JAMES GORBOLD / HARDWARE ACCELERATED
James Gorbold has been building, tweaking and overclocking PCs ever since the 1980s. He now helps Scan Computers to develop new systems.
OPINION
A
fter aseriesofdelays,Intel’s10th-genCoredesktop
CPUsarefinallyhere.I’msureyou’vealreadyread
the extensivereviewcoverageintherestofthemag
(see p16), but sufficetosaythatIntelmisseda trickgiventhe
naming to finallyunveilsome10nmprocessors.
Instead, 10th-genCoreprocessorsarestuckwithyetanother
revised 14nm processbasedontheagingSkylakearchitecture
from 2015. Toaddinsulttoinjury,thesenewCPUsneeda
new motherboardandthe‘K’versionsusea fairbitofpower,
especially whenoverclocked.
Although theCorei9is gettingmostofthemediaattention,
I’m actually moreinterestedinwhat’sgoingon
with Core i5 thistimearound.That’sbecause
9th-gen Core i5CPUshavebeenlosingmarket
share to Ryzen5 recently,bothintheself-build
and even the largerpre-builtPCmarket.
So much so,infact,thatinourexperience,
Ryzen 5 (particularlythe3600)hasbeen
outselling Corei5ata ratioofmorethantwotoone.Incontrast,
despite the clear superiority of Ryzen 9 chips in content
creation applications, Core i9 CPUs continue to sell well due
to their perceived gaming credentials and brand strength.
While the new Core i5-10400F only adds Hyper-Threading
to its predecessor’s spec, the new Core i5-10600K also
gets very welcome frequency increases, with the base clock
rising by 400MHz and the turbo clock rising by 200MHz
compared with the Core i5-9600K. This gives the new Core
i5-10600K a huge performance uplift in content creation
applications and a welcome boost in games, making it far
more competitive with Ryzen 5.
However, Intel’s decision to stagger the launch of all the
chipsets wrecks the potential of Core i5 to make a comeback.
WhenthesenewCPUslaunched,theonlynewchipset available
is Intel’sflagshipZ490,withthecheapestboards retailing at
around£150,andgamingboardscostingover£200.
Let’sfaceit,youwouldn’twanttospendthesame amount
ofmoneyona motherboardasa CPUinthis price league,
wheregettingbangforyourbuckis themainfactor. The CPU
drivesperformanceina muchmoremeaningful way than the
motherboard.I onlyhavetolookatthehugenumbers of Core
i5gamingPCswesellthatusesub-£100H310 boards to see
what’sneeded.Cheaper10th-genchipsetsandmotherboards
areontheirway,butatlaunchthenewCorei5sare going into
battlewithonearmtiedbehind their back.
Thatsaid,AMDnearlyshot itself in the
footthismonthwiththeannouncement that
itsnext-genZen3 processorswill require a
500-seriesmotherboardchipset. However,
aftera massiveoutcry,justa few days later,
AMDbackpedalledandannounced that older
400-seriesmotherboardscanalsobemadecompatible with
a BIOS update, although this comes at the cost of overwriting
support for older CPUs to make space in the ROM for the
new processors.
While I’m not a massive fan of companies responding to
Internet frenzies, the outcome in this instance is brilliant,
and will continue to drive sales of Ryzen 5 CPUs on affordable
B450 boards.
One fact is certain though; while Intel’s 10th-gen Core
processors aren’t a massive leap forwards, competition is
incredibly important for a healthy market. Without it, you get
stuck with quad-core CPUs for generation after generation,
and astronomically expensive graphics cards that put the
inflation rates of banana republics to shame.Ryzen 5 has been
outselling Core i5 at a ratio
of more than two to oneTIMING IS EVERYTHING
Intel’s new Core i5 chips would better compete with Ryzen 5 if they
had cheaper motherboards, argues James Gorbold