Intel adopts AMD tactics
The brand new 6-core/12-thread Core i5 10400, which was released as part of the Intel Comet Lake family, is one of the most powerful processors in the sub-$200 category. Moreover, it gets into it quite back to back due to the F-version of the processor, in which the graphics core is disabled and, accordingly, the price tag is slightly lower. It seems that AMD and Intel have finally switched roles, the former are now taking the rap for technical progress, while the latter are lagging behind on all fronts, however, they keep the public's interest due to the constant price reduction.
A worthy competitor to the Ryzen 5 3600
In addition to the increased number of computing units, the Comet Lake family has acquired multithreading support, slightly increased the frequencies and volumes of the third level cache, and, of course, moved to the new LGA 1200 socket because ... well, you understand. Here Comes The Money. However, despite the snail's pace of Intel's technical progress, these small improvements, along with price balancing, have made it possible to impose worthy competition on both the past and the current generation of Ryzen. What do we end up with? A bunch of 6 + 6 cores with a maximum clock speed of 4.3 GHz in resource-intensive applications is expectedly inferior to the slightly more expensive bestseller Ryzen 5 3600. However, the gap is relatively small and regardless of the type of task (compiling, rendering, archiving), the advantage of the AMD processor rarely exceeds 15 %.
The optimal chip for a good gaming computer
But in games, the Core i5-10400 wins a landslide victory, providing somewhere around a 10% FPS advantage. The only fly in the ointment was the too soft turbo boost. If the multi-core monsters of the Core i7 in manual mode easily knock out the coveted 5 GHz, the performance of this Core i5 rises very carefully and slowly, which makes it difficult for it to keep even 4 GHz simultaneously on all cores. However, this is not surprising, with such powers of the Core i5, 95% of users would have missed them, and the older Intel series would have become the lot of enthusiasts.
