Crispy fresh benchmarks of Intel's upcoming Core i9-10900X based on the Cascade Lake X platform has leaked out (via Twitter). The benchmarks in question were taken from an upcoming Dell OEM tower clocked at an all-core boost clock of 4.4 GHz.
Intel's upcoming Cascade Lake X lineup gets first benchmark leak, Intel Core i9-10900X clocked at 4.4 GHz (all-core boost)
The computer that leaked the data is a Dell Inc. Precision 5820 Tower from their X-series, clearly present in one of their hardware testing labs. The Northbridge and Southbridge mentioned are of the old chipset. Without any further ado, here is the benchmark:
Intel Comet Lake platform landing in 2020 Q1 as well
Intel’s Comet Lake-S platform specs and launch date have previously leaked out (Xfastest) along with the complete roadmap till Q2 2019. Comet Lake-S is Intel’s plan to introduce up to 10 cores to its mainstream lineup, based on the 400-series chipset and LGA 1200 socket.l Comet Lake S parts will be landing near the end of the year and should hit the shelves by early Q1 2020. The lineup will include high performance “K” series parts with 125W TDP and a very high clock rate (these are based on the company’s highly mature 14nm process).
Intel’s Comet Lake-S lineup will be rolled out by the end of 2019 and should be available for purchase in early 2020. Customers will, however, have to buy new motherboards as the platform is based on the 400-series chipset with the LGA 1200 socket and is not backward compatible with 300-series. The Comet Lake-S will represent Intel’s first 10 core mainstream processor (anyone remember the 4-core limited era? you can thank AMD for this) and considering it’s based on the highly mature 14nm++(+?) process, you can expect very high clock speeds.
Intel’s 14nm process represents a very interesting problem. Some have dubbed it the silicon ouroboros (a term coined by @underfox3). Since Intel’s 14nm process is so incredibly mature, clock speeds have actually reached a point where shifting down to a lower node like 10nm could actually be detrimental (the IPC gain would not offset the lower clock speed differential). This would make transitioning to 10nm very hard for high-performance segments like Desktop. For laptops and mobilities, clocks are usually low and leakage comes into play, making 10nm a viable option. Since this roadmap ends in Q2 2019, I assume we will see 10nm desktop parts hit the shelves by late 2020.
Intel Comet Lake S will be divided into three categories, 125W, 65W, and even 35W parts. This is fairly standard but the 125W lineup indicates a desire from Intel to cash in on its mature 14nm process and give the CPU the power it requires to hit those high clocks. I would not be surprised to see clock speeds nearing the 5.0 GHz mark on these processors (on 10 cores). The latest bells and whistles are of course integrated into the platform, like WiFi 6, USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3. It also contains the latest and greatest hardware codecs.
All that said, what will really make or break this platform is going to be pricing. AMD has been fairly aggressive with pricing in the past and we can expect them to continue doing so going forward. It also appears that Intel’s highest core part will remain the Intel Xeon W-3175X till Q2 2020 at 28 cores / 56 threads. It remains to be seen what Intel will christen the parts as but if the 10nm mobility nomenclature is any indication then we might see them using the 10th generation branding.
