Intel’s lineup is definitely confusing right now. While the company announced plans to phase out the “Core i” branding from its chip range last year, the few releases that followed were very non-consistent. Sure, we got Core and Core Ultra chips with newer branding, but Intel’s main desktop chip series, the 14th gen range, still featured the old branding, going up to the Intel Core i9-14900K. Now, Intel has just released an improved version of its latest chip, which might well be the last high-end Core i chip.

Intel has unveiled the Intel i9-14900KS processor, its fastest processor to date. Like all other S-variants before it, this is just a faster version of theIntel Core i9-14900K, with cherry-picked silicon that can clock at speeds higher than a regular i9-14900K. How fast does it go, actually? It has a maximum turbo frequency of up to 6.2 gigahertz (GHz), with this particular processor catering to desktop enthusiasts that really need the very best Intel has to offer. The Intel Core i9-14900K was already probably the fastest chip available on the market, as AMD is yet to debut its Zen 5 Ryzen CPUs—it switched to a biyearly release schedule while Intel still releases new chips yearly, so Intel gets the bragging rights for at least a whole year. All the i9-14900KS is doing is putting Intel’s crown tighter on.

When we say that it’s just an i9-14900K, we do mean it. We have 24 cores and 32 threads, as well as 36MB of Intel Smart Cache. As for how it compares to previous chips, Intel says you can expect up to a 15% improvement in performance compared to the Intel Core i9-13900KS—we don’t know how faster it actually is compared to the non-S 14900K, but again, this is a bit of a smaller release and the 14900KS is almost identical. It’s also aided by Intel’s Application Performance Optimization (APO) feature. Content creators, on the other hand, can anticipate up to a 73% performance enhancement in compute-intensive workflows compared to competitors. The chip also supports up to 192GB of DDR5-5600 or DDR4-3200 memory.

The chip is now available for purchase, and it costs $699—if you have a few bucks remaining in your budget and you want something a tiny bit faster than a regular i9-14900K, you’re able to get this.