29 November 2019
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Don't expect the refined 14nm chips to be trail-blazers
10-core Core i9-10900K will lead the pack
INTEL'S ENTIRE LINE-UP of 10th-generation Comet Lake desktop processors appears to have leaked, revealing CPUs with up to 10 cores and 20 threads.
The chip chasers at WCCFTech got their peepers on some slides that show what we can expect from the CPU lineup, which will be built upon another refinement of the 14-nanometre processor architecture; the 10nm node will remain the domain of the Ice Lake mobile CPUs for the time being.
Comet Lake-S is the codename given to the mainstream 10th-gen desktop CPUs, which will be lead by the 10-core, 20-thread Core i9-10900K. Other than the fact it'll come with 20MB of cache, there's precious little other information on offer.
But there are more details on the Core i9-10900, which sports the same number of cores and threads but has a base clock speed of 3GHz that ramps up to 5.1GHz by extracting performance from an 80W thermal design power.
The Core i9 lineup not only includes a 'K' version and a non-suffixed CPU, but also a 'T' chip, which has a reduced TDP of 35W and thus has a lower base clock speed and boost speed. It's the same story for other Core chips in the Comet Lake-S range.
Skip down to the Core i7 chips and you're looking at eight-core and 16-thread CPUs. The Core i7-10700 is expected to run from 3GHz to 4.8GHz, sports 16MB of cache and a 65W TDP.
10th-gen Core i5 processors have six cores and 12 threads, and the Core i5-10500 has a base clock speed of 3.2GHz that spools up to 4.3Ghz; 12MB of cache and a 65W TDP complete the specs. We reckon such a chip will appeal to folks after a mainstream desktop that has a solid processor for getting s**t done and playing games.
Step down to the Core i3, and if you were expecting CPUs with four cores and eight threads, then you'd be right. The Core i3-10100 clocks from 3.2GHz to 3.8GHz, with 12MB of cache and a 65W TDP.
Starting from the Core i3 and going up the range, the tenth-gen CPUs sport Hyperthreading, come with WIFi 6 support, and can support up to 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes.
According to the slides, Comet Lake-S offers an 18 per cent performance hike in multi-threaded compute tasks over the previous Coffee Lake-R CPUs, and delivers an eight per cent boost in Windows application performance.
Going by this leaked info, it looks like the Comet Lake-S CPUs will offer a step-up from the previous generation of Core desktop processors. But as the 14nm process node is still being used, we don't expect that boost to be hugely significant.
We suspect one will have to wait for 10nm desktop processors to see a major step-change from Intel in the desktop CPU arena; apparently it's beavering away on such chips. µ
