More Intel Comet Lake-S leaks give us a hint of Intel's upcoming processors

Is Comet Lake-S coming soon?
Is Comet Lake-S coming soon? (Image credit: Intel)

At this point, everything we know about Comet Lake-S – the upcoming desktop processors from Intel’s Comet Lake line – is all speculation and rumors. Still, thanks to solid leads from eagle-eyed hardware leakers, many of them are pretty much confirmed. 

Take the Intel Core i9-10900 and Core i5-10500 processors as examples. Leaked slides from Intel, which appeared on Informatica Cero in late December 2019, show these upcoming Comet Lake-S processor with 10 cores, 20 threads and a 5.1GHz single-core boost clock speed, and 6 cores, 12 threads and a 4.5GHz boost clock speed, respectively.

Thanks to Twitter user @_rogame, who recently spotted the CPUs make an appearance in the 3DMark database, some of the specs on these two chips are now confirmed, giving us another sneak peek at the long-anticipated Comet Lake-S range.

Intel Core i9-10900 and Core i5-10500 specs

According to the screenshots tweeted by the hardware investigator, the Core i5-10500 will definitely boast 6 cores, 12 threads and a base clock speed of 3.1GHz – although it looks like 3DMark failed to detect its boost clock correctly.

The Core i9-10900, on the other hand, will definitely impress with its 10 cores and 20 threads. However, it’s looking to only deliver 2.8GHz base and 4.9GHz boost clock speeds, a tad lower than what was shown on the aforementioned leaked slides.

Though it might be premature to worry about the lower numbers – as Tom’s Hardware reports, these could be engineering samples whose specs are subject to change. We might still get the 5.1GHz boost clock when the Core i9-10900 finally rolls out.

Although no other information is available in the shared screenshots, the fact that we’re seeing more and more signs of these rumored Comet Lake-S chips – a UserBenchmark entry for an Intel Core i3-10300 was also recently leaked – is already great news. It means that the Comet Lake-S chips are well on their way and will be launching very soon, possibly in Q2 or early spring.

Michelle Rae Uy
Contributor

Michelle Rae Uy is the former Computing Reviews and Buying Guides Editor at TechRadar. She's a Los Angeles-based tech, travel and lifestyle writer covering a wide range of topics, from computing to the latest in green commutes to the best hiking trails. She's an ambivert who enjoys communing with nature and traveling for months at a time just as much as watching movies and playing sim games at home. That also means that she has a lot more avenues to explore in terms of understanding how tech can improve the different aspects of our lives.