Four Intel 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs Benchmarked Before Release

News
By
Published

Intel Core i7-10700 and three other CPUs were reportedly tested in China.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Gurg
    So the 10700 non-K beats the 3700x in Time Spy and Extreme the two measures closer to gaming. Also almost 10% increase over 9700k. The 10700k when overclocked with decent motherboard and memory should be a great CPU for gaming.
    Reply
  • [dev]
    Gurg said:
    So the 10700 non-K beats the 3700x in Time Spy and Extreme the two measures closer to gaming. Also almost 10% increase over 9700k. The 10700k when overclocked with decent motherboard and memory should be a great CPU for gaming.

    10% ?? Incredible difference LOL
    Don't you need another motherboard for that 10% ??
    Reply
  • mdd1963
    [dev] said:
    10% ?? Incredible difference LOL
    Don't you need another motherboard for that 10% ??

    I rather doubt many 9700K owners are participating in any CPU/mainboard upgrades this year....(and any that do, certainly are not doing so for any sort of 'my Battlefield 5 frame rates are not fast enough' cause) :)
    Reply
  • st379
    Gurg said:
    So the 10700 non-K beats the 3700x in Time Spy and Extreme the two measures closer to gaming. Also almost 10% increase over 9700k. The 10700k when overclocked with decent motherboard and memory should be a great CPU for gaming.
    10700 is 16 threads. It is suppose to be better than the 9900k without overclock not the 9700k.
    Probably the 10700k = 9900ks.
    i5 10600=8700k performance with minor ipc improvement if at all.
    lga 1200.
    I really don't see it selling well because of the new motherboard and high price.
    People with i3 or pentium can't upgrade to these new cpus without a new motherboard.
    Intel should not have change motherboard. It is skylake cpu they could make it work on lga 1151.
    Reply
  • al_capwn
    I think the biggest thing 10th-gen Intel CPUs will bring to the table is a lower price (I hope). Here's to waiting for 10nm from Intel, or smaller, for desktop. I'm glad AMD is putting up fantastic competition.

    I don't see upgrading my CPU until DDR5 is mainstream, and to see what Intel and AMD offers, in the foreseeable future.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    st379 said:
    Intel should not have change motherboard. It is skylake cpu they could make it work on lga 1151.
    Core uArch and socket have almost nothing to do with each other.

    Your complaint would certainly apply to Coffee Lake (where Intel could've retained the same socket for an unprecedented 4 generations), but Intel is now finally making I/O changes that necessitated a new socket.

    Comet lake tried to move to PCIe 4.0. Rocket Lake doubled the DMI datapath, upgraded its CPU-direct PCIe lanes to 4.0, and added another x4 for NVMe storage.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    al_capwn said:
    I think the biggest thing 10th-gen Intel CPUs will bring to the table is a lower price (I hope).
    Nope. These are 14 nm CPUs, meaning the cost structure won't change relative to Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs. That's not to say they won't be cheaper, but Intel could more easily just drop prices on their current gen.

    What's worse is that having more cores per CPU should actually make them more expensive (assuming Intel is able to hold its margins constant).

    al_capwn said:
    Here's to waiting for 10nm from Intel, or smaller, for desktop.
    Intel's CFO recently said that 10 nm would be less profitable, for them. You can bet they'll push the higher production costs onto consumers, to the extent they can. Only stiff competition from AMD can hope to keep that in check.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    bit_user said:
    Nope. These are 14 nm CPUs, meaning the cost structure won't change relative to Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs. That's not to say they won't be cheaper, but Intel could more easily just drop prices on their current gen.

    What's worse is that having more cores per CPU should actually make them more expensive (assuming Intel is able to hold its margins constant).
    More cores per money=cheaper,at least for the consumer.
    There has never been a CPU gen from intel that had prices based on production costs...
    bit_user said:
    Intel's CFO recently said that 10 nm would be less profitable, for them. You can bet they'll push the higher production costs onto consumers, to the extent they can. Only stiff competition from AMD can hope to keep that in check.
    Less profitable does not mean higher production costs,the stiff competition from AMD made intel have twice the profit as usual with 14nm so it's only logical to assume that 10nm is not going to make as much again,intel has to assume that profit will go down again to the usual ~10bil.
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/263565/intels-net-income-since-2004/
    Reply
  • Gurg
    bit_user said:
    Nope. These are 14 nm CPUs, meaning the cost structure won't change relative to Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs. That's not to say they won't be cheaper, but Intel could more easily just drop prices on their current gen. What's worse is that having more cores per CPU should actually make them more expensive (assuming Intel is able to hold its margins constant). Intel's CFO recently said that 10 nm would be less profitable, for them. You can bet they'll push the higher production costs onto consumers, to the extent they can. Only stiff competition from AMD can hope to keep that in check.

    Actually I believe you are wrong. Keeping on 14nm means that Intel has been able to continue using much of the same equipment this whole time. So in an accounting sense it is now fully depreciated so Intel's manufacturing costs are going down significantly. A semiconductor chip plant basically needs to replace lots of existing equipment each time they move to a smaller production size for improved tolerances. Additionally yields per wafer improve and can be maximized the longer the process is in production.

    In a financial sense the shift to 10nm will result in higher production costs due to the accelerated depreciation on the new replacement fab equipment needed to improve tolerances. Additionally the yield of good chips per wafer is much lower when moving to a new production size initially improving over time. Both of those factors outweigh the increased number of chips that can fit on the wafer. Since Intel is still looking to reduce to 7nm or lower in the coming years means that depreciation cost of new equipment will remain high for the entire shorter run at 10 nm compared to the long run at 14nm. Intel will also have trouble achieving the same high yield percentages it is currently getting from its long run at 14nm.

    That wafer that Intel was letting the media handle and take pictures of a month or two ago was most likely a reject with only around 20% or fewer good chips that didn't justify cutting the low number of good chips out for use and would have been scrapped. Usually with low yield wafer, the fewer good chips do not perform that well either.
    Reply
  • st379
    bit_user said:
    Core uArch and socket have almost nothing to do with each other.

    Your complaint would certainly apply to Coffee Lake (where Intel could've retained the same socket for an unprecedented 4 generations), but Intel is now finally making I/O changes that necessitated a new socket.

    Comet lake tried to move to PCIe 4.0. Rocket Lake doubled the DMI datapath, upgraded its CPU-direct PCIe lanes to 4.0, and added another x4 for NVMe storage.

    If Amd can do it Intel can do it. Not to mention 1151v2 cpu not supported on 1151v1.
    I remember that when the new cpu arrived someone release a bios update for 1151v1 that make those cpu work on it.
    Reply