Intel Core i7-10700K clears 5 GHz and performs well on Geekbench but just cannot break the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X in multi-core testing

The high-end parts of Intel’s Comet Lake-S series are undoubtedly powerful, with the Core i7-10700K showing a decent result in Geekbench 4, as noticed by data-miner Tum Apisak. The 8-core, 16-thread processor is capable of clocking at over 5 GHz as long as the thermal conditions are right for the necessary boost. The i7-10700K recorded scores of 6,018 points in the single-core benchmark and 34,221 points in the multi-core benchmark (single-core score has been measured hitting 6,073 points in other i7-10700K runs).

As usual for an Intel part, the single-core score is very strong. Surprisingly, the multi-core result is also very good and this is an area most frequently dominated by AMD. There are only a handful of records for the Intel Core i7-10700K on Geekbench so far whereas over 3,000 AMD Ryzen 7 3800X chips have been tested. As a fellow 8-core, 16-thread desktop processor with a high TDP, it’s interesting to see what the Matisse chip can manage.

The highest recorded single-core score for a system with the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X is 6,766 but generally you could expect a median score of somewhere around 5,700-5,800 for this processor. The highest listed multi-core score is an amazing 43,848 points, but looking around halfway in all of the thousands of Geekbench 4 results for the Ryzen 7 3800X you can find scores of between 35,000 and 36,000 points. This places the older Matisse processor above the upcoming Intel Core i7-10700K.

There are, as always, plenty of other variables at play. The TDP for the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X is listed as lower than that of the Intel Core i7-10700K (105 W vs. 125 W), and it is well-known that Intel’s TDP figures are “flexible” (higher clock rates will mean much higher power consumption). Still, the Comet Lake processor recorded a frequency of up to 5.07 GHz during testing, and the results are competitive. But you can pick up the Ryzen 7 3800X for US$339.99 at the moment whereas the i7-10700K is expected to cost around US$400 at launch.