Tag: CPU

Core i5-11400 and i9-11900K Rocket Lake CPUs Show Up in New Benchmarks

Leaks for Intel’s upcoming Core i5-11400 and Core i9-11900K Rocket Lake CPUs are starting to show up, including a few benchmarks. APISAK Tweeted two new benchmarks, one showcasing the i9-11900K running on an RTX 2080 Ti in an Ashes of the Singularity run, and a SiSoftware benchmark result has appeared for the Core i5-11400.

In the Ashes of the Singularity run, the Intel Core i9-11900K, with a base clock of 3.5ghz, scored 6400 points in the benchmark, with an average CPU frame rate of 64 fps. This score seems incredibly low for Intel’s next-gen flagship. For perspective, you can find plenty of Core i7-9700K results with the same settings and GPU with nearly double the frame rates. Presumably, this means the 11900K is an engineering sample and isn’t running beyond its base clock. But at least we now know that 11900K samples are in the testing phase, implying that Intel’s Rocket Lake chips should be getting close to launch.

For the Core i5-11400, we now know this chip rocks six cores and 12 threads, plus a base clock of 2.6GHz and a maximum turbo frequency of 4.4Ghz, not bad for what should be Intel’s lowest-end Core i5 model. The benchmark used is SiSoftware’s Multi-Media workload, and the 11400 came with a score of 646.07Mpix/s.

Intel’s Rocket Lake processors will be built on the upcoming Cypress Cove core architecture, which is simply Intel’s 10nm Sunny cove cores backported to the 14nm node. So yes, for one final time (we hope), Intel is sticking with its 14nm process. But, Intel seems to be focusing entirely on IPC performance this time around, with the i9-11900K only having eight cores and 16 threads, a strange occurrence when the Core i9-10900K came with ten cores and 20 threads. 

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X & Ryzen 9 5900X “Zen 3” CPU Benchmarks Leak Out, 16 Cores At 5 GHz & Huge Single-Threaded Performance Jump

The latest benchmarks of AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X “Zen 3” CPUs have leaked out in the Geekbench database (via TUM_APISAK). The Ryzen 9 series processors will feature the highest core count available in the Ryzen 5000 series lineup and will be aimed at the enthusiast gaming market.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16 Core & Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core CPU Benchmarks Leak Out, Huge Boost In Single-Core Performance

The benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X show both chips running at close to 5 GHz frequencies which is pretty impressive for such high core count chips. Both Ryzen 9 chips were running on different platforms. The Ryzen 9 5950X was featured on an ASUS ROG STRIX X570I Gaming motherboard with 16 GB (DDR4-3866) memory while the Ryzen 9 5900X was featured on MSI’s X570 GODLIKE motherboard with 16 GB (DDR4-3600) memory.

In Geekbench 5, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X scored 1575 points in the single-threaded &13,605 points in the multi-threaded tests. The chip was running at clock speeds close to the 5 GHz mark with the maximum reported clock speed hitting 4.983 GHz in the multi-threaded test while the CPU hit 5.01 GHz in the single-core test.

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X scored 1605 points in the single-threaded &12,869 points in the multi-threaded tests. Once again, the chip was boosting beyond its rated boost clocks with the highest core clock reported at 4.947 GHz in the multi-threaded and 4.95 GHz in the single-threaded test.

When it comes to performance comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is around 20% faster than the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X in the single-threaded and around 10% faster in multi-threaded tests. AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X is also around 20-25% faster in single-core but only around 6-8% faster on average in multi-core tests compared to its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 3900X.

Compared to Intel’s flagship Core i9-10900K CPU, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X offers a 15-20% single-core performance bump and around a 15% performance bump in multi-threaded tests.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X “Zen 3” Desktop CPU – 16 Cores / 32 Threads Up To 4.9 GHz For $799 US

Starting off with the top of the line parts, AMD is announcing the Ryzen 9 series which is made up of the Ryzen 9 5950X. The Ryzen 9 5950X is the flagship 16 core part which is aimed at users demanding heavy multi-threading performance on AM4 sockets.

The chip has a total cache of 72 MB and a TDP of 105W. The chip features a boost clock of up to 4.9 GHz boost which when put together is just stunning for a 16 core part. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is going to cost $799 US and will be available on the 5th of November like the rest of the lineup.

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X “Zen 3” Desktop CPU – 12 Cores / 24 Threads Up To 4.8 GHz For $549 US

Next up, we have the Ryzen 9 5900X which is a 12 core part that is aimed at users demanding heavy multi-threading performance on AM4 sockets. The chip has a total cache of 70 MB and a TDP of 105W. The chip features a base clock of 3.7 GHz and a boost clock of up to 4.8 GHz boost which is faster than the Ryzen 9 3900XT. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X will feature a retail price of $549 US which is $50 US higher than the MSRP of the Ryzen 9 3900XT while delivering significantly faster performance.

In performance comparisons, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X completely obliterates the Intel Core i9-10900K, delivering insane amounts of up to 15% single-threaded performance jump over the competing chip within Cinebench R20. The same goes for gaming performance where the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X delivers up to 21% performance gains over the Core i9-10900K.

The AMD Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPUs, codenamed Vermeer, will be launching on the 5th of November. The launch lineup will include the 16 core Ryzen 9 5950X, the 12 core Ryzen 9 5900X, the 8 core Ryzen 7 5800X, and the 6 core Ryzen 5 5600X. You can learn more about these SKUs here.

All 500 series motherboards (X570/B550) will be receiving BIOS updates to support the next-gen lineup so if you’re planning to get a Ryzen 5000 CPU at launch, you better head over to this link and grab one that’s supported for your motherboard (do note that 400-series support comes later around January 2021).

Intel Announces 10nm SuperFin Atom x6000E Elkhart Lake, Celeron and Pentium CPUs

Intel announced its new Atom x6000E series ‘Elkhart Lake’ of processors today, along with Pentium and Celeron N and J series chips, all targeted at industrial, embedded, and IoT applications. Intel is also pressing its Tiger Lake-UP3 chips into service for edge applications that require a higher level of performance. 

The Atom x6000E, Pentium, and Celeron processors feature either dual- or quad-core Tremont designs. Base frequencies for the Atom models vary between 1.2 to 1.8 GHz, while boost speeds top at at 3.0 GHz for chips that come with the feature. The Atom chips serve the 4.5W to 12W TDP range, while Intel splits the Pentium and Celeron processors into 6.5W and 10W variants. 

All models have baked in support for up to 64GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 or LPDDR4x-4267 memory, much like the Tiger Lake processors, and come in BGA-mounted packages, meaning they aren’t socketed processors. Intel also segments the stack by only providing ECC support for the Atom processors. 

The lineup comes with Gen11 graphics, which Intel says offers up to twice the performance of the Gen9 graphics found on prior-gen models. Atom also takes a step forward, courtesy of the Tremont architecture, to notch a 1.7X gain in single-threaded workloads and 1.5X gain in multi-threaded work over previous-gen Goldmont Plus. 

As we see with chips destined for the IoT space, Intel offers a seven to ten-year support window, and that includes ensuring the chips will be available throughout that same window. Intel also leans in on AI support with this generation, including support for the OpenVINO toolkit that includes containerized packages to speed deployment of automation, sensing, and vision applications. 

Tiger Lake-UP3

Intel is also pressing its Tiger Lake-UP3 chips into service for applications that require a higher level of performance. These chips come with all of the normal trimmings of the Tiger Lake processors, which you can read about in-depth here, like the 10nm SuperFin process, Xe LP graphics, Thunderbolt 4, and support for AVX-512 and VNNI. 

Intel Claims Its Cheaper To Build A Faster Gaming PC With Its 10th Gen Core CPUs Than AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs, Pits The Core i7-10700K Against Ryzen 9 3900XT

Intel has released a new set of ‘real-world’ performance benchmarks that compare its 10th Gen Desktop CPUs to the AMD Ryzen 3000XT lineup. The company specifically compares the gaming performance of its chip against its competitors and claims that they offer the best performance package at a cheaper price.

Intel Claims Their Core i7-10700K Is Not Only Faster in Gaming But Also Better Value Than AMD’s Ryzen 3000XT CPUs

The new ‘real world’ performance slides were showcased during a presentation to the APAC regional market. While Intel’s own CEO has stated that the industry should move on from the generic benchmarks showcase, the recent decline in desktop processor shipments has led the company to win over the minds of consumers in the mainstream and high-performance CPU segments with a new set of comparisons. We won’t start with how much controversy the real performance benchmark slides have been marked with since their first outing but recently, the blue team has started using similar priced and similar spec’d configurations that do lead to better representation of real-world usage.

Intel Core i7-10700K 8 Core vs AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT 12 Core CPUs Compared

The comparison consists of the Intel Core i7-10700K and the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT. The Intel Core i7-10700K is an 8 core and 16 thread CPUs with a base clock of 3.80 GHz, boost clock of up to 5.10 GHz, 20 MB of cache, and a TDP of 125W (229W PL2). The AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT is a 12 core and 24 thread CPU with a base clock of 3.80 GHz, boost clock of up to 4.70 GHz, 70 MB of cache, and a TDP of 105W.

Intel says that their Core i7-10700K CPU is cheaper with a starting price of $387 US ($409.99 US at Newegg) while the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT CPU is expensive at $499 US ($479.99 US at Amazon). The standard Ryzen 9 3900X which is not featured in these performance metrics costs $429.99 US that is a far better deal than the Ryzen 9 3900XT which offers up to 5% better performance but for a 10 percent price difference.

Intel used similar test setups which featured an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card and 16 GB of DDR4 memory. The memory on the Intel platform was running at 2933 MHz speeds while the AMD platform was running 3200 MHz DIMMs. Now there’s no mention of which motherboard both setups were using but considering that X570 and Z490 boards end up costing around the same, the price difference would be close with Intel offering a slightly better value versus the Ryzen 9 3900XT.

The performance benchmarks show that the Intel Core i7-10700K outperformed the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT in several AAA titles. The Intel CPU was up to

23% faster in Total War: Warhammer 2

17% faster in Leauge of Legends

15% faster in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

14% faster in Rocket Leauge

12% faster in War Thunder Tank Battle

6% faster in Total War Three Kingdoms

In addition to the games where the Core i7 scored a double-digit win against the Ryzen 9 CPU, Intel also showcased several other titles where their CPU was more than 3% faster than the 3900XT. The lead was seen in 24 out of the 30 titles tested. In the remaining tests, the Ryzen 9 3900XT secured a lead and surprisingly, the AMD CPU scored better than the Intel part in CSGO which is one of the top played eSports titles. All performance tests were performed on a 1080p resolution. The slides were shared by Benchlife however the exact appendix for workload and configurations isn’t shown.

Sure Intel has a solid lead in gaming performance which was the whole purpose of this comparison but a 12 core and 24 thread CPU also has several other benefits than just gaming. The AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT can deliver better performance to game streamers and for general productivity tasks and professional uses which many gamers these days also run simultaneously on their desktop PCs.

Its an added benefit from the several cores that Ryzen CPUs provide and while Intel leads the gaming benchmarks, the gap isn’t huge, especially if we compare the standard Ryzen 9 3900X CPU which costs pretty much identical to the Core i7-10700K in the retail segment. If you’re purely building a gamer-focused machine, then Intel CPUs do retain the advantage but the real question is how long will this advantage reside with Intel with Zen 3 fast approaching the desktop PC market.

Intel Unveils 3rd Gen Ice Lake-SP Xeon CPU Family: 10nm+ Sunny Cove Cores, New Instructions, 28 Core Chip Showcased

Intel has unveiled the details of its next-generation Xeon CPU family codenamed Ice Lake-SP at HotChips 32. Coming later this year, Ice Lake-SP CPUs are going to host a range of new features such as a brand new chip architecture, improved I/O, and an enhanced software stack powering Intel’s first 10nm server lineup.

Intel Ice Lake-SP ‘Next-Gen Xeon’ CPUs Detailed – Feature 10nm+ Sunny Cove Cores & Advanced Capabilities

The Intel Ice Lake-SP is officially launching later this year on the Whitley platform. The platform will scale to single and dual-socket servers. In its presentation, Intel unveiled a 28 core Ice Lake-SP CPU as an example to demonstrate the enhanced capabilities that Ice Lake-SP offers over Cascade Lake-SP.

Intel has not confirmed if the 28 core CPU they showcased is the highest core count that will be available with the Ice Lake-SP family or if there would be higher core count variants. Earlier rumors do point to higher core counts so this 28 core die could just be used for comparison with the top of the stack 2nd Gen Xeon CPUs available today.

Intel Ice Lake-SP ‘Next-Gen CPU’ CPU Architecture

Coming to the details, Intel mentions that its Ice Lake-SP CPUs are fabricated on the 10nm+ process and not the 10nm++ process which is utilized by the Tiger Lake CPUs which launch next month. The Ice Lake-SP family will make use of the Sunny Cove cores which deliver up to 18% IPC increase over the Skylake architecture which all 14nm Xeon CPUs utilize.

The Sunny Cove architecture, in general, adds a range of improvements over Cascade Lake or the enhanced Skylake cores such as:

Improved Front end: higher capacity and improved branch predictor

Wider and deeper machine: wider allocation and execution resources + larger structures

Enhancements in TLBs, single-thread execution, prefetching

Server enhancements – larger Mid-level Cache (L2) + second FMA

Intel also adds in a range of new SIMD instructions exclusive to the Sunny Cove server processors that are mainly meant to increase performance in Cryptography and compression/decompression workloads. That along with enhanced software and algorithmic support will allow Intel gains of up to 8X per core over Cascade Lake.

Intel Ice Lake-SP ‘Next-Gen CPU’ 28 Core Die & Whitley Platform Detailed

Looking at the block diagram of the Ice Lake-SP 28 core CPU, the chip offers a new interconnect in the form of an enhanced Mesh Fabric which runs through all of the 28 CPU cores. The Ice Lake-SP die features two 4-channel memory controllers whereas the Cascade Lake-SP die offered two tri-channel memory controllers.

The Intel Ice Lake-SP processors also feature four PCIe Gen 4 controllers, each offers 16 Gen 4 lanes for a total of 64 lanes on the 28 core die. The Cascade Lake-SP chips offered hexa-channel memory support while Ice Lake-SP will offer octa-channel memory support on the Whitley platform at launch. The platform will be able to support up to DDR4-3200 MHz memory (16 DIMM per socket with 2nd Gen persistent memory support.

Intel is also adding a range of latency and coherence optimizations to Ice Lake-SP chips. But you can see that the memory bandwidth-latency gets a big jump with the 8-channel memory interface and the higher DIMM speeds.

Intel Ice Lake-SP ‘Next-Gen CPU’ New Interconnect Infrastructure

In addition to the standard Mesh interconnect, Intel has further expanded its interconnect design for Ice Lake-SP Xeon CPUs. The new control fabric and data fabric do connect with the cores and different controllers of the chip but also manage the data flower and power control for the chips themselves. These new interconnects will deliver even lower latency and faster clock updates than 3rd Gen Cooper Lake-SP chips. For example, the core frequency transition takes 12us and the mesh frequency transition takes 20us on Cascade Lake-SP chips. Ice Lake-SP in comparison takes less than 1us and 7us, respectively.

The less frequency drain means higher efficiency over Cascade Lake. Ice Lake-SP will also improve upon the AVX frequency since not all AVX-512 workloads consume higher power. This also isn’t specific to just AVX-512. Even AVX-256 instructions on Ice Lake-SP will deliver better frequencies profile over Cascade Lake CPUs.

Some of the major upgrades that 10nm will deliver include:

2.7x density scaling vs 14nm

Self-aligned Quad-Patterning

Contact Over Active Gate

Cobalt Interconnect (M0, M1)

1st Gen Foveros 3D Stacking

2nd Gen EMIB

The Intel Ice Lake-SP lineup would be directly competing against AMD’s enhanced 7nm based EPYC Milan lineup which will feature the brand new 7nm Zen 3 core architecture which is confirmed to be one of AMD’s biggest architectural upgrade since the original Zen core. Expect to see more Intel & NVIDIA based servers in the coming months.

Huawei’s 24-Core 7nm Kunpeng CPU Allegedly Beats Core i9-9900K In Multi-Core Performance

Chinese news outlet IThome received word that Huawei is on the brink if launching the brand’s new desktop PC (internally known as Pangu) for the domestic market. The system utilizes a variant of the company’s Kunpeng 920, which is also known as the Hi1620. The report claims that the Kunpeng 920 3211K’s multi-core performance is slightly better than the Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake processor.

The Kunpeng 920, which is based on Arm’s Neoverse N1 (codename Ares) microarchitecture, boasts core configurations that span from 24 up to 64 cores, running between 2.4 GHz and 3 GHz. TSMC used to produce Kunpeng 920 for Huawei on its 7nm process node before cutting off all ties with Chinese tech giant due to new U.S. regulations.

The Kunpeng 920 3211K in particular has 24 cores that max out at 2.6 GHz. Huawei pairs the processor with 8GB of SO-DIMM memory, a 512GB Samsung SSD and AMD’s Radeon 520 mobile graphics card.

Huawei tailors the Pangu to government and enterprise markets, meaning the system is equipped with China’s homemade Unified Operating System (UOS). User expansion and customization on the Pangu is close to zero. The Kunpeng 920 3211K is soldered to the motherboard and doesn’t support other graphics cards. The UOS is cemented into the PC so you can’t install Windows on it either. We suspect you may be able to upgrade the memory or SSD, but that’s about it.

The purported images of the Pangu show three USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port and a single 3.5mm headphone jack in the front of the case. There is also room for an optical drive. The rear of the case holds four USB Type-A ports, one Ethernet port, three 3.5mm audio jacks and a D-Sub port. IThome’s report states that the Pangu comes with a 23.8-inch monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and 70% NTSC color gamut.

Pricing and the exact release date for the Pangu is unknown. The IThome reader only insinuated that the Pangu will launch soon.

Intel 10th Gen Comet Lake-S Desktop CPU Final Specifications & Prices Leak Out – Core i9-10900K 10 Core For $488 US, Core i7-10700K 8 Core For $374 US, Core i5 6 Core Starting at $150 US

The final specifications & prices of Intel’s upcoming 10th Generation Comet Lake-S Desktop CPU family have leaked out by Videocardz. The information confirms the details that we already knew but the most important thing covered in this leak is the prices that show that Intel has definitely given its Core lineup a major overhaul in terms of price/positioning to tackle AMD’s Ryzen 3000 processors.

Intel’s 10th Generation Desktop CPU Family Specifications & Prices Leak Out – Core i9-10900K With 10 Cores For $488 US, i7-10700K With 8 Cores For $374 US

Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake-S Desktop CPUs and the accompanying Z490 platform are expected to be unveiled on 30th April and will be introduced on retail shelves on the 20th of May.

Update: HD-Tecnologia has also leaked the latest slides and shown us the pictures of Intel’s latest box packaging for its 10th Generation Desktop CPUs. While the dodecahedron packaging for 9th Gen Core i9 desktop CPUs looked great, I think the more simplistic box-shaped package with a nice mirror cut design looks even better.

The Intel Comet Lake-S or the 10th Generation Core Family is expected to be the last CPU lineup to reuse the 14nm Skylake architecture. The Skylake architecture has been with us since 2015 and Intel has yet to replace it for desktop consumers. The architecture has seen several optimizations and key refinements that have led to an increase from 4 cores and 8 threads to 10 cores and 20 threads. The same 14nm process has also been improved to the point that the flagship CPU speeds have seen a massive jump from 4.20 GHz boosts to 5.30 GHz boosts.

There are three SKUs in the unlocked lineup which is one less than what we were told. There’s the flagship Core i9-10900K which is followed by the Core i7-10700K and the Core i5-10600K. The Core i3 variant is missing but it’s such a crucial SKU that would be targetting a very competitive market and it would be a bad decision for Intel to not launch an unlocked quad-core part in the budget tier segment.

Intel Core i9-10900K – 10 Cores, Up To 5.3 GHz Single-Core, 4.9 GHz All-Core at $488 US

The Intel Core i9-10900K will be the flagship part of the 10th Generation Desktop CPU family. Intel has a few tricks up their sleeves to offer even better performance than the Core i9-9900KS. The i9-10900K features 10 cores, 20 threads a total cache of 20 MB and a 125W TDP. The chip has a base frequency of 3.7 GHz and a boost frequency of 5.1 GHz. However, using Intel’s Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology, the chip can boost up to 5.2 GHz on a single-core and what’s even better is the 4.9 GHz all-core boost. Some of the features of this particular chip include:

Up to 4.8 GHz All-Core Turbo

Up to 5.3 / 4.0 GHz Thermal Velocity Boost Singe / All-core Turbo

Up to 5.2 GHz Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0

Up to 10C and 20T

Up to DDR4-2933 MHz dual-channel

Enhanced Core & Memory Overclocking

Active Core Group Tuning

Here’s the interesting part, the chip would also get Thermal Velocity Boost, similar to the current flagship parts. CPUs that support this algorithm, like the Core i9-10900K, would feature even faster boost frequencies of 5.3 GHz (single-core) and 4.9 GHz (all-core). However, as the name suggests, only top-tier cooling solutions would be able to allow full utilization of the Thermal Velocity Boost feature. So unless you rock a high-end AIO liquid cooler or a closed-loop setup, don’t expect a sustained velocity boost but rather short bursts until the threshold is hit. It will be interesting to know the full extent of the features that this function has to offer and what kind of cooling would the Core i9-10900K requires in general. A few benchmarks of the Core i9-10900K versus the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X CPU can be found here.

Intel Core i7-10700K – 8 Cores, Up To 5.1 GHz Single-Core, 4.7 GHz All-Core at $374 US

The Intel Core i7-10700K would be featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. The chip would house 16 MB of total cache and a TDP of 125W. The chip would feature a base clock of 3.8 GHz, a boost clock of 5.0 GHz (single-core), and 5.1 GHz (single-core) with Turbo Boost Max 3.0. The chip will be 100 MHz faster in single-core but slower across all-cores by 100 MHz than the Core i9-9900K which retails for over $500 US. Since this is an i7 part, expect pricing to fall around $350-$400 US.

Intel Core i5-10600K – 6 Cores, Up To 4.8 GHz Single-Core, 4.5 GHz All-Core at $262 US

The Intel Core i7-10600K would be featuring 6 cores and 12 threads. The chip would house 12 MB of total cache and a TDP of 125W. The chip would feature a base clock of 4.1 GHz, a boost clock of 4.8 GHz (single-core), and 4.5 GHz (all-core). The chip would be faster than the 8th Gen flagship, the Core i7-8700K, featuring a higher base and boost clock across a single and all-cores. The Core i5 should be retailing in the $220-$270 US segment which is a decent price for a fast 6 core and multi-threaded chip.

Intel 10th Gen Comet Lake-S 65W Desktop CPU Family

The rest of the lineup is made up of the 65W SKUs which come in Core i9, Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 flavors. Having a 65W Core i9-10900 with 10 cores and 20 threads which still boosts up to 4.5GHz across all cores and 4.6 GHz if you include the Thermal Velocity boost is pretty good plus 5.2 GHz on a single-core doesn’t sound that bad at all, considering this is a 65W chip (at its base frequency).

The Intel Core i3 lineup is also worth pointing out as it is made up of 3 SKUs which seem to be part of the initial launch family. The Core i3-10320 would be leading with 4 cores, 8 threads at 65W. 8MB of cache, clocks of up to 4.6 GHz with a single-core, and 4.4 GHz on all-cores sound decent enough for what is supposed to be a budget chip retailing under $150US. The full list of SKUs along with their specs can be seen in the table below.

400-Series Platform and LGA 1200 Socket Support

The Comet Lake-S family would also move to a new socket known as LGA 1200. While the LGA 1200 socket has the same dimensions as the LGA 1151 socket (37.5mm x 37.5mm), the socket keying has shifted to the left side and Comet Lake is no longer electrically or mechanically compatible with Coffee Lake motherboards. Some details of the new LGA 1200 package and socket for Comet Lake:

Comet Lake will transition to a higher pin-count package

Comet Lake LGA will not have backward compatibility with legacy platforms

No changes to ILM dimensions or thermal solution retention

Comet Lake LGA improves power delivery and support for future incremental I/O features

Pin 1 orientation remains the same, but socket keying has shifted left

The good thing is that your existing coolers would still be compatible with the LGA 1200 socket so that’s one hardware change you shouldn’t be worrying about. The Comet Lake-S family will retain support for DDR4-2666 memory UDIMM and support up to 32 GB capacity DIMMs per channel.

Intel plans to have several chipsets deployed in the 400-series family. There would obviously be Z490 which will target the ‘K’ unlocked SKUs I mentioned above, but aside from that, we are looking at the W480 (Entry Workstation), Q470 (Corporate with Intel vPro), and H410 (Value) chipsets. These would target more corporate and entry tier users. Also interesting to note is that H410 is not pin-compatible with W480 and Q470 chipsets, which reveals a very cut down design for the entry-level chip.

Following are some of the main platform features of the 10th Generation Comet Lake-S family:

Up To 10 processor cores for enhanced performance

Up To 30 PCH-H High-Speed I/O lanes for port flexibility

Up To 40 PCIe 3.0 Lanes (16 CPU, up to 24 PCH)

Media & Display features for premium 4K content support

Integrated + Discrete Intel Wireless-AC (Wi-Fi/BT CNVi) Support

Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) Support

Enhanced Core and memory overclock

Integrated USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 (10 Gb/s) support

Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST)

Programmable (Open FW SDK) Quad-Core Audio DSP

C10 & S0ix Support for Modern Standby

While there would be a range of new overclocking features, Intel has also revealed that they will be thinning out the die of 10th Gen Desktop CPUs, offering more IHS space for the CPU to make use of to dissipate heat. Intel is calling it the Thin Die STIM design and is stated to improve the overall CPU thermal performance.

In terms of chipset features, W480 would be the most feature-rich of the three chipsets that are mentioned here. Z490 would be the most appealing for the enthusiast and gaming audience, but let’s take a look at the mainstream chipsets. The W480 chipset would offer a total of 46 high-speed IO lanes and a total of 40 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes. The CPUs would retain 16 lanes with the chipset offering up to 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

There would be support for up to 8 SATA III ports, 8 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports or 10 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 14 USB 3.2 Gen ports, and Intel RST. Neither of the three chipsets would feature overclock support since that is restricted to the Z490 chipset but we will get more information on overclocking later on from Intel themselves. 

Intel has definitely adjusted the prices of various processors in its lineup. The Core i9-10900K with 10 cores actually features a lower price point than the $500 US+ Core i9-9900KS while being lower in price which is a great thing for consumers who were waiting to buy one. The rest of the prices are also great and the only thing that needs to be seen now is how they fare against AMD’s Ryzen 3000 in actual benchmark tests. We will know what kind of value proposition the Intel 10th Gen Core lineup holds against the AMD Zen 2 based family on the 20th of May.

Intel 10th Gen Laptop CPU at 5 GHz Spotted Before Release

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.

The i9-10880H (codename Comet Lake-H) is expected to arrive sporting eight cores and 16 threads like its predecessor. Besides the improved clock speeds, there isn’t any significant architectural changes with Comet Lake over the i9-10880H’s Coffee Lake. Therefore, we expect the i9-10880H to retain the same 16MB of L3 cache as the i9-9880H. Being a H-series part, the 14nm processor will likely operate within the 45W envelope.

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%.

With the previous generation, Intel offered consumers the i9-9980H and faster i9-9980HK. The latter operates with a 100 MHz and 200 MHz higher base and boost clocks, respectively. It’s plausible that Intel would release a i9-10880HK with slightly faster clocks.

So far, the i9-10980HK has appeared with a 3.1 base clock and 5.27 GHz boost clock in unconfirmed benchmarks. Given the huge gap between the i9-10980HK and i9-10880H’s specifications, there’s certainly room for a i9-10880HK to slide in between. 

The i9-10880H and i9-10980HK should be very popular choices for upcoming high-performance mobile workstations and gaming laptops. However, they’ll have to compete with AMD’s Ryzen 4000-series (codename Renoir) chips, such as the Ryzen 9 4900H and Ryzen 7 4800H.

AWS Designing a 32-Core Arm Neoverse N1 CPU for Cloud Servers

Amazon Web Services’s CPU design unit is working on a new multi-core processor for AWS servers. The new CPU is said to use Arm’s new Neoverse N1 architecture and would feature a considerably higher core-count when compared to AWS’s first-generation Graviton processor, which should result in a significant performance increase.

The yet-to-be-named AWS CPU will be based on Arm’s Neoverse N1 microarchitecture and will integrate as many as 32 cores, according to Reuters, which cites two sources with knowledge of the matter. The chip will also be able to connect to various special-purpose accelerators using a ‘fabric’ interface to greatly speed up certain workloads.

On a high level, the Neoverse N1 (aka Ares) to a large degree resembles Arm’s consumer-oriented Cortex-A76 microarchitecture: a 4-wide fetch/decode machine with a pipeline depth of only 11 stages that can reduce itself to 9 when needed. Meanwhile, the Neoverse N1 is designed to run at relatively high frequencies to provide maximum single-thread performance, it has a different cache architecture (coherent, with 1 MB L2 option, yet caches are technically not a part of the microarchitecture per se), and some other enhancements. Overall, with the Neoverse N1 Arm is looking at clocks of up to 3.1 GHz and a ~100 W TDP per SoC.

Readers who are interested to find out more about Arm’s Neoverse N1 platform can read our coverage from earlier this year, but the key thing in the context of the newly released information is that AWS continues to believe in custom Arm-based processors for servers and would be among the first adopters of the Neoverse N1. As noted above, the microarchitecture and the platform were optimized for cloud server workloads from the ground up, so with with further customization from Amazon, the 32-core processor promises to offer rather serious performance in applications that it was designed for. Will these CPUs challenge AMD’s Rome or Intel’s Cascade Lake? Probably not, but the importance of custom chips is their ability to offer the right total cost of ownership and sufficient performance, not win all the benchmarks.

Intel Comet Lake-S 10-Core CPU Benchmarks Surface

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. 

As a quick refresher, Comet Lake-S will replace Intel’s current Coffee Lake Refresh lineup. The upcoming Comet Lake-S chips continue to hail from Intel’s 14nm process node. However, they’re likely to be based on an improved 14nm+++ process. Comet Lake-S is also expected to bring higher core counts and more cache.

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.