Intel’s 10th Generation desktop processors have launched. A Core i9 behemoth with 10 cores, 20 processing threads, and a maximum frequency of 5.3GHz leads the company’s new lineup of mainstream CPUs.
Intel is adding more cores and better performance to its mainstream desktop processors, once a sleepy backwater of the semiconductor industry that has roared back to life in recent years thanks to increased competition from AMD’s Ryzen chips.
The new CPUs Intel unveiled this week—32 of them in total—range from $40 dual-core Celeron models destined for pokey library lookup stations to a $490 Core i9 behemoth with 10 cores,20 processing threads, and a maximum frequency of 5.3GHz (on one core). They are part of the “Comet Lake-S” processor family, built on a refinement of the 14nm semiconductor fabrication process (technically, here dubbed «14nm++») that Intel has used for some years.
A First Look at the Line: Core i9 and Core i7
A few observations based on the launch specs. Here’s a look at the Core i9 and Core i7 chips being launched. (A few more, in the «T» series, are detailed later.)
SEE ALSO: AMD Launches Its ‘Fastest Ever’ Ryzen 3 Desktop Processors
You’ll note that the lineup includes «K» (overclockable), «KF» (unlocked for overclocking, but without integrated graphics), and «F» (no integrated graphics) chips. Intel is bringing back the no-integrated-graphics KF and F versions, with modest discounts (varying from chip to chip) off the list prices of their equivalents with integrated graphics. (With the initial launch of the F-type desktop chips in the 9th Generation desktop line, at times the F versions sold for as much as the non-F chips.) Once again, the flavor of integrated graphics, where it is present, is the now-familiar Intel UHD Graphics 630.
A big thing to note: All of the chips from Core i3 to i9 support thread-doubling Hyper-Threading, with the Core i3 chips offering four cores and support for up to eight threads. That’s a major departure (and reversal) from the 9th Generation Core chips, which were a mixed bag of Hyper-Threaded versus not.
The Big Iron: The Core i9-10900K
The 10-core flagship, the Core i9-10900K, is destined for powerful but niche desktops that appeal to hardcore gamers and PC-building enthusiasts. Not only does it have more cores and threads than its predecessor, the Core i9-9900K, but Intel claims that it will also offer better performance when running on just a single core. That’s thanks to the company’s new Thermal Velocity Boost feature, which identifies the best-performing core and optimizes the PC to run on it.
Single-core performance is important to many PC gamers, ever in search of better components that will let their games display more frames per second (fps) and thus silky-smooth visuals. Intel claims that more than half of PC games are optimized to run on a single processor core.
The company is targeting the Core i9-10900K at gamers and multimedia content creators whose current PCs are at least three years old.
