At CES 2024, Intel has released all the products of the desktop Core 14th generation processors, and the SKUs are everything we expected, starting with the i5 i9. Among them, there are two non-standard models specially created for the Chinese market - i7-14790F & i5-14490F, which we also call the China Special Edition.
The China Special Edition is not worth buying
It's not the first time that Intel has released a special version for China, when the 12th generation Core was released, among them, the i5-12490F left a deep market imprint, and it is with the same level of 12400 higher three slow, main frequency and turbo frequency capabilities, the core graphics (F series) that are deliberately omitted, catering to the preferences of Chinese gamers. Especially since then, Intel has adopted black packaging, which is different from the blue packaging that is sold globally, which has also brought a black market to find.
Some people say that the stepping is used as the basis for judging whether it is a native core chip and a castrated core chip, the reason is that the 12490f uses the same stepping as the 12600, which is a castrated version of the 16 cores; What's more, it is publicly stated that the "China Special Edition" is a reverse defective product. Taking the opportunity of this in-depth evaluation of i7-14790f & i5-14490f, I also want to give you a good interpretation of the truth behind the "step theory" and "defective product theory".
At the time of the release of i5-12490f, Intel's official website did not announce the stepping parameters, of course, we can check this parameter in CPU-Z, and the stepping is not a different core as some people claim, in fact, it is just an upgraded version of Power-ON correction, the general engineering sample is AX (a number at the beginning of A), and the step size cannot judge whether the CPU is excellent or not, but an indicator of many bugs. On Intel's official website, we can see that the i7-14790F and i7-14700F use the same B0 step; The i5-14490F and i5-14400F use the same C0 step, so it is obviously false to judge that it is a product with different cores by stepping in.
In addition, the "China Special Edition" is a reverse defective product, which is even more nonsense. In fact, the wafers are cut and packaged into chips, and the chips are still white-label CPUs (without distinguishing whether it is i5, i7 or other grades), and the defects on each die are measured and finally sorted into SKUs. So i9-14900ks is a high-frequency special version of i9-14900k, that's right, fewer defects make the chip have a better physique, and the sorting process of the test will indeed distinguish which level the chip is, it is possible that i5, i7 is the same size of die. However, it is absolutely misleading to say that the defects on the wafer are defective, and the packaging and testing process of the chip is extremely strict, and the core or cache in the corresponding position will be closed when a problem is found. Therefore, the Chinese special version is definitely not a defective product, and the two pieces we are going to talk about today are very likely to copy the name of the i5-12490F and gain more attention.
**Comparison with parameters
To evaluate the i7-14790F and i5-14490F, we found their globally sold benchmarks – the i7-14700F and i5-14400F. In JD Intel's official ***, the selling price between them is exactly the same. However, since Intel has set up a separate SKU for these two products, it is naturally quite different from the standard version of the SKU, and it can even be said to be unique.
As you can see from the parameter table, the parameter indicators of i7-14790F and i5-14490F are actually quite skilled, and it can even be said that the user type is differentiated. The two China special editions are still designed with Intel 7 technology and high-performance hybrid architecture.
Among them, the i7-14790F has 8 performance cores and 8 energy efficiency cores, with a total of 16 cores and 24 threads, which is 4 less energy efficiency cores than the i7-14700F, and the number of cores is the same as that of the previous generation 13700F; The performance-efficient turbo frequency has been increased to 5 with the intergenerational upgrade4GHz, it's worth noting that the cache has been increased from 33MB to 36MB.
There are some differences between the solo results of the i5-14490F and the i5-14400F: the number of cores is the same, with 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, with a total of 10 cores and 16 threads; In addition, the base frequency and turbo frequency of the Performance Core and Efficiency Core have been increased, both by 03ghz and 02ghz；What is very attractive is that the three slows have also been increased from 20MB to 24MB.
Benchmarks vs. playtests
In order to test the i7-14790F and i5-14490F with more accurate data, we used the same test platform as the i9-14900K, leaving as much redundancy as possible for CPU testing on the hardware, of which the heat dissipation and power supply are quite sufficient.
In terms of configuration, the characteristics of the Chinese special version can already be seen. In our previous review of the i7-14700, we said it was the most generational improvement of the Core 14, but on the i7-14790F, the four new efficiency cores were retracted, so we can see a 5. average score drop in subsequent CPU benchmarks4%；However, due to the increase in the capacity of the three slows, its average game frame rate score has increased by 506%,So the sensitivity of the game to the cache is actually better than the frequency、And better than the number of cores,Intel only increased a small amount3MB**cache,Let the i7-14790F, which has reduced 4 energy efficiency cores, has improved in the game,I don't know what to think about,Intel has not launched a big three-slow product similar to "X3D" on the market,Otherwise, gamers are entirely likely to take the i-word prefix as a belief。
And the i5-14490F is basically an overall improvement in parameters compared to the i5-14400F: it can be seen that the i5-14490F has increased the frequency and three slows at the same time, and the CPU benchmark test and the average score of the game have increased by 419% and 528%, don't underestimate this 5% increase, you know, these performance overflows that can be obtained by relying solely on the CPU may need to be obtained with thousands of power and heat dissipation in exchange for overclocking ability in reality.
Let's take a look at the specific tests, the CPU benchmarks include CPU-Z, Cinebench R20, R and Passmark, GeekBenchdmark CPU Profile, and we try to select as many mainstream** approved test benchmarks as possible to make our average score more convincing. Among them, CPU-Z is the old CPU testing software, R20 and R versions of Cinebench are conducive to balancing different loads, in addition, there is Passmark to test the actual computing power, cross-platform software GeekBench, and 3DMark CPU Profile to test the performance of threads.
Judging from the test results, i7-14790F in the competition with i7-14700F, the multi-core score of the three rendering-based Cinebench scores is more obvious, all of which reach more than 10%, and the single-thread score of the 3DMark CPU profile has also dropped by about 10%, while the decline in other tests is about 2 3%. The i5-14490F won the competition with the i5-14400F, and the biggest improvement in multi-core (thread) performance was R23 (6.).52%), and the biggest difference in single-core (thread) performance is Cinebench 2024 (777%）。
In the game scene, we tested 5 triple-A masterpieces such as "Cyberpunk 2077" and 3 online games such as "Naraka: Bladepoint", all of which are more mainstream in the current market. i7-14790F Compared to i7-14700F, the biggest improvement in triple-A games is Cyberpunk 2077 (628%), it seems that the new DLC has improved a lot in terms of game optimization, so that this old negative optimization game can also perform well; The biggest improvement in online games is "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (711%）。The i5-14490F compared to the i5-14400F, Far Cry 6 tops the triple-A game improvement list (9.).35%）；The biggest improvement in online games is Naraka: Bladepoint (4.).68%), PUBG (455%) also followed.
If you look at the benchmark and gaming test results, the i7-14700F and i7-14700F are more like different branches of work users and gaming users; The i5-14490F is basically an all-round improvement compared to the i5-14400F, considering that the two are the same, the i5-14490F is more cost-effective.
Whole machine test and productivity scenario test
There are not many tools left for us in the whole machine test, and this time we still chose Crossmark and PCMark 10. PCMark 10 We mainly compare the scores of four CPUs in modern office mode, and we can see that the i7-14790F is 112%；The i5-14490F is 22%。The overall score of the i7-14790f is 329%；The i5-14490F is 14 years better than the i5-14400F57%。Pretty much in line with the scoring trend of the CPU benchmark.
In the productivity scenario, we tested the Blender Benchmark, Indigo Benchmark, V-Ray Benchmark, X264, X265, WebXPRT4, etc., covering rendering, codec, and web applications, and in terms of the total score, the i7-14790F is 674%, the i5-14490F is 10% better than the i5-14400F53%。
In the codec test, the i7-14790F compared to the i7-14700F has a significant decrease in X264 score, which is a decrease of 529%；The biggest improvement of the i5-14490F compared with the i5-14400F is also the X264, an increase of 77%。
In the Indigo Benchmark rendering test, the i7-14790F has a noticeable reduction of 1892%；The biggest improvement over the i5-14400F is the Supercar sample, which is improved by 2118%。This shows that CPU rendering is more sensitive to the number of cores, followed by frequency, and then cache.
In the Blender Benchmark rendering test, the i7-14790F is about 12 13% lower than the i7-14700F in three scenarios; Compared with the i5-14400F, the i5-14490F is increased by 6% and 15%. V-ray CPU Benchmark test, the former is reduced by 1178%, the latter increased by 1049%；WebXPRT4 showed a decrease of 456%, the latter increased by 546%。The whole productivity scenario test,You can see that the number of cores has a relatively large impact on the test results,For users in terms of productivity,i7We recommend buying a standard SKU,i5You can enter the Chinese special version of the SKU without brains。
EF Reviews:
In this evaluation of the two Chinese special CPUs, we have analyzed the test results in different scenarios. Among them, compared with the standard version of the SKU, the i7-14790F has reduced 4 energy efficiency cores, and the performance of the whole machine has decreased less in productivity scenarios, and the performance and benchmark computing power of the whole machine have decreased less, however, with only the increase of the three slow and turbo frequency, the i7-14790F has won back a city in the game, and it can be seen that even in the 3A game, the i7-14790F has 1 compared to the i7-14700FWith a 72% performance boost, you can think of the i7-14790F as trading productivity for gaming performance, which is definitely not a loss for players.
i5-14490F is our full recommendation, the improved three slow, performance core, energy efficiency core frequency, and turbo frequency, comprehensively surpassing the standard SKU i5-14400F in the same class, I believe it will also continue the good character set up by i5-12490F, and continue to inherit the "black box legend". Of course, you can also understand the Black Box Core 14th Gen China Special Edition as optimized for the needs of Chinese gamers, which is very much in line with the public perception of "black = game".