Intel Core i7-10510U and Core i5-10210U disappoint on Geekbench with lower scores than the Ryzen 7 3700U and Ryzen 5 3500U

Two new Intel Core i U series processors have appeared on Geekbench with alarmingly low scores. Spotted by @TUM_APISAK on Twitter, the processors in question are the Core i7-10510U and the Core i5-10210U, which have both been tested in what may become a successor to the entry-level HP 17 series.

These results are likely from early engineering samples that usually score lower than retail versions. Nonetheless, they are still surprisingly low with the Core i7 model only scoring 9,188 points in the multi-core portion of Geekbench 4.1. By contrast, even the Core i5-8265U exceeds 12,000 points, while the Ryzen 7 3700U pushes beyond 13,000 points.

Both formally unannounced processors are quad-core chips that support Intel Hyper-Threading according to the information posted on Geekbench and offer a sizeable base clock speed boost over their predecessors. The benchmark recorded the Core i7-10510U as having a 2.29 GHz base clock speed with the Core i5-10210U trailing by 200 MHz at 2.09 GHz. These speeds put the processors 449 MHz and 409 MHz ahead of the Core i7-8565U and Core i5-8265U respectively.

Something seems amiss with these results then, as one would expect over 20% higher base clock speeds to yield comparable or better performance than existing processors. Moreover, both are listed as Kaby Lake rather than Ice Lake chips, which means that they been manufactured on a 14 nm FinFET process. Including 14 nm and 10 nm architectures in the same generation of chips seems an odd and confusing move for Intel to make though.