Intel Core i3-14100F: Four cores whipped to the max

Conclusion

It’s the fastest Core i3 yet, but it’s also the hungriest. The 14100F’s (Raptor Lake Refresh) biggest competition in its own ranks is in the form of older models (13100F and 12100F). These are a bit slower, but lower-power. The “better” choice depends on what holds more weight on your scales. Maybe it will be that record-breaking speed? In this class (Core i3), power consumption is always relatively low.

Conclusion

The Core i3-14100F is definitely the fastest option among cheap quad-core processors. The word “quad-core” is important in the previous sentence, though, because you can still get the outselling Ryzen 5 3600. It is a third cheaper than the Ci3-14100F and at the same time has a little more computing performance in some situations. Namely, in tasks where the older Ryzen fully accelerates all cores and gains numerical superiority.

In games and single-threaded applications, the Core i3 Raptor Lake Refresh is already significantly faster (than the R5 3600). But then there’s the Ryzen 5 5600, which has gradually dropped in price to the level of the Ci3-14100F. Both gaming and multi-threaded performance is higher with the AMD processor (R5 5600), and that is always at a higher efficiency. Intel’s edge (Ci3-14100F) is in single-threaded environments, which are well represented by working in a web interface or simpler office deployments.The Core i3 performs better in this regard, even with better power efficiency. Here, it’s also worth noting the intergenerational comparison, in which the Core i3-14100F, thanks to higher clock speeds, is some 6% above the Core i3-12100F speed-wise at a lower power consumption. This suggests that the manufacturing process of Raptor Lake Refresh is more efficient than that of Alder Lake (the first generation of Intel big.LITTLE processors).

In a heavy all-core workload, with all cores pushed to the edge, it no longer shows, and the 14100(F) is the least efficient processor compared to its predecessors (the 13100/F and 12100/F). With the push to higher clock speeds, power consumption rises more than computing and gaming performance. And in games, the Ci3-14100F doesn’t even achieve better speed results compared to the Ci3-13100F. These are comparable. In some places the 14100F performs a hair better, but elsewhere it’s the other way around.

The clock speeds of the Ci3-14100F are admittedly higher in gaming workloads (than those of the Ci3-13100F), but in games they don’t affect the speed much. In addition, the Core i3-14100F has wilder clock speed management, which can be seen in more pronounced power consumption spikes when the load suddenly changes. Power management is more aggressive even at very low loads, resulting in significantly higher “idle” power consumption compared to the Core i3-13100F.

But back to gaming performance, which hasn’t moved much since last time (13100F) even after increasing CPU clock speeds. Based on the Ryzen 5 5600’s higher position in the gaming performance rankings, with the Core i3, only four cores seem like a bottleneck. In cheap computers with slower graphics cards it doesn’t matter, the differences are so small that they don’t show up. That is, if we’re talking about a purely gaming setup, where a minimum number of background processes are running (if there were more of them, a processor with a larger number of cores, such as even a Ryzen 5 5600, will not slow down in practice as much as a 4-core Core i3).

In terms of the price of the complete platform, the Ci3-14100F, like the Ryzen 5000 (and AMD AM5), is an attractive choice for its support of cheaper memory and the ability to use a cheaper motherboard. With power consumption up to 90W, even low-end models with H610 chipsets can be safely used.

The Core i3-14100F has worse efficiency compared to the Core i3-13100F, you won’t notice the difference in gaming performance, but in a web and in an office environment it will be the more agile processor, although don’t expect any miracles. It’s just on the level of those +200 MHz. And what about the cooler? Higher clock speeds and higher power consumption are naturally associated with higher temperature. The supplied Laminar RM1 cooler, however, can handle such a load, as we know from its tests on the Core i5-12400 with ten watts higher power consumption. It will be noisier than on the Core i3-12100F, but still quite usable. Unless you are building an extremely quiet computer, if you find its operation to be annoying, optimizing the cooler’s fan curve is better than replacing the cooler. Its curve can be more aggressive than would be sufficient on some motherboards.

So what is the Core i3-14100F processor like? That is for everyone to judge for themselves from the text above. While for someone’s needs, the AMD AM4 platform (with the R5 5600) will be a better fit for similar money, for another, the pros-to-cons ratio will be more favorable with the Intel platform. It’s individual, it depends on personal preference.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

We are grateful to Datacomp e-shop for cooperation in providing the tested hardware

Special thanks also to Blackmagic Design (for DaVinci Resolve Studio license), Topaz Labs (for DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI licenses) and Zoner (for Photo Studio X license)

• Contents
• Intel Core i3-14100F in detail
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Borderlands 3
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Overall gaming performance
• Gaming performance per euro
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Photos 1/2: Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
• Photos 2/2: Affinity Photo, Topaz Labs AI Apps, ZPS X, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)encryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• Processor power draw curve
• Average processor power draw
• Performance per watt
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• Conclusion