Intel finally announced the 10th Generation Comet Lake-H processors for mobile devices today. Notebookcheck has the scoop on what you can expect from the new 14nm processors in terms of performance.
These new chips rock the Comet Lake-H microarchitecture, which is on Intel’s 14nm process node. AMD Ryzen 4000-series (codename Renoir), on the other hand, is based off AMD’s Zen 2 microarchitecture and the 7nm process node from TSMC. From a technological standpoint, AMD’s offerings are more modern.
Being H-series parts, Comet Lake-H and Renoir processors are mobile-friendly with TDP (thermal design power) ratings of 45W. In AMD’s case, the chipmaker has a special HS-series branch that’s optimized for 35W. Both chipmakers have processors that max out at eight cores and 16 threads. However, the Comet Lake-H portfolio starts at four cores, while the Ryzen 4000 lineup starts at six cores.
Intel 10th Gen Comet Lake-H Benchmarks
Notebookcheck compared the i9-10880H, i7-10750H and i5-10300H SKUs against the Ryzen 9 4900HS, (which we also tested in our Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review ) and Ryzen 7 4800H. The site also pulled in the new chips’ Coffee Lake-H counterparts, the i9-9880H, i7-9750H and i5-9300H. The Comet Lake-H laptops used for testing used dual-channel DDR4-2666 RAM.
The publication noted that the i9-10880H and i7-10750H results are from two different laptops. Consequently, the results will vary according to the laptop’s design and cooling solution. Notebookcheck averaged the Ryzen 4000-series and Coffee Lake-H results scores across a different number of devices.
Based on Notebookcheck’s results, Intel is still the king of single-core performance, but AMD isn’t too far behind. The Cinebench R15 results show the i9-10880H as being up to 10.9% faster than the Ryzen 9 4900HS. On the more recent Cinebench R20 benchmark, the i9-10880H’s lead dropped to just 3%.
Generation-over-generation improvements will depend on which Comet Lake-H and Coffee Lake-H models you compare. For comparison, the i9-10880H delivers up to 7.6% and 11.2% more performance in Cinebench R20 than the Core i9-9980HK and Core i9-9880H, respectively, according to the benchmarks shared today.
The tides turned in AMD’s favor when it came multi-core performance. The Ryzen 7 4800H outperformed the i9-10880H by 24% and 2.2% in Cinebench R20 and Cinebench R15, respectively, in Notebookcheck’s testing.
Although the i9-10880H’s results look bad compared to the Ryzen 7 4800H, the Comet Lake-H showed improved multi-core performance over the prior i9-9980H. According to Noteboocheck’s results, the i9-10880H is up to 3.1% faster than the i9-9980H in Cinebench R20 and up to 19.6% quicker in Cinebench R15.
With Zen 2, AMD has almost caught up to Intel in regard to single-core performance. If Intel doesn’t move to a new microarchitecture and process node soon, we suspect that AMD will pass Intel when it graduates to Zen 3, 7nm+ chips. Notebookcheck’s numbers showed Comet Lake-H failing to compete with Renoir in the multi-core performance race and barely clinging to the single-core ribbon.