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Early benchmark results point to 8 cores, 16 threads and a 3.8-GHz clock speed.

Intel hasn't confirmed when it will launch its 10th Generation Comet Lake desktop CPUs (although rumors suggest we'll see them in April). But benchmarks and specification tables are already coming at us left and right. On the higher-end of the desktop platform, we've already heard about the Core i5-10500, Core i9-10900 and Core i9-10900K. Today's early benchmark, found by Twitter user @Tum_Apisak, is about the i7-10700K, a chip that may appeal to many enthusiasts. As with any test results shared before an official release, however, you should take things with a grain of salt or two.

The leak comes in the form of a 3DMark hardware configuration that shows some of the specifications of the i7-10700K. There are a few errors, but that's not unusual for pre-launch chips that haven't been properly taken up in the libraries yet.

The specifications show the i7-10700K with eight cores, 16 threads with a base clock speed of 3.8 GHz and a boost maximum turbo clock of 5.3 GHz.

It's not surprising to see the chip with eight cores and Hyper-Threading. What does come as a surprise is the boost clock reaching 5.3 GHz, which surpasses the 5.1-GHz boost clock spotted for the i9-10900K. Note the latter has two more cores.

Intel has received a lot of flack for staying on the 14nm process for its upcoming Comet Lake CPUs, and there have been reports that problems with power consumption on the new series have delayed the CPUs' launch.

We also saw that the current-gen i9-9900K was happy to churn through 200W without too much effort. If Intel were to make the jump to a smaller manufacturing node, it could reduce the power consumption and create a viable upgrade, but unfortunately, Intel has been having problems making the jump to 10nm since 2018.

Over are the days when we saw Intel working with a tick-tock strategy, where each year it outed a chip with a new architecture and then shrunk that architecture's process node a year later.

But that doesn't mean that we're not expecting to get an upgrade with Comet Lake on desktop. The most similarly stacked chip to the i7-10700K from the 9th Generation is the eight-core, 16-thread i9-9900K, which has a maximum boost clock of 5.0 GHz. That's an i9 chip though, and where the i9 is getting two more cores, it looks like the i7 will be getting back Hyper-Threading and more aggressive boost profiles.

It looks like Intel is doing its best to squeeze every last bit of power out of its upcoming chips. We'll have to wait and see if Comet Lake is able to bring some more competitiveness to the market.
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