Quote:Intel's next silicon fabrication node, 10 nm, takes off only toward the end of 2019, and AMD is expected to launch its 7 nm "Zen 2" architecture much sooner than that (debuts in December 2018). Intel probably fears AMD could launch client-segment "Zen 2" processors before Intel's first 10 nm client-segment products, to cash in on its competitive edge. Intel is looking to blunt that with "Comet Lake." Designed for the LGA115x mainstream-desktop platform, "Comet Lake" is a 10-core processor die built on 14 nm, and could be the foundation of the 10th generation Core processor family. It's unlikely that the underlying core design is changed from "Skylake" (circa 2016). It could retain the same cache hierarchy, with 256 KB per core L2 cache, and 20 MB shared L3 cache. All is not rosy in the AMD camp. The first AMD 7 nm processors will target the enterprise segment and not client, and CEO Lisa Su in her quarterly financial results calls has been evasive about when the first 7 nm client-segment products could come out. There was some chatter in September of a "Zen+" based 10-core socket AM4 product leading up to them.

Quote:It’s good to see the CPU market moving forward in terms of core counts, but we’ve seen core counts offered at a given price point jump dramatically in just the past two years thanks to AMD’s Ryzen processor. The market has definitely noticed — the number of CPUs with more than four cores has grown substantially in recent months according to the Steam Hardware Survey — but dual-core and quad-core chips still hold ~88 percent of the market. Rumors that the PS5 and Xbox Next will use Ryzen-derived 8-core chips could mean the next generation of games will lean more on CPU horsepower and respond better to higher thread counts, but strong multi-threaded adoption in games has played out slowly over years.

But diminishing returns are inevitable as core counts increase, particularly when they leap ahead quickly. This is not to say that a 10-core Comet Lake won’t deliver improvements over the Core i9-9900K, but that buyers of this still-hypothetical part will want to pay careful attention to where it does and does not improve overall performance. If this part is real, it also implies that Intel’s initial 10nm push will focus on mobile and low-power systems, similar to how the company rolled Broadwell and first-generation 14nm as a mobile solution first and foremost. While not impossible, it seems unlikely that Intel would launch a 10-core 14nm part on desktop next year, only to turn around and drop 10nm silicon in the same space.

Quote:On the other hand, coreboot, an open source project to replace the BIOS and UEFI, has some vital information on Comet Lakes. According to the Github page, Comet Lake-U (CML-U) processors, which are primarily aimed at laptops, carry up to six cores, while the Comet Lake-H (CFL-H) and Comet Lake-S (CMT-S) chips feature up to 10 cores.

Rumors on the street are that AMD's forthcoming Ryzen 3000-series desktop processors could purportedly pack a whopping 16 cores on a single chip. During AMD's presentation at the CES 2019 tech show in January, an eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 3000-series chip was trading blows with Intel's Core i9-9900K, which could have pressured the Santa Clara chipmaker to cranking Comet Lake's core count to 10 cores for same measure.

Intel is expected to launch its Comet Lake processors around the middle of the year. It's possible Intel could announce the chips at Computex 2019, which starts May 28. As always, we'll be at the venue to bring you the latest in computer hardware news, so stay tuned.

Quote:Comet Lake could help shore up Intel's defenses against the new Ryzen lineup, finally beating AMD's core counts, but whether they'll maintain a lead over the Ryzen 3000 series remains an open question–AMD has left open the possibility that its new chips may come with more than eight cores.

Intel's trials and tribulations with the 10nm process are well documented, but the summit is in sight. As such, it looks like the Comet Lake processors will serve as the swan song for 14nm on the desktop. Intel has done an enviable job pushing the limits of the 14nm process and extracted a 70% increase in performance since its debut, but it has surely entered the land of diminishing returns.
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Intel's pricing continues to be a thorn in its side, particularly as it grapples with a shortage of production capacity, so a win on the performance front might not equate to a thorough win in the market. TSMC's 7nm process, while more expensive to develop than prior nodes, does bring the promise of lower pricing along with it. That plays well to AMD's reputation for being the value king, but the 7nm process should also halve power consumption under the right circumstances. Even with a 14nm I/O chip sucking power, Ryzen 3000's 7nm compute dies should sip power, giving the company yet another edge as Intel turns the power up on its Comet Lake processors.

All this means that Intel's refresh of the Coffee Lake refresh might not be that refreshing after all in terms of pricing and power consumption. Ten Intel cores will be sure to deliver an impressive amount of horsepower to the mainstream desktop, further blurring the lines between the mainstream and high end desktop lines, but this story is far from over. We'll update this post as new information comes to light.

Quote:In a similar spirit, driver support for Comet Lake's Gen9 graphics has also been added with more than a dozen new PCI IDs. Comet Lake is yet another 14nm refresh of Skylake, succeeding Coffee Lake. It is expected to launch starting in Q2 for mobile CPUs along with a new chipset (PCH). The maximum core count is expected to increase to eight for laptops and to ten for desktops.

Quote:A couple of days ago, a juicy rumor emerged from the deep depths of the Chinese PTTWeb forums that Intel could possibly use the 10000-series branding for its upcoming Comet Lake products. A 3DMark leak from leaker TUM_APISAK seemingly lends credence to the rumor.

Comet Lake (CMT) has big shoes to fill because it's Intel's scheduled processor microarchitecture to replace the existing Coffee Lake and Whiskey Lake microarchitectures. If the recent Intel client roadmap is to be trusted, Comet Lake processors should arrive in the fourth quarter of the year. Comet Lake-U (CML-U) will feature configurations up to six cores while the higher-end Comet Lake-S (CML-S) and Comet Lake-H (CML-H) offerings could sport up to 10 cores. Unfortunately, Comet Lake continues to come out of Intel's 14nm furnace.

Quote:The README file for the driver package sheds some light on Intel's branding for the upcoming chipsets. Apparently, Intel will use 400-series branding to refer to the Comet Lake (CML) chipset. This makes perfect sense because Comet Lake is the planned successor to replace Coffee Lake (CFL), which is affiliated with the 300-series moniker. And yes, Comet Lake will still be on the 14nm process node.
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Intel's most recent desktop client roadmap suggests that Comet Lake will land in the last quarter of the year while Ice Lake won't arrive until 2020.

Quote:We’ve heard for a while that Intel might respond to AMD’s 7nm onslaught with higher core counts on desktop processors. A new leak suggests that’s exactly what the company will do, with a new chipset supporting up to 10-core CPUs built on the company’s mature 14nm process. This will supposedly require a new CPU socket, as Intel is increasing the power delivery and capability of its desktop motherboards to compensate for the higher power requirements in a 10-core chip.

The new socket is supposedly LGA 1200 and the top-end chips will offer 10C/20T configurations if rumors are to be believed. TDP is also finally rising, up to 125W. This last is something of an interesting point. Intel CPU power consumption currently has little relation to TDP if you allow the CPU to boost; TDP is measured at base clock, not boost clock. Intel may need to expand TDP to deal with adding more CPU cores, but in the past, it has kept its CPUs in the same TDP brackets by cutting base clock.
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Anyone who has paid attention to relative standings between AMD and Intel has already realized that a 10-core Comet Lake isn’t going to match AMD in most performance areas. The 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X is on its way, and we’ve already seen what happens when a 10-core Intel HEDT CPU takes on a 16-core AMD Threadripper: The 10-core CPU loses. Mostly, it loses by a lot.

But while this might sound faintly absurd, beating AMD in absolute multi-core performance probably isn’t the goal here. Both companies are working towards their respective strengths: For AMD, that means emphasizing multi-core while working to improve single-core, where Intel still holds a narrow advantage in some games at 1080p. For Intel, that means attempting to improve single-core while competing more effectively in multi-core. Bumping up to 10 cores and raising base clock via TDP increase probably helps the company achieve that. It’s going to take more than +2 cores to put Intel seriously back in the multi-threading game, and the company knows that.

The rumors of a 10-core Comet Lake are strong enough and have been running around for long enough that I think they’re pretty solid. We suspect this generation will see the return of Hyper-Threading as well to boost Intel’s competitive standing against AMD at lower price brackets. Without any price information, we obviously can’t opine on how the two companies will stack up, but Intel has a history of introducing better price/performance ratios at major product launches. This suggests we’ll see the company adjust its core count/dollar strategy at the next major launch.

Quote:Intel’s next-gen mainstream CPUs, dubbed Comet Lake-S, aren’t expected land in desktops until sometime in 2020. But the rumors and leaks about the company’s upcoming 14nm (++++?) processors have started to pile up. And boy, it’s hard to see how these chips -- which look to be a fifth (if you count Coffee Lake Refresh) re-warming of the company’s 2015-era Skylake architecture -- are going to find favor among just about any enthusiast or system builder next year.

Assuming the leaks hold true -- and we shouldn’t assume that they all will -- Comet Lake-S looks like the kind of lineup that would have been seen as a tepid, skippable update five years ago when Intel had little real competition in the desktop space. Here in the back half of 2019, AMD’s Ryzen 3000 processors (following on the well-received previous-generation Ryzen parts) have injected excitement into the desktop world, thanks to substantive performance (and performance per dollar) gains the likes of which we haven’t seen in going on a decade. Add in the bandwidth-doubling PCIe 4.0 interface packed into new AMD X570 motherboards and backward-compatibility with previous-generation, lower-priced X400-series boards and what Intel looks to be readying for early next year honestly borders on insulting.
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If we’re indeed several months out from new competing parts from Intel, and if all the company manages to deliver in early 2020 is yet another set of re-tweaked, hot-running 14nm CPUs with at best a couple of extra cores, AMD doesn’t have much to worry about in the short term, to say the least.

Granted, if 10nm still isn’t delivering the yields necessary for mass rollout, Intel likely feels like it has to release something. And there’s no doubt that Comet Lake-S will sell well enough to system integrators for new Intel-based desktops in big-box stores and for compact systems where Ryzen’s lack of integrated graphics (outside of its lower-end APUs) is a problem. New Intel chips will help move new PCs, especially in a world where the blue team’s long dominance means many mainstream customers don’t know enough to consider alternatives.

But with all the positive (and mostly well-deserved) press that AMD has been getting this year, even mainstream consumers are soon likely to start considering alternatives, as more and more AMD machines show up in Best Buy and on Amazon’s curated choice lists. Unless Comet Lake-S somehow turns out to be far more impressive than it looks on paper (granted, again from unconfirmed leaks), Intel’s next-gen desktop chips will be a Broadwell-like stop gap at best. And for enthusiasts -- even those who have been long-time Intel fans -- another round of modest performance gains packaged with yet another round of required motherboard upgrades is only going to increase the tide of consumers turning toward AMD.

Quote:The Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) database has become a popular place to get a glimpse at unreleased hardware. The latest Gigabyte listing shows an abundance of 400-series motherboards for Intel's highly anticipated Comet Lake (CML) processors.
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Comet Lake will reportedly find its home in the new LGA 1200 socket, meaning it's that time again when Intel fans will have to spill out cash for a motherboard upgrade if they hope to use the new tech.
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In the EEC listing, there are mentions of the B460, H410, H470, Q470 and Z490 chipsets. Strangely enough, there is no reference to the Z470 chipset, so it looks like Intel might completely skipp that chipset for this generation. The Z490 will undoubtedly be the flagship chipset for Comet Lake processors, which means it'll come with all the bells and whistles, plus a hefty price tag.

Quote:According to sources close to DigiTimes, 14 nm production has fallen short of demand again and will likely cause many notebook manufacturers to delay their products to 2020. Most likely victim of this delay is the newly announced 10th generation mobile CPUs codenamed Comet Lake. Those CPUs were supposed to be built using Intel's "14nm++" revision of 14 nm technology which targets higher CPU frequencies and improved efficiency, but most likely due to continued shortage of 14nm, there will be only a few notebooks powered by these chips. As the source suggests, many manufacturers are likely to delay the launch of their products to 2020, when this situation is supposed to be resolved.

Quote:A SiSoftware benchmark submission, spotted by chip detective @TUM_APISAK, reveals a new 10th-Gen Comet Lake Core i3-10100 processor sporting four cores and eight threads. That's a nice improvement over today's Core i3-9100 equivalent, which features four cores and four threads.

Quote:Intel's 10th generation Core desktop processor lineup, based on the 14 nm "Comet Lake" silicon, will begin with the Core i3-10100 succeeding the Core i3-9100 and i3-8100. To squeeze the most out of the microarchitecture that's essentially identical to "Skylake," Intel has decided to enable HyperThreading across the Core processor family, which means the i3-10100 is a 4-core/8-thread chip. Interestingly, Intel has given it just 6 MB of shared L3 cache. It's likely that the slightly beefed up i3-103xx will be differentiated with 8 MB of L3 cache. The chip has the same 3.60 GHz nominal frequency, and an unknown degree of Turbo Boost. The current-gen i3-9100 features Turbo Boost, so it's likely that its successor will also get the feature.

A SiSoft SANDRA online database entry for the i3-10100 surfaced, where it has an overall score of 382.61 MPix/s using multimedia tests, a significal step up from the roughly 290 MPix/s of the i3-9100 (a 31 percent performance increase). This increase in performance can be attributed to HyperThreading, as SANDRA's multimedia tests leverage it efficiently. Intel is expected to launch the Core i3-10100 around the $120 mark, competing with AMD's Ryzen 3 3200G.

Quote:Update 10/21/2019 5:00pm PT: A new benchmark submission of what appears to be a Core i5 has surfaced, likely confirming that the new Comet Lake i5's will also feature Hyper-Threading. We've updated the text below.

Quote:Intel's 400-series chipset, which is tailored to Comet Lake-S (CML-S) processors, are also due next year. Wang mentioned three chipsets in particular here. It's rumored, that the Z490 chipset will target high-end motherboards, while the B460 and H410 chipsets will be for mid-range and entry-level motherboards, respectively. According to a Comet Lake-S leak from earlier this month, the 14nm chips are scheduled for the first half of next year, so we don't expect to see any 400-series motherboards in a near future.

Quote:Fresh benchmarks for Intel's 10th-Generation Comet Lake-S (CML-S) processors have started to appeared in the Geekbench 4 database. The results reveal the chips' core counts, L2 and L3 cache, as well as the preliminary base and boost clocks. But as always, it's wise to take these with a some grains of salt, since they are submissions of unreleased hardware.
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Starting with what we assume is the flagship part, the unidentified Comet Lake-S processor will apparently come rocking 10 cores and 20 threads. It seemingly has 640KB of L1 cache, 2.5MB of L2 cache and 20MB of L3 cache. Geekbench 4 lists the processor with a 1.51 GHz base clock and 3.19 GHz boost clock.

The other unknown Comet Lake-S part is said to sport six cores and 12 threads, plus 384KB of L1 cache, 1.5MB of L2 cache and 12MB of L3 cache. Geekbench 4 identified the chip as having a 1.99 GHz base clock and 2.89 GHz boost clock.

According to Geekbench 4's report, both Comet Lake-S processors are equipped with Intel's UHD Graphics 630, which is the same iGPU (integrated graphics processing unit) that debuted with the chipmaker's Coffee Lake family. It's perplexing that Geekbench 4 only detects 23 EUs (execution units) for both Comet Lake-S parts when the UHD Graphics 630 is known to offer up to 24 EUs. When it comes to speeds, the 10-core chip's iGPU is clocked at 1.2 GHz, while the six-core is confined to 1.15 GHz.

AMD has already landed the first blow with its third-generation Ryzen desktop processors that maxes out at 16 cores with the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X. Obviously, Intel would be at a disadvantage core-wise if Comet Lake-S arrives topping out at just 10 cores, as rumored. So, It'll be interesting to see how Intel ends up responding.

Quote:Intel is expected to finally refresh its mainstream desktop platform with the introduction of the 14 nm "Comet Lake-S" processors, in Q2-2020. This sees the introduction of the new LGA1200 socket and Intel 400-series chipsets, led by the Z490 Express at the top. Platform maps of these PCI-Express gen 3.0 based chipsets make them look largely similar to current 300-series platform, with a few changes. For starters, Intel introducing its biggest ACPI change since C6/C7 power states that debuted with "Haswell;" with the introduction of C10 and S0ix Modern Standby power-states, which give your PC an iPad-like availability while sipping minimal power. This idea is slightly different from Smart Connect, in that your web-connected apps and processor work at an extremely low-power (fanless) state, rather than waking your machine up from time to time for the apps to refresh. 400-series chipset motherboards will also feature updated networking interfaces, such as support for 2.5 GbE wired LAN with an Intel i225-series PHY, 802.11ax WiFi 6 WLAN, etc.

HyperThreading will play a big role in making Intel's processor lineup competitive with AMD's given that the underlying microarchitecture offers an identical core design to "Skylake" circa 2015. The entry-level Core i3 chips will be 4-core/8-thread, Core i5 6-core/12-thread, Core i7 8-core/16-thread; and leading the pack will be the Core i9-10900K, a 10-core/20-thread processor. According to a WCCFTech report, this processor will debut in April 2020, which means at CES 2020 in January, we'll get to see some of the first socket LGA1200 motherboards, some even based on the Z490. The platform also mentions an interesting specification: "enhanced core and memory overclocking." This could be the secret ingredient that makes the i9-10900K competitive with the likes of the Ryzen 9 3900X. The LGA1200 platform could be forwards-compatible with "Rocket Lake," which could herald IPC increases on the platform by implementing "Willow Cove" CPU cores.

Quote:Hardware leaker @momomo_us has shared a diagram of what appears to be Intel's forthcoming LGA1200 socket. The new socket will house the chipmaker's Comet Lake-S desktop processors, which could potentially drop in the first quarter of next year.
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The mechanical diagrams show that the LGA1200 and LGA1151 socket share similar dimensions. The mounting mechanism is most likely the same as well. This should come as music to Comet Lake adopters' ears as existing CPU coolers that support the LGA115x socket should fit just fine on the new LGA1200 socket. Sadly, they'll still need to spill out cash for a new Intel 400-series motherboard.

Quote:In the press-deck of its 3rd Generation Ryzen Threadripper 3970X/3960X launch, AMD teased its flagship HEDT part for the TRX40 platform, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, with a 2020 launch date. It should come as little surprise then, that the core-count gap between the 3970X and the 3990X has an SKU in the middle - the 3980X. This SKU reportedly surfaced in CPU-Z 1.91 code. The 3980X is a 48-core/96-thread monstrosity for when 64 cores are too many, and 32 too few.

Like the 3990X, the 3980X will likely be built with eight "Zen 2" CCDs (chiplets) for optimal IFOP bandwidth utilization and heat-spread. Each CCD will likely be configured with 6 cores (3 per CCX), adding up to 48 cores on the package. Much like the 3990X, clock-speeds of the 3980X remain under the wraps. AMD is expected to launch the two some time in 2020, featuring compatibility with existing AMD TRX40 chipset motherboards. The company could target a sub-$3,000 price-point to make the Xeon W-3175X obsolete both in performance and value.

Quote:Ahead of a possible reveal in the sidelines of CES, followed by an early-Q2 2020 product-launch, company slides detailing Intel's 10th generation Core desktop processors in the LGA1200 package, codenamed "Comet Lake-S," leaked to the web courtesy Informatica Cero. They confirm that HyperThreading will play a key role, with Intel enabling it across the lineup. The range-topping Core i9 series will be 10-core/20-thread along with 20 MB of L3 cache. The Core i7 series will be 8-core/16-thread, along with 16 MB L3 cache. The all-important Core i5 series will be 6-core/12-thread, equipped with 12 MB of L3 cache. The Core i3 series will have two sub-tiers: i3-103xx series with 4-core/8-thread and 8 MB L3 cache; and i3-101xx series 4-core/8-thread with 6 MB L3 cache.
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Built on a 14 nm-class silicon fabrication node, and featuring the same IPC as "Skylake," the 10th generation Core "Comet Lake" series will rely on aggressive power-management to sustain 65 W TDP rating for most SKUs, but Intel's virtual barrier for 95 W as the TDP number for unlocked K SKUs ends with the 10 generation (the i9-9900KS already breaks that). The 10th generation Core K SKUs have a scorching 125 W TDP rating not just for the 10-core i9-10900K and 8-core i7-10700K, but also the 6-core i5-10600K. The table above details the various SKUs we could make out from the low image-quality slide screenshots.

Quote:In what seems to be an unprecedented move, even for Intel, Comet Lake might end up taking residence on not one, but two new sockets: Chip detective @momomo_us recently discovered a string in the latest version of CPU-Z that references the LGA1159 socket, which may complement the LGA1200 socket that we already know is coming for Comet Lake.
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We suspect that Intel plans to split support for Comet Lake between different platforms, with the 125W K-series chips likely requiring the LGA1200 socket while the remaining 65W and 35W Comet Lake parts will get by with the LGA1159 socket. This separation sounds reasonable as the high-end Comet Lake chips have steeper power requirements and the extra pins in the LGA1200 socket can provide the necessary juice.

If our assumption is valid, Intel could potentially position the LGA1200 socket as a "value HEDT" (high-end desktop) platform. We hope the chipmaker doesn't roll with this strategy as it wouldn't fare well with enthusiasts, considering that rival AMD has already brought HEDT-like performance to mainstream motherboards with the Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core chip that continues to leverage the advantages of the company's long-lived AM4 socket.

A couple of days ago, Iranian news outlet Tnews shared two very interesting Comet Lake slides that help support our assumption. The first slide shows three divisions for Comet Lake: Enthusiast (125W), Mainstream (65W) and Low Power (35W). The K-series which, in all likelihood is comprised of the Core i9-10900K, i7-10700K and i5-10600K, can be configured to 95W at lower clock speeds. However, the real nugget lays in the second slide.

The second slide clearly shows that the Comet Lake chipsets are divided into two major categories. The W480, Q470, Z490 and H470 chipsets allegedly employ the CML PCH-H chipset, while the lower-end B460 and H410 chipsets are seemingly based of the CML PCH-V chipset. It's not confirmed, but we think the 'H' stands for High-Performance while the 'V' alludes to Value.
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There is little doubt that there will be two sockets for Comet Lake, we're just not sure how Intel is going to sell that idea to consumers.

Quote:According to John Burek at our sister site PCMag, Intel will offer a larger selection of 8C/16T CPUs with Comet Lake-H. Currently, Intel offers one CPU that hits a 5GHz boost clock with 8 CPU cores — the Core i9-9980HK. PCMag reports that the Core i7 H series will be capable of boosting to 5GHz, while the i9 variants will boost even higher. This is a bit of a surprise, given that no Intel desktop chip has pushed above 5GHz for boost clocks yet.

Intel didn’t give any details on what the CPU boost frequencies would be for multiple cores or which GPU solution would ship with the 45W CPUs. While we don’t expect to see Ice Lake’s GPU shipping on 14nm silicon, it’s possible that Intel has equipped these chips with Iris Plus graphics rather than the typical UHD 630 solution it shipped with 9th Gen.

Quote:MebiuW, a forum user at Weibo.com, posted what appears to be an internal document from Intel that showcases the performance of the unreleased ten-core Core i9-10900K. We have been expecting this part for some time, but Intel has been totally silent on their upcoming 10th-Gen Comet Lake parts. According to this purportedly leaked document, the 10900K is up to 30% faster than the i9-9900K in threaded workloads, but the operative word here is "up to."
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Other benchmarks show a much lower improvement, especially XPRT which averages about 3-4% higher on the 10900K than the 9900K. This benchmark measures single-threaded performance, and since we know the architecture isn't really that different than its predecessor, it's almost certain that Intel has yet again increased clock speeds with this upcoming 10th-Gen chip. The aging 14nm process has shown surprising gains in clock speed, but this certainly is coming at the cost of power; we can see that under multi-threaded workloads, the performance bump is only equal to as many cores Intel has added to the 10900K, indicating that Intel hasn't made very much, if any, gain on core clock speeds.
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Overall, we can clearly see an increase in performance coming with the 10th-Gen chips, but Ryzen 3000 still offers tough competition with much higher multi-threaded performance and competitive (but slightly weaker) single threaded performance. Given that these projections appear in what are purportedly Intel's own performance docs, the 10th-Gen chips will need a good price to stand out.

Quote:Reports are flooding the web regarding Intel's total lack of reference to their upcoming Comet Lake family of CPUs, which will be branded under the Intel core 10000 series. As reports would have it, motherboard makers had stock of LGA 1200 motherboards ready to showcase at CES, but were told to pull them out in what is equivalent to a logistical "last minute". It seems that both Intel's lack of commitment to Comet Lake on its CES presentation and absence of ecosystem showcase at this year's CES might have something to do with, well, close to shame on Intel's parts.

Comet Lake will increase the maximum core count for their desktop CPUs up to 10 cores and 20 logical threads. But being built on the same 14 nm process as previous Intel generations since Skylake, there isn't much that can be done to offset increased power consumption. This is why industry sources are claiming Intel decided to skip Comet Lake at this CES - a difficulty to rein in the processors' power consumption in time for the event, with power consumption hitting 300 W. And with Intel's Core i9 10900K being configured with a PL2 (Power Level 2) of 250 W, a maximum 300 W under full load seems more than plausible.

Quote:ntel's upcoming 400-series desktop chipset will lack support for PCI-Express gen 4.0. The motherboards will stick to gen 3.0 for both the main x16 PEG slots wired to the LGA1200 socket, and general purpose PCIe lanes from the PCH, according to a Tom's Hardware report. It was earlier expected that 400-series chipset motherboards will come with preparation for PCIe gen 4.0, so even if the upcoming 10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors lacked gen 4.0 root-complexes, the boards would be fully ready for the new bus standard in 11th gen "Rocket Lake" desktop processors.
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It is also being reported that Intel has delayed the launch of 10th gen Core desktop processors and 400-series chipset motherboards to Q2-2020, to as early as April. Motherboards based on Intel 400-series chipset were the most notable absentees at the 2020 International CES, and it's rumored that a last-minute decision to delay the platform's launch caused exhibitors to box up their Z490 chipset motherboards. With an April launch, "Comet Lake" will lead Intel's mainstream desktop product line for at least three quarters. Intel is expected to debut 11th gen "Rocket Lake" in the 2021 CES, unless something changes then.

Quote:DFI has listed two of its motherboards for Intel's upcoming 10th-Generation Comet Lake processors in its 2020 product catalog.

The CMS310-W480 and CMS310-Q470 are MicroATX motherboards based around the W480 and Q470 chipsets, respectively. The first is aimed at the workstation segment, while the latter is for the enterprise market. Therefore, only the CMS310-W480 will be able to support Comet Lake Xeon chips upon release.

Both motherboards carry the LGA1200 CPU socket to accommodate the next wave of Intel desktop processors that span up to 10 cores. They each have four DDR4 memory slots to support up to 128GB of RAM, and the W480 chipset will also support ECC memory, the specs say. According to leaked information, Comet Lake natively supports DDR4-2933 memory modules.

Quote:Intel hasn't confirmed when it will launch its 10th Generation Comet Lake desktop CPUs (although rumors suggest we'll see them in April). But benchmarks and specification tables are already coming at us left and right. On the higher-end of the desktop platform, we've already heard about the Core i5-10500, Core i9-10900 and Core i9-10900K. Today's early benchmark, found by Twitter user @Tum_Apisak, is about the i7-10700K, a chip that may appeal to many enthusiasts. As with any test results shared before an official release, however, you should take things with a grain of salt or two.

The leak comes in the form of a 3DMark hardware configuration that shows some of the specifications of the i7-10700K. There are a few errors, but that's not unusual for pre-launch chips that haven't been properly taken up in the libraries yet.

The specifications show the i7-10700K with eight cores, 16 threads with a base clock speed of 3.8 GHz and a boost maximum turbo clock of 5.3 GHz.
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But that doesn't mean that we're not expecting to get an upgrade with Comet Lake on desktop. The most similarly stacked chip to the i7-10700K from the 9th Generation is the eight-core, 16-thread i9-9900K, which has a maximum boost clock of 5.0 GHz. That's an i9 chip though, and where the i9 is getting two more cores, it looks like the i7 will be getting back Hyper-Threading and more aggressive boost profiles.

Quote:By now, it's no secret that the next-generation Comet Lake CPUs for desktops are coming, as plenty of leaks have made their way onto the internet. Today is another day with yet another leak surfacing, and this time it's about the i7-10700F, courtesy of Korean Quasarzone.

The Intel Core i7-10700F is expected to be an 8-core 16-thread chip, with the leak showing a nominal clock speed of 2.9 GHz. Of course, that says nothing about the boost clocks, but the performance figures shown demonstrate the chip scoring 4781 points in Cinebench R20, with a single-core score of 492 points.

For comparison, we've benchmarked the Intel Core i9-9900K (see our i9-10980XE review for the details), and it scored a total of 4997 points in Cinebench R20. That tells us that the performance of the two chips will be quite similar.
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Although it's still not entirely clear when the new Intel CPUs will come out, they are predicted to land sometime in April. The reason for taking so long is said to be that Intel is having trouble sorting out the power consumption problems, which comes as no surprise as the i9-9900K was happy to burn through 200W without all too much effort. Intel also isn't expected to be making the jump to 10 or 7nm yet, further complicating the problems.

Quote:The Core i7-10700F is an upcoming 8-core/16-thread processor that's expected to be significantly affordable compared to the i7-10700K. Unlike the i7-10700K targeted at overclockers, the i7-10700F is multiplier locked, has lower nominal clock speeds of 2.90 GHz, and lacks integrated graphics (hence the "F" extension). PC enthusiasts on Korean tech community QuasarZone posted a screenshot of an alleged i7-10700F test run on Cinebench R20. The chip is shown scoring 4781 points in the multi-threaded test, and 492 points single-threaded. These scores roughly compare with AMD's Ryzen 7 3700X processor. No other details such as motherboard or memory configuration were put out.

Quote:Uruguayan media outlet Informática Cero has published alleged specifications for Intel's looming 10th Generation Comet Lake F-series desktop processors. The PowerPoint slide appears to be part of a Comet Lake presentation that leaked back in December.

Intel first introduced the F-series concept with its 9th Generation Coffee Lake processors. Those F-series chips have the same silicon as their non-F counterparts but lack integrated graphics, providing Intel a way to salvage silicon that failed to meet graphics standards. If Informática Cero's slide is legitimate, Intel will seemingly follow this same game plan for Comet Lake.

It appears that Intel could launch up to three F-series and KF-series Comet Lake processors. The slide names a Core i9-10900KF, Core i7-10700KF and Core i5-10600KF, as well as their respective locked variants, (which can't be overclocked), the Core i9-10900F, Core i7-10700F and Core i5-10600F.

The KF-series chips reportedly adhere to a 125W TDP (thermal design power), with the F-series chips confined to 65W. Only the i9 parts benefit from Intel's Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) technology, which aims to enable a higher clock speed on top of the existing Turbo Boost clock.

Quote:Intel's 10th Generation Comet Lake desktop processors aren't expected until the spring. However, a tip from hardware detective @momomo_us helped us track down early Comet Lake listings from two European retailers.

Czech retailer Bohemia Computers and Slovakian retailer ITSK-HS have already listed the Comet Lake parts on their respective websites. The postings could be temporary placeholders, but if not, they give us a general idea of Comet Lake's final pricing.
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The i5-10600 could hit the retail market with a price tag of $230-$250. This means that the unlocked model, the i5-10600K or i5-10600KF, will ultimately cost even more. If this pricing is accurate, Intel is in big trouble. AMD's Ryzen 5 3600X, which also sports six cores and 12 threads, is selling for as low as $214.

One of the more interesting duels will likely be between the i5-10400F, which apparently costs $160-$175, and the Ryzen 5 3600 that's priced at $175. Both fighters come with six cores and 12 threads, so it'll be exciting to see which comes out as the winner.

The Comet Lake Core i3 chips seem to cost $130-$180. This is a very dangerous territory to for Intel to compete in, considering the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is in the same price range. Although Intel has enabled HyperThreading on the Core i3, the i3 chips are still at a two core disadvantage compared to AMD's Ryzen 5 chips.

Comet Lake has a rumored April launch date, so we're only a few months away from fight night.

Quote:Alleged pictures of the upcoming Intel Core i9-10900K and i7-10700K processors made it to Chinese social media. The blurry-cam pictures of the chips' topside don't reveal much other than the "Intel Confidential" markings, denoting that these chips are engineering samples. The reverse side confirm that these are chips are built in the new LGA1200 package. You can also spot electrical ancillaries laid out unlike any previous-gen Intel package, and different socket key notches.

Quote:A Dutch website has listed what seems to be the entirety of Intel's upcoming 10th gen CPU lineup, with prices to boot. Of course, we have to take these listings with various grains of salt: e-tailers are known to sometimes display higher pricing than the manufacturer's MSRP when products still haven't been listed on other websites.

The listing below showcases model number and pricing for each Intel processor. Should this pricing actually come to pass in a generalized way, we're looking at Intel's Core i9-10900KF processor (which is currently listed for €567.73 including 21% VAT) competing with AMD's closest-priced CPU Ryzen 9 3800X, which is already street-priced at €449. The Core i5 10400F, on the other hand, is listed at €196.99, which means it currently competes with AMD's Ryzen 5 3600X at €199.99. It remains to be seen which of these CPUs will win in a direct shootout. Remember that for US pricing you typically just swap out the € currency for $, and you've got your price estimate pretty close to final.

Quote:AMD may want to be concerned. Based on alleged Time Spy benchmark results shared by hardware leaker @_rogame, the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X will have a strong rival in the upcoming Intel Core i9-10900KF.

The i9-10900KF is one of Intel's forthcoming Comet Lake desktop chips and will compete with AMD's recently launched Ryzen 3000-series (codename Matisse) CPUs. More specifically, the i9-10900KF will be trading blows with the Ryzen 9 3900X, which makes today's fight so interesting.
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According to the Time Spy entry, the i9-10900KF had a 12,412 CPU score. The Ryzen 9 3900X, in return, scored 12,857 points. Therefore, AMD's chip is only up to 3.6% faster. In the i9-10900KF's defense, it was paired with DDR4-2400 RAM, while the Ryzen 9 3900X's system was on speedier DDR4-3200 memory.

Indeed, memory speed shows a significant impact on the Time Spy benchmark. The same Ryzen 9 3900X scored 13,913 and 13,650 points with DDR4-3600 and DDR4-3800 memory, respectively.

Meanwhile, the i9-10900K, which is essentially the i9-10900KF but with an iGPU, scored 13,142 points with DDR4-2666 memory. Since the i9-10900KF is basically a replica of the i9-10900K but without integrated graphics the performance for both processors should be in the same neighborhood.

If we compare the i9-10900K DDR4-2666 result to the Ryzen 9 3900X DDR4-3200 result, Intel's processor is actually up to 2.2% faster. That's the problem with leaked benchmarks. You can never be sure of the conditions of the test system or operating system. When unreleased hardware is involved, there's always a strong chance of discrepancy between the results. Plus, this has no implications as to whether the i9-10900KF can keep up with the Ryzen 9 3900X in other real-world scenarios, especially multi-threaded ones.

Quote:The Intel Core i9-10880H, which should be the direct successor to last year's i9-9880H, hasn't been announced yet, but benchmarks results are already creeping up. Hardware leaker @_rogame reportedly found the upcoming mobile chip in a 3DMark submission yesterday.
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According to the 3DMark entry, the i9-10880H could come with a base clock fixed at 2.3 GHz, which is the same base clock on the prior i9-9980H. The only thing that the i9-10880H has going for it is the higher boost clock. If the 3DMark's report is accurate, the i9-10880H will flex a 5 GHz boost clock, which is 200 MHz higher than the i9-9980H but only by 4.2%.

Quote:Spanish news outlet El Chapuzas Informatico claims that Intel will announce the company's highly-anticipated 10th Generation Comet Lake desktop processors on April 30. However, benchmark and review embargoes reportedly won't lift until the second week of May. Approach the rumored dates with a bit of caution since we have no way to confirm them.

Quote:According to the Chinese website ITHome, Intel is going to launch its 10th generation Comet Lake-H CPUs for mobile devices, on April 2nd. The new models are going to bring improved frequency and core count, with top-end models reaching up to 8 cores with 16 threads.

Quote:The results found by Tum_Apisak place the i9-10900K at a single-core Geekbench score of 1437 points, and a Multi-Core score of 11390 points. For comparison, the Intel Core i9-9900K scores 1340 points in single-core and 8787 points in multi-core tests.
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It's been known for a while that Intel has been having problems with the power consumption of its new Comet Lake Desktop chips, as these are still to be on the 14nm fabrication process, and packing this many cores into a CPU at that node size makes for some very power-hungry silicon. Nevertheless, the spotted results suggest Intel has been able to tame the power consumption somewhat, thus enabling higher sustained boost frequencies and the higher performance that comes with that.

Also note that it's highly unlikely that the two chips were tested on the same motherboard with identical cooling, which can also account for differences. The i9-10900K was benchmarked in the ASRock Z490M Pro4 together with 32GB of DDR4 memory.

Quote:We've been waiting for Intel to launch its 10th Generation Comet Lake-H processors for mobile devices. This week, HD Tecnología, a hardware news outlet in Argentina, published PowerPoint slides that claim to reveal specifications for the looming chips.

The Intel Core i9-10980HK will be the crown jewel of the Comet Lake-H lineup. The leaked slides compare the chip to an enthusiast-level PC from three years ago, claiming that the Comet Lake-H chip delivers up to 54% higher frame rates in games and 44% better overall performance. The slides also tout up to double the performance in rendering and exporting 4K resolution video.

Quote:Comet Lake desktop CPUs have been selling ilegally in China since February. A couple of days ago, a user on the Chinese Sohu news portal apparently managed to buy not one, but four Comet Lake-S processors and put them through various benchmarks.

The Intel Core i5-10400, i5-10500, i5-10600K and i7-10700 are the stars of today's Comet Lake show. The tester said the i5-10500 and i5-10600K are engineering samples (ES) , while the i5-10500 and i7-10700 are qualification samples (QS). The clock speeds for the latter should be very close to what we can expect from the retail samples.
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According to the results from the review, the i7-10700 is slightly faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, another 65W chip. But the difference is less than 2%, so it might not even be perceptible in a real-word scenario. The Ryzen 7 3700X did outperform the i7-10700 in the Cinebench R15 benchmark.

The i5-10400, i5-10500, i5-10600K were nowhere close to catching the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X. To be fair, the Ryzen 5 3600X is a 95W processor, while the i5-10400 and i5-10500 are 65W parts. Nevertheless, the two Core i5 chips might not pose a threat to the 65W AMD Ryzen 5 3600 either, since its performance is very close to the X variant.

AMD's dominance doesn't only come from offering more cores, but the Zen 2 microarchitecture and 7nm process node play an essential part in the equation as well. To level the playing field, the Sohu user locked the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, i7-10700, i9-9900K and i7-8700K to a four-core, four-thread configuration at 4 GHz.

The charts show the Ryzen 9 3900X crushing three generations of Intel processors. In Intel's defense, Comet Lake seemingly performs better than Coffee Lake at the same core count and frequency. The improvement, as small as it may be, is there, based on these results.

Quote:Notebookcheck compared the i9-10880H, i7-10750H and i5-10300H SKUs against the Ryzen 9 4900HS, (which we also tested in our Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review ) and Ryzen 7 4800H. The site also pulled in the new chips' Coffee Lake-H counterparts, the i9-9880H, i7-9750H and i5-9300H. The Comet Lake-H laptops used for testing used dual-channel DDR4-2666 RAM.

The publication noted that the i9-10880H and i7-10750H results are from two different laptops. Consequently, the results will vary according to the laptop's design and cooling solution. Notebookcheck averaged the Ryzen 4000-series and Coffee Lake-H results scores across a different number of devices.

Based on Notebookcheck's results, Intel is still the king of single-core performance, but AMD isn't too far behind. The Cinebench R15 results show the i9-10880H as being up to 10.9% faster than the Ryzen 9 4900HS. On the more recent Cinebench R20 benchmark, the i9-10880H's lead dropped to just 3%.
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The tides turned in AMD's favor when it came multi-core performance. The Ryzen 7 4800H outperformed the i9-10880H by 24% and 2.2% in Cinebench R20 and Cinebench R15, respectively, in Notebookcheck's testing.
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With Zen 2, AMD has almost caught up to Intel in regard to single-core performance. If Intel doesn't move to a new microarchitecture and process node soon, we suspect that AMD will pass Intel when it graduates to Zen 3, 7nm+ chips. Notebookcheck's numbers showed Comet Lake-H failing to compete with Renoir in the multi-core performance race and barely clinging to the single-core ribbon.