The buzz surrounding Intel’s development of a turbocharged iteration of its top-tier Core i9 processor was hardly a secret. Leaks and rumors had flooded the tech sphere earlier in the month, generating significant anticipation among enthusiasts. But what added an extra layer of intrigue to the unveiling of the i9-14900KS was the date: March 14th, widely celebrated by math enthusiasts as Pi Day. (Yes, the correlation is intentional.) Coincidentally, this was the day Intel chose to release its latest chip—a decision that culminated in a remarkable achievement: setting records in the Super Pi benchmark program.
For those unfamiliar, Super Pi is a Windows utility designed to calculate the value of pi to an astonishing 32 million digits. The efficacy of this single-threaded workload directly correlates with the processing speed of your CPU. Hence, it serves as a straightforward yet potent gauge of a computer’s computational prowess.
So, when Intel officially unveiled the Core i9-14900KS, capable of hitting speeds of 6.2GHz sans overclocking, the timing felt almost serendipitous, coinciding with Pi Day—represented as 3-14 in the American date format. Predictably, enthusiasts wasted no time in putting the new chip through its paces, subjecting it to the rigorous demands of the Super Pi benchmark.
The results were nothing short of spectacular. The i9-14900KS quickly ascended to the top of the public leaderboard, boasting completion times of 3.662 and 3.768 seconds for the calculation—a testament to its exceptional performance. Notably, renowned overclocking maestro Allen “Splave” Golibersuch pushed the boundaries even further, achieving an eye-watering clock speed of 8.44GHz—700 megahertz beyond his previous feat with the Core i9-14900K.
As a point of comparison, I decided to run the Super Pi program on my own rig, powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D—a respectable CPU, particularly for gaming. However, it’s evident that it pales in comparison to Intel’s latest offering and Splave’s overclocking wizardry. My attempt at the 32-million-digit calculation clocked in at a modest six minutes and four seconds.