Intel Comet Lake leak gives us a taste of how the CPUs might compare to AMD Ryzen 3000

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Intel’s next-gen Comet Lake-S desktop processors have been the subject of more online leakage, this time detailing the specs of one of the 10th-gen CPUs – and apparently a finished version of the chip.

A 3DMark result posted on Reddit (via prolific Twitter leaker Momomo_us, as spotted by PC GamesN) shows what appears to be the final version of Intel’s Core i5-10600 (as opposed to the engineering samples which have graced previous leaks).

If this is correct – and we have to exercise the usual caution, and note that the result has since been removed (although that could be because it’s on the money) – it shows the i5-10600 is a 6-core (12-thread) processor with a base clock running at 3.3GHz and a Turbo of up to 4.7GHz.

It would seem that the leak pertains to the finished model because it has the full processor name in place, rather than the usual placeholder names which denote early engineering samples (which won’t be representative of the final spec or performance you can expect from the CPU).

Note that the result also showed the Core i5-10600 was nestling in an MSI Z490 Pro Carbon WiFi motherboard. So yes, in case you missed this, Comet Lake will require a motherboard upgrade (as it uses a different socket – albeit one of the same size).

Please release me…

Regarding the potential release date of next-gen Comet Lake, the general buzz on the grapevine has been that that these chips are expected to arrive early in 2020, probably in the first quarter – although the most recent speculation pointed to a slightly later timeframe, namely an April release.

However, if finished versions of processors are now floating around – and of course that’s a sizeable if we can’t take for granted – maybe we can expect to see Comet Lake-S desktop chips in Q1 of next year after all.

That would certainly be good for Intel, as it needs to get some fresh silicon out there to counter the threat of AMD’s hot-selling Ryzen 3000 CPUs. And indeed to move in good time before Ryzen 4000 processors pitch up (AMD has previously indicated that these Zen 3 chips will arrive in the latter half of 2020, so that could mean late summer, potentially).

Previous leaks have pointed to the Comet Lake-S Core i5-10400 (also 6-core, 12-thread) being clocked at 3.5GHz with Turbo up to 4.1GHz, and a flagship Core i9 that runs with 10-cores (20-threads), supposedly with Turbo up to 5.1GHz.

As to exactly how Comet Lake-S next-gen chips will shape up against Ryzen 3000, it’s obviously way too early to guess, but one thing is fairly clear, namely that Intel will have its work cut out in terms of competitively pricing the new CPUs, given the value proposition of AMD’s latest desktop processors.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).