Starting later this month, PC vendors will start unleashing new laptops for gamers and power users with Intel’s latest chip family: the 10th Generation Core H-Series processors.

The range of six new chips, code-named in the run-up to their release as "Comet Lake-H" processors, starts with a Core i5 processor and scales all the way up to a Core i9, which can be overclocked to break the 5GHz barrier. According to Intel, the silicon will be packed inside more than 100 upcoming notebook designs, including gaming laptops.

The only problem is the coronavirus; Intel says the ongoing pandemic has been disrupting the supply chain in Asia, so the volume of new laptops using the chips will take longer to materialize. Expect the first models to show up for sale or for pre-order on April 15.

'Comet Lake-H': The Return of 14nm

Although Intel is lumping the new chips into its 10th Generation line, the processors actually use a further refinement of the older 14-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process, which the company has been relying on for years as it has struggled to transition quickly to 10nm process technology.

H-Series chips are traditionally Intel's top-end mobile processors for robust laptops. The chip maker has already debuted 10nm, lower-power chips in its U-Series in another 10th Generation family, code-named "Ice Lake." These chips are designed for thin-design, premium-priced laptops, while these H-Series processors are meant for thicker, power-minded machines and gaming models. Also already on the market are 10th Generation U-Series chips employing the 14nm process, under the code-name "Comet Lake-U."

Here's a look at the lineup of new 10th Generation mobile H-Series processors:

According to Intel, the 14nm node was chosen for Comet Lake-H because it offers a better performance gain for heavy-duty users, especially on single-threaded performance.

The most powerful processor in the new family is the Intel Core i9-10980HK, an unlocked eight-core, 16-thread beast that can boost under the right conditions to single-core clock speeds of up to 5.3GHz. The same chip has a 2.4GHz base clock speed and contains 16MB of cache with support for Intel’s Optane Memory modules.

The chip family also contains three Intel Core i7 processors, all of which can boost to a 5GHz or higher clock speed on a single core.

How Will the H-Series CPUs Play Out?

The company did release some benchmarks on how well the Core i9 and Core i7 chips fare on improving the frame-per-second (fps) performance on several games. Intel compared them against equivalent PC systems created three years ago, and noted a 23 to 54 percent increase in frame rate on titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Total War: Three Kingdoms.

However, we’d take this particular set of benchmarks with a heavy grain of salt. The reason why? The 10th Generation systems were running current Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics chips, versus the three-year-old systems and their older GeForce GTX GPUs. So it’s unclear how much of the performance boost in each case is coming from the CPU uptick versus the GPU upgrade. Intel also refrained from supplying benchmarks comparing the chips against AMD’s very latest equivalent silicon, the spanking-new 4th-generation mobile Ryzen, dubbed "Renoir." (Earlier this week, we had a chance to test an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop with one of AMD's new Ryzen "Renoir" processors, and it was fast.)

We'll have to wait and see how the chips perform in the real world when we get actual review units. Nevertheless, Intel says for the Core i9 chip, users can expect an up to 44 percent increase on overall performance when compared to an equivalent three-year-old laptop. For the Core i7-10750H processor, which sits in the middle of the family, the chip promises an overall performance increase of up to 33 percent.

According to Intel, PC vendors will be packing the new 10th Generation chips into a wide range of laptops at different price points, although the first models will probably skew toward the high end. The new processor family will also pave the way for PC vendors to build products that support Wi-Fi 6, up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM, and a maximum of four Thunderbolt 3 ports. However, no specific change was made to 10th Generation processors in terms of power consumption. (These all remain 45-watt TDP chips.) So don't expect a huge battery-life increase from the silicon itself.

Further Reading

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