Intel is launching today the Core 10th-gen Comet Lake H-series CPUs for high-performance productivity and gaming laptops.
The big one is the introduction of a new 8-core processor into the Core i7 range. The Core i7-10875H essentially takes what Intel was offering previously with the Core i9-9880H, but brings it down from the expensive Core i9 tier to the more mainstream Core i7 family.
We don’t have unit pricing on the new parts just yet but as an example, the customer price for a 9880H was $556, compared to $395 for the six-core 9850H and 9750H. With 8 cores now in the Core i7 line-up, it should be cheaper for OEMs to offer such a part. Laptops that previously used the Core i7-9750H should be getting a Core i7-10875H this generation, for around the same retail price everything else being equal.
Outside of the 10875H, most of the other CPUs are minor revisions to what we had previously. The Core i5 line-up remains at 4 cores and 8 threads, there are still two other Core i7 processors offering 6 cores and 12 threads, while at the top of the stack is the Core i9-10980HK continuing to offer the best 8 core performance in this line-up with the highest clock speeds in an unlocked package.
Right at the top of the stack with the Core i9-10980HK. A 2.4 GHz base clock on 4 cores is identical to what Intel were offering with the i9-9980HK. However now we get a 5.3 GHz Thermal Velocity Boost, up from 5.0 GHz. Intel says above 85C, that drops to 5.1 GHz, which is 300 MHz higher than the non-Thermal Velocity Boost numbers on the 9980HK. Intel also told us the chip has a 4.4 GHz all-core turbo, up from 4.2 GHz with the previous gen.
Then for the 10875H we’re basically getting a Core i9-9880H as we mentioned, with a slightly higher turbo frequency provided by Thermal Velocity Boost, ~300 MHz higher in the best case. And this remains the same for the rest of the parts. If we’re lucky we’re seeing a 100 MHz higher base clock and 400 MHz higher turbo clock, which at the absolute best is a 10% improvement.
The rest of these processor specs remain similar to previous generations, too. Cache sizes are kept the same at 8MB for quad-cores, 12MB for hexa-cores and 16MB for octa-cores. Memory support has received a small bump, from DDR4-2666 to up to DDR4-2933 support. Other new features are partially integrated Wi-Fi 6 support, and a one-click overclock method for unlocked CPUs.
Intel’s performance figures for this new generation mostly focus on comparing 10th-gen to 3-year-old 7th-gen configurations. This does have its place given a lot of people will be making that sort of upgrade, but omitting performance compared to the previous generation is disappointing. Oh, and take note Intel, on a slide discussing gaming performance between 7th to 10th gen systems, the GPUs used for each system are substantially different, pitting a GTX 1080 versus an RTX 2080. That’s not very useful data.
