Intel is coming for AMD hard, if this latest performance leak is any indication

Intel's 10th-generation Comet Lake-S processors for desktop still aren't here, and while we haven't heard anything from Intel itself, there's a deluge of performance leaks out there. 

The latest of which comes via famed hardware leaker @TUM_APISAK and shows a supposed Intel Core i7-10700KF scoring 294.33GOPS on the SISoftware CPU Arithmetic benchmark. For comparison's sake, an AMD Ryzen 7 3800X can score around 308GOPs according to SiSMark's results browser. 

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This would mean that Intel's next generation processors won't quite catch up to AMD's mainstream platform, but because Comet Lake-S is, by all indications, going to still be on the 14nm manufacturing process, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. In fact, its promising that Intel is able to come so close on its aging manufacturing process at all. 

This is likely largely due to the processor boosting all the way up to 5.3GHz, which is an amazing boost clock for any processor, especially when it comes with 8-cores and 16-threads. Only time will tell if this is an actual boost clock and not an overclock – if this benchmark result is even real. However, it's still promising. 

We are fully expecting Intel to unveil its Comet Lake-S processors any time now, and these chips will show us whether or not there really is any life left in the Skylake architecture. We'll just have to wait and see. 

Wait, there's a catch

According to some juicy speculation by our friends over at Tom's Hardware, Intel may end up launching its 10th-generation Comet Lake-S chips with three different levels of TDP (thermal design power): 125W, 65W and 35W. 

It's extremely likely that the Intel Core i7-10700KF shown off in this benchmark is going to come with the 125W TDP rather than a 65W, which would be significantly higher than the 105W TDP of the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X. 

You also have to take into consideration the fact that TDP is measured differently by Intel and AMD. Here at TechRadar, we didn't review the 3800X, but we reviewed a large portion of the AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation lineup, and the Ryzen 9 3900X stays closer to its 105W TDP with a peak power draw of 145.75W than something like the Intel Core i9-9900KS which is rated for 127W but draws up to 202.75W. 

It's likely then, that if the Intel Core i7-10700KF ships with a 125W TDP, it could see power consumption spike much higher than the Ryzen 7 3800X, which would make it both slightly slower and much less efficient. 

Still, this loss in power efficiency may not be a dealbreaker for some users, especially if Intel manages to keep its lead in single core – and thus gaming – performance with its next-generation CPUs. The benchmark leaked here is definitely geared more towards multi-core performance, so its possible that Intel could still maintain its lead elsewhere. 

We'll have to wait until we manage to get our hands on these processors ourselves, of course, but until then we'll report on any other major benchmark leaks leading up to the release of Comet Lake-S. We can't wait. 

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