The 10-core i9-10900KF matches the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X in leaked Time Spy bench, but upcoming Ryzen 4000 lineup means Comet Lake could still be DOA

Leaked Time Spy CPU scores for the Intel i9-10900KF offer some hope for Team Blue’s 2020 consumer CPU plans. The 10-core 20-thread Comet Lake part, which operates at up to 5.3 GHz, scored 12412 on the Time Spy CPU Benchmark, which is marginally slower than the Ryzen 9 3900X’s score of 12857.

A combination of incremental IPC gains and higher clock speeds evidently allow the Comet Lake part to come within spitting distance of the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X.

However, the i9-10900KF-and Comet Lake in general-might just be a case of too little, too late. The Ryzen 9 3900X launched all the way back in July 2019. When the Comet Lake S i9-10900K launches, it won’t be going up against the 1 year-old 3900X for very long: AMD’s introducing their Ryzen 4000 desktop lineup very soon. Ryzen 4000 APUs are already out on the market.

With higher IPC and higher clocks, these parts will almost certainly deliver a meaningful performance upgrade over Ryzen 3000. In this scenario, it’s very hard to see Comet Lake S staying relevant, even in gaming workloads where Intel currently maintains a small performance lead at the high end. If Ryzen 4000 processors arrive before the 10900KF, they might make this high-end Comet Lake S part completely irrelevant.

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