Intel Core i5-10400 comes close to AMD Ryzen 5 3600 in leaked benchmarks

(Image credit: Toms Hardware)

The soon-to-be-released Intel Core i5-10400 is just shy of beating AMD’s year-old Ryzen 5 3600 in leaked benchmarks.

The Core i5-10400 is an affordable mid-range Comet Lake CPU that’s expected to launch at the end of the month priced at $182 (around £145, AU$285). Though it’s based on Intel’s ageing 14nm architecture, it offers similar specs to AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 5 3600; it’s a 6-core, 12-thread locked processor with a base clock of 2.9 GHz and a Turbo Boost of 4.3GHz. 

Though it’s yet to arrive on shelves, a PC enthusiast on ChipHell has managed to put the CPU through its paces. Testing the Comet Lake chip on an MSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk motherboard teamed with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, they ran a number of benchmarking tests, using Cinebench R15 and R20, various forms of CPU-Z bench, and SuperPi.

Compared to the Core i5-9400F, the incoming Core i5-10400 recorded modest gains of 2-5% in single-core performance. However, thanks to its added Hyper-Threading, it shamed its budget predecessor in multi-thread tests with impressive 35-45% performance gains in CPU-Z, a 41.85% gain with Cinebench R20, and 45.05% gain with Cinebench R15.

The CPU didn’t fare so well compared to AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600, however. Even though Team Red’s hexa-core chip debuted a year ago, the chip posted 5-10% single-core gains over the Core i5-10400. It also came out on top when it comes to multi-core performance, scoring 3746 in Cinebench R20’s multi-core test, compared to the 3186 racked up by Intel’s mid-range CPU.

Though it failed to topple the Ryzen 5 3600, the Intel Core i5-10400 is still shaping up as a decent mid-range chip when it comes to gaming performance. Earlier this month, leaked benchmarks showed that the CPU outperformed Intel’s pricier Core i7-9700F chip in certain scenarios, despite having two fewer cores and a slower Turbo clock.

Carly Page

Carly Page is a Freelance journalist, copywriter and editor specialising in Consumer/B2B technology. She has written for a range of titles including Computer Shopper, Expert Reviews, IT Pro, the Metro, PC Pro, TechRadar and Tes.