Intel 10th Generation

Intel 10th Generation Comet Lake H Series Leaked – Up To 8                  Cores With 5.3 GHz Boost And 45W TDP

Final specifications of Intel's upcoming Comet Lake H mobility CPUs have leaked out from HDTechnologia (via Videocardz). The "H" series is the one that goes into powerful laptops (as opposed to the "U" series, which goes in ultrabooks and low-powered variants). The TDP for all of these chips is 45W and considering the clock rates extend as high as 45W, these can be thought of as SKUs that are in between traditional mobility and desktop parts - sort of like what NVIDIA does with their 'desktop' mobility GPUs.

Intel 10th Generation Comet Lake H leaks out: Insanely Powerful 8 Core / 16                      Thread CPU With 5.3 GHz Boost at the Cost of TDP

While the leaked slide deck only contains specifications, an 8 core that can boost up to 5.3 GHz on a mobility platform would be an extremely powerful setup. This is something that we expected considering AMD has gained the edge in IPC and Intel needs to up the clock speeds (something it can do because of its ridiculously mature 14nm process) to remain competitive. The lineup is extremely impressive and if priced appropriately could certainly turn on the heat for AMD's parts. Intel has already shown that they are ready to eschew their old pricing strategy with server parts and it's time to pass on the same price cuts to mainstream parts (or lose market share to AMD).

While this approach certainly works - it also creates an issue famously known as the silicon ouroboros: a problem where the 14nm process gets so mature that a transition to 10nm actually results in lowered performance as the IPC is not able to overcome the differential in clocks. One way that Intel could potentially deal with this dilemma is by shortening the shelf life of 10nm, accelerating towards 7nm and keeping 14nm alive on the sidelines. It will be messy, but it could work and get Intel back on its feet as far as process competitiveness goes. In fact, we believe Intel's CFO has hinted as much that this is exactly what they plan to do.

Intel's Core i9-109800HK is the flagship part here, which will have a base clock of 2.4GHz and a boost that is more than 2x the base clock all the way up to 5.3GHz. This is possible through the introduction of Turbo Boost Max 3.0 to Intel's mobility platform with this iteration of SKUs. The Core i9 part is an 8 core and will be fully unlocked (bringing the overclocking capability to the mainstream mobility segment). All other parts will have a locked multiplier (except for the Core i7-10850H which is partially unlocked). Memory Support has been extended to DDR4 2933 MHz (without overclocking the IMC) and Optane Memory support has also been added.

WiFi 6 and Thunderbolt 3 will also be featured in this iteration of mobility processors. As we exclusively told you, Intel's 10th generation mobility processors will be launching side by side with NVIDIA's SUPER refresh that will lower the cost of gaming significantly (with the refresh GPUs, you can get higher gaming performance while staying within the same price bracket). At the same time, AMD's Renoir has also launched to absolutely rave reviews and it seems the final decision about the viability of CML-H will be decided when reviews go live.