i5-14490F does not perform as well as the i5-13490F, which shows that this processor can be said to have a comparable performance to the previous generation in some applications.
Cinebench is the industry's most common processor benchmarking software, and we have tested it with different versions. In the Cinebench R23 version, the test score of the i7-14790F is 2081pts for single-core and 30718pts for multi-core, which is about 5% higher than that of i7-13790f, and the single-core score is only about 1The increase of 4% is also quite limited. The test score of the i5-14490F is 1893pts for single-core and 17021pts for multi-core, which is an increase of 24% and 4%.
In the Cinebench R20 version of the test, the i7-14790F has a single-core score of 797pts, which is only a slight improvement over the i7-13790f, and the multi-core score of 11743pts is about 6% higher than that of the i7-13790f. The test score of the i5-14490F is 715pts for single-core and 6568pts for multi-core, which is basically the same as that of the i5-13490F single-core, and the multi-core score is about 34%。
In the older version of Cinebench R15, the i7-14790F has a single-core score of 301 and a multi-core score of 4553, both of which are only marginally improved compared to the i7-13790F. The test score of the i5-14490F is 268pts for single-core and 2531pts for multi-core, which is basically the same as that of the i5-13490f single-core, and the multi-core score is about 54%。
In the 3DMark CPU Profile test, which is closer to the actual use, the single-thread performance of the two processors is basically the same as that of the previous generation, and the maximum thread performance has been improved to a certain extent, of which the I7-14790F has been improved by 3Around 7%, while the i5-14490F boost is around 5%, and the lift is also limited.
Overall, whether it is the high-end i7-14790F or the mainstream-level i5-14490F, in the absence of significant improvement in specifications, the improvement of both single-core performance and multi-core performance in benchmarks is quite limited, and this performance is also in line with expectations.
Comprehensive performance test performance in line with positioning
Next, let's take a look at the comprehensive performance of the i7-14790F and i5-14490F1) The i7-14790F's hardware evaluation score is more than 2.76 million, of which the processor's individual score is as high as 1.08 million, which has flagship-level performance.
The i5-14490F has a hardware evaluation score of more than 2.35 million, of which the single score of the i5-14490F processor is 710,000 points, an increase of about 30,000 points compared with the previous generation. Combined with the results of the two processors, there are results that are consistent with their positioning.
Next, we used 3DMark for testing, focusing on the physical performance of CPUs in benchmarks such as 3DMark Time Spy Fire Strike. The i7-14790F has a CPU score of up to 16608 in the Time Spy scenario and 9773 in the Time Spy Extreme scenario. In the three scenarios of Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme Fire Strike Ultra, the physical score of the i7-14790F is 45957 44679 44859, respectively, and the overall performance is slightly inferior to the previous generation i7-13700K.
The i5-14490F scored 13634 5907 in the Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme scenarios, respectively. In the three scenarios of Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme Fire Strike Ultra, the physical score of the i5-14490F is 29999 30222 29977, respectively, which is quite good among mainstream processors.
Crossmark (v1.)0.1.88) In the productivity test, the overall score of the i7-14790F test platform is 2432 points, and it performs well in the tests of productivity, creativity, and responsiveness, compared to the 13th generation Core i7-13700K, the performance is still quite good, reaching the flagship level. The i5-14490F test platform scored 2053 points, which is also quite good.
In the UL Procyon benchmark, we tested three scenarios: office productivity, editing, and editing. Both processors and platforms have achieved good results. Specifically, the i7-14790F scored 8670 points in the Office Suite-based office productivity scenario, 9914 points in the Adobe Lightroom-based and Adobe Photoshop-based editing scene, and 9121 points in the Adobe Premier-based editing scene.
The i5-14490F, on the other hand, scored 7467 points in the Office Suite-based office productivity scenario, 8638 points in the Adobe Lightroom-based and Adobe Photoshop-based editing scene, and 8335 points in the Adobe Premier-based editing scenario.
Finally, in the PCMARK 10 Extend test for more workloads in PCMARK 10, the i7-14790F scored a whopping 14,517 points, including 12,790 points for productivity, 17,912 points for digital content creation, and 43,539 points for gaming performance.
The i5-14490F scored 12,168 points in the PCMARK 10 Extend test, including 11,828 points for productivity, 14,965 points for digital content creation, and 30,555 points for gaming performance.
Game performance test Mainstream masterpieces can be played without pressure
Next, let's take a look at the strength of the i7-14790F and i5-14490F through the game test. We tested six iconic games – Gears of War 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 5, Forspoken, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1:22 – at FHD 2K 4K at the highest quality settings (with ray tracing enabled, DLSS performance files enabled, and frame generation enabled for supported games).
First of all, let's take a look at the game performance of i7-14790F, with RTX 4080, it can be said that it can kill all kinds of 3A masterpieces, even for the configuration requirements of "Cyberpunk 2077" 4K resolution can also reach a playable frame rate, the performance is still quite strong. However, in the comparison of the 1080p and 2K resolutions of the two games "Gears of War 5" and "Shadow of the Tomb Raider", it can be seen that the i7-14790F with RTX 4080 will still have processor bottlenecks in some environments.
The performance of the i5-14490F is also quite good, but compared with the results of the i7-14790F, it can be seen that this processor still drags down the RTX 4080 to a certain extent, but it is more than enough to cope with the 2K image quality masterpieces, and the overall frame rate has reached a pretty good level, and it also has a good performance among mainstream processors.
Power consumption has improved after the price reduction or more preferred
Finally, let's take a look at the power consumption of the i7-14790F and i5-14490F. The default TDP of the i7-14790F is 65W, and the official maximum turbo power consumption is 249W. The default TDP of the i5-14490F is 65W, and the official maximum turbo power consumption is 148W. We still use the AIDA 64 (stress FPU) for a 15-minute full-load test to see how the power consumption of the two processors performs.
First of all, let's look at i7-14790F, after 15 minutes of copying test, the average temperature of the CPU package at this time is 90°C, the maximum temperature of a single core is 100°C, at this time, the CPU power consumption can reach up to 277 watts, and the average power consumption is 246 watts, which is still a certain improvement compared to i7-13790F, and at the same time, it still maintains the performance core all-core 51GHz, energy efficiency nuclear full core 4The performance of 1GHz is also quite outstanding.
The i5-14490F after 15 minutes of copying test, at this time the average temperature of the CPU package is 72°C, the maximum temperature of a single core is 77°C, at this time the CPU power consumption can reach up to 159 watts, the average power consumption is 155 watts, the power consumption performance has been improved compared with the previous generation, and the heat dissipation has room for further shrinkage. At the same time, in terms of frequency, the i5-14490F is also maintained at the performance core 4 throughout the whole process4GHz, energy efficiency core 3The performance of 7GHz is also quite stable under strong heat dissipation.
On the whole, the two special black box processors of the 14th generation Core do have a small improvement compared to the two of the previous generation, and they perform well in terms of performance and power consumption. However, in combination with the current market, whether it is compared with the 13th generation processor that has been reduced in price or the 14th generation non-special processor, the cost performance of the two products is really not high. But this does not mean that these two processors are not worth buying, after all, these two processors do not support overclocking, and it is enough to use with the B760 motherboard with excellent power supply, and the i5-14490F is also a pretty good choice for users who assemble ITX hosts.