Just a day after AMD’s Ryzen 4000 “Renoir” mobile processors hit retail, Intel’s entire 10th Gen Comet Lake-H lineup has been leaked. Coincidence? I think not. These CPUs are set to replace the existing 9th Gen H series which were compared against the Renoir parts in reviews. While this might sound encouraging for Intel, the unfortunate fact is that the Comet Lake-H parts are merely overclocked variants of their predecessors. While in the desktop space that’s consequential (to an extend), in the mobility space, where thermal and power constraints are much more strict, the net improvements will be very limited.
Intel’s figures aren’t false but considering that they are comparing these chips to three-year-old PCs, they’re largely redundant.
Intel’s marketing is misleading as ever. Yes, the 5.3GHz single-core boost is an achievement, but most laptops will be able to run at these clocks for short intervals at the cost of thermals and increased power draw. Intel’s figures aren’t false but considering that they are comparing these chips to three-year-old PCs, they’re largely redundant.
You’ve got two i5s, three i7s, and an i9. The Core i9-10980HK will be limited to MacBooks and a bunch of bulky gaming-centric laptops. We’ll mostly be seeing the Core i7-10750H and the 10875H in mainstream devices going up against AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800H/HS. The 10875H is the first mobile i7 from Intel packing eight cores. It’s essentially a lower clocked i9. Similarly, the 10750H is the same chip as its predecessor, except it runs at a slightly higher clock.
In most cases, the performance uplift will vary from 5-10% with well-cooled laptops seeing gains in the 15-20% range at best. It appears that AMD is all set to conquer the laptop market as well.
The official announcement for the Comet Lake-H laptops is going to come on the 2nd of April along with the NVIDIA RTX Super laptops. The desktop-class, Comet Lake-S lineup is rumored to launch at the end of the year, with Rocket Lake slated to arrive at the end of 2020 to tackle AMD’s Zen 3 based Ryzen 4000 processors. We’ll keep you posted if anything changes.
