Intel Comet Lake first made its way into Ultrabooks in late 2019, but ever since then we've been waiting to see them make their way to the best gaming laptops and workstations. That wait is over.
Today, Intel has announced the full lineup of Comet Lake-H processors, which will be the high-performance chips that will be found in gaming laptops this year. And, when we say high-performance, we mean that turbo speeds are being pushed all the way up to 5.3GHz in a laptop, which is a spec that was out of reach for the best processors just a couple years ago.
- Here are the best graphics cards
- Check out the war of Nvidia vs AMD
- We'll show you how to build a PC
It's not just clock speeds that see a jump, though. Core counts are also getting a boost, particularly in the mid-range. You see, when it comes to 9th-gen Coffee Lake Refresh processors for laptops, core counts peaked at 8-cores and 16-threads for the top-end Core i9 processors, but everything below that had less available. However, with the Intel Core i7-10875H the spec gets bumped up to 8-cores and 16-threads, likely in response to AMD Ryzen 4000.
These high core counts, combined with the high turbo speeds should lead to a sizable jump in performance, especially if you haven't upgraded your laptop in a few years. We can't say just how big of a performance boost these new processors will provide until we get our hands on them for testing, though.
Either way, with both Comet Lake-H and AMD Ryzen 4000-H out in the wild, the best laptops for gaming and creative work are getting a lot better, and the line between desktop and mobile computing is getting even more blurred. We're excited to get our hands on laptops rocking these new Intel and AMD processors over the next few months as they filter out to store shelves.
We went ahead and listed out all the 10th-generation Intel Comet Lake-H processors down below:
- Intel Core i5-10300H: 4 cores, 8 threads | 2.5GHz base clock | 4.5GHz max Turbo
- Intel Core i5-10400H: 4 cores, 8 threads | 2.6GHz base clock | 4.6GHz max Turbo
- Intel Core i7-10750H: 6 cores, 12 threads | 2.6GHz base clock | 5.0GHz max Turbo
- Intel Core i7-10850H: 6 cores, 12 threads | 2.7GHz base clock | 5.1GHz max Turbo
- Intel Core i7-10875H: 8 cores, 16 threads | 2.3GHz base clock | 5.1GHz max Turbo
- Intel Core i9-10980HK: 8 cores, 16 threads | 2.4GHz base clock | 5.3GHz max Turbo
Intel vs AMD
With what's happening in the computing world right now, it's impossible not to talk about the war between Intel and AMD here. AMD Ryzen 4000 laptops are here and in our testing of the Asus Zephyrus G14, AMD has a pretty significant advantage in battery life and power over Intel's 9th-generation Coffee Lake Refresh-H processors.
Only time will tell whether or not Intel Comet Lake-H will be enough to hold off AMD, and the higher clock speeds on offer here might be enough. However, since AMD Zen 2 processors bring such a huge improvement to IPC, or instructions per clock, a raw clock speed increase might not be enough.
Analysts are already taking a pretty critical look at Intel over this issue, predicting that Team Blue could have a rough time this year if it can't sufficiently defend its mobile crown from AMD.
One thing is for sure either way, though. The best gaming laptops are about to get a whole lot better in the very near future. Even if Comet Lake-H doesn't absolutely destroy AMD, it will result in better gaming devices, especially when paired with one of the new Nvidia GeForce RTX Super GPUs.
The world of PC gaming just got a lot more interesting, especially if you're into playing on a laptop.
- There's a whole world of PC components out there
