Intel Core i9-10900K Could Outperform i9-9900K By Up To 30 Percent

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As we're approaching the rumored Intel Comet Lake-S desktop launch, we're slowly starting to spot more performance figures that fall in a much more believable range. The latest test submission comes from Tum_Apisak, who has kindly trawled through the Geekbench results databases and found some figures for the alleged i9-10900K.

The Intel Core i9-10900K is expected to be the successor to the Core i9-9900K, packing an additional two cores and featuring slightly uplifted frequencies. Whereas the Core i9-9900K has a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and a maximum boost clock of 5.0 GHz, the i9-10900K is expected to bump those figures to 3.7 GHz and a maximum clock of 5.1 GHz.

Purported Benchmark Results

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.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
CPUi9-9900Ki9-10900K
Cores/Threads8 / 1610 / 20
Base Frequency3.6 GHz3.7 GHz
Max Boost Frequency5.0 GHz5.1 GHz
Geekbench 5 Single-Core1340 pts1437 pts
Row 4 - Cell 0 Improvement+ 7%
Geekbench 5 Multi-Core8787 pts11390 pts
Row 6 - Cell 0 Improvement+ 30%

*Core i9-10900K specs in table not confirmed

Looking purely at core count, you would expect the Core i9-10900K to notch a 25% increase in multi-threaded performance, but the 30% figure jumps over that by a significant margin. The slightly elevated clock speeds would account for that somewhat, but not by the entire 5%, so we reckon there is something more going on.

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.

Of course, we won't know for sure until the chips come out and we get them in our labs for review. The biggest bit of information that we're still missing is what they will cost -- though given that AMD's Ryzen 3000 CPUs are brutally competitive and Intel does need to catch up, we somehow doubt the price hikes will be all too steep. Even so, Intel says it might take until late 2021 for Intel to catch up with AMD.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • mdd1963
    So, 20-22% more performance from 25% more cores, faster RAM clocks (lets hope). and, a whopping 100 MHz boost on the base clock and boost clock speeds??...

    What did I miss?

    Barring some trickery, many might be pretty underwhelmed with a 3-5 fps increase in gaming framerates at 1080P in CS:GO! :)
    Reply
  • NightHawkRMX
    I'm really wandering what intel expects OEMs to do with these CPUs. An OEM isn't going to like to spend money on a beeeeeefy cooler to even think of uses one of these or even a non -k version.
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    Get your nuclear reactor ready to power this thing.
    Reply
  • jeremyj_83
    NightHawkRMX said:
    I'm really wandering what intel expects OEMs to do with these CPUs. An OEM isn't going to like to spend money on a beeeeeefy cooler to even think of uses one of these or even a non -k version.
    You forgot about the 1500W PSU you will need to power it. I wonder if Intel will include their industrial chiller that they used for the 28c @ 5.0GHz demo with every 10900k....
    Reply
  • jeremyj_83
    logainofhades said:
    Get your nuclear reactor ready to power this thing.
    Actual footage of someone turning on a computer with an i9-10900k CPU
    Reply
  • Olle P
    Forget about the multicore performance, where did the 7% single core increase come from?
    Upping the frequency by just 2% shouldn't do that!
    Reply
  • jeremyj_83
    Olle P said:
    Forget about the multicore performance, where did the 7% single core increase come from?
    Upping the frequency by just 2% shouldn't do that!
    Isn't the 10 series rumored to have that "velocity boost" and the 10900k is to like 5.3GHz. If so right there is 6% higher clock speed and the other 1% could be from better RAM.
    Reply
  • King_V
    NightHawkRMX said:
    I'm really wandering what intel expects OEMs to do with these CPUs. An OEM isn't going to like to spend money on a beeeeeefy cooler to even think of uses one of these or even a non -k version.

    One would think with all the money they've made sitting on their laurels for so many years and not actually making much in the way of advances in CPU technology, that they could easily afford providing exceptional coolers for their excessively power-hungry CPUs.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    Or, more simple : some security vulnerabilities software mitigations are now implemented in hardware.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    "Looking purely at core count, you would expect the Core i9-10900K to notch a 25% increase in multi-threaded performance, but the 30% figure jumps over that by a significant margin. The slightly elevated clock speeds would account for that somewhat, but not by the entire 5%, so we reckon there is something more going on. "
    Since when has 5% become a significant margin?

    Is this something that is new in our now post Corona world?
    Reply