And yet 8GHz wasn’t enough for either Australian team to make it out of the bottom four.
Intel does an extremely good job sponsoring esports venues and tournament organizers such as their long established partnership with ESL and their most recent “IEM Sydney” (Intel Extreme Masters) venue which hosted the world’s first international LAN event for the newly revamped Counter-Strike 2.
However in a bid to garner some attention for their space heater 14th Generation Core processors, Intel did a little marketing stunt during IEM Sydney.
In a live demonstration, Team.AU successfully pushed the Core i9-14900K to operate at speeds ranging from 7.5 GHz to 8 GHz on Gigabyte’s Z790 Aorus Tachyon X motherboard.
Roger Chandler, Intel’s Vice President and General Manager for Enthusiast PC and Workstation in the Client Computing Group, enthusiastically fed LN2 to the hungry hungry i9-14900K in hopes that they avoid a nuclear crisis resulting in the deaths of many.
The Core i9-14900K’s maximum boost clock is 6 GHz, so Team.AU’s achievement represents a remarkable 33% overclock. However, it’s important to recognize that this achievement is still significantly below the current world record of 9,043.92 MHz, which was also established by the Intel Core i9-14900KF.
Their system, which was more than likely paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU managed to push out monstrous framerates of over 1,300 FPS whilst playing a round of online deathmatch which is actually a hinderance to outright FPS versus simple 5v5 matchmaking or benchmarking on an empty server.
1310 FPS. That is staggering, it’s a good thing that Team AU were doing this live on stage and talking over the whole process because I’d imagine that the coil whine would be deafening.
Sadly we don’t yet have miracle 1000Hz monitors to effectively take advantage of such sheer power, however I cannot help but wonder if Intel are intending on making nitrogen their coolant of choice for future generations of Intel Core processors.
This whole stunt was a bit unnecessary if I was to be honest, the Intel Core i9-14900K is reportedly priced at $589 USD. While it might seem reasonable for a portable grill, it’s worth noting that in the world of Counter-Strike, players could easily buy a Molotov in-game for just $400 making this entire overclocking endeavor seem rather counterproductive.
Intel’s PR department could use a revamp, I don’t think consumers need to be reminded of just how much of a furnace Intel Core processors can be.
