Intel officially announced its 10th-generation Core desktop processors today, from the $122 Core i3 10100 all the way up to the $488 Core i9 10900K. Like its Comet Lake H mobile processors, announced in early April, the big focus here is on single-core performance through frequency gains - with several models pushing past 5GHz and the flagship model hitting 5.3GHz - but there are also higher core and thread counts for many models. Intel also detailed some nice feature additions for enthusiasts and overclockers which look promising - but will it be enough to reverse the trend towards AMD Ryzen for gamers and content creators? Here's what you need to know about Comet Lake on desktop.
First, let's take a look at the full Comet Lake Core lineup. We're seeing faster frequencies more or less across the board compared to the Coffee Lake refresh of 2019, but there are also some interesting design changes to note.
Core i9 processors now have ten hyper-threaded cores, up from eight last gen, while Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 keep their ninth-gen core counts (four, six and eight, respectively) but gain hyper-threading. Finally, the tray prices here are exactly the same as last-gen, which hopefully will translate into similar prices at retail despite the current human malware situation.