Intel Core i9-10900KF: all the details on processor consumption

Intel is almost ready to market i Core 10th gen desktop processors "Comet Lake-S", a line of products which, unless further postponements due toCoronavirus epidemic, is expected to debut by April. The Intel Comet Lake-S processors, built on a 14nm (+++) production process, will be the first of the US company to bring 10-core architecture to the consumer segment, trying to contrast AMD and 7nm Ryzen 3000s announced last year at Computex in Taipei.

Today we are talking about 10 core processors, and in particular the Core i9-10900KF (without iGPU), top model together with Core i9-10900K characterized by 10 cores / 20 threads and clock frequencies that can reach 5.3 GHz in single-core. The most recent benchmarks published on the 3DMark database show that the Core i9-10900KF offers performance very close to the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, scoring 12412 points in the CPU Test of the 3DMark Time Spy test.

To have a comparison, a Ryzen 9 3900X scores a score between 12857 and 13650 based on the RAM setting (DDR4 from 3200 to 3800 MHz), the Core i9-10900KF has instead been tested with DDR4 2400, a setting that could slightly limit its performance. Having said that, it seems that clock rates so pushed allow Intel to keep up on the performance side, but the discourse should change significantly when we talk about consumption.

It's no secret that the Intel Core i9 K series processors have high power consumption as well as the frequencies, but in this case the difference between the two solutions may be too marked given that the Ryzen 9 3900X stands at about 200W in full-load while the top of the range Core i9 10-core Comet Lake-S could easily exceed the peak 300W. In addition to performance, therefore, AMD focuses heavily on efficiency, aided by a better production process (7nm) and by a very flexible platform which, among other things, also offers full support for the PCI-E 4.0 standard.