Introduction

Today, we have for you the quirky new Core i9-10850K 10-core processor by Intel. Throughout May-July, we've reviewed almost every 10th Gen Core desktop processor in the retail channel, and first reports of an i9-10850K being in the works had us theorizing that the chip could either be a regional product or an OEM-exclusive. To us, it made little sense at the time—an unlocked 10-core/20-thread Socket LGA1200 processor that has nearly identical specs to the i9-10900K, just with 100 MHz lower clocks.

The Core i9-10850K in this review is based on Intel's latest 14 nm "Comet Lake-S" silicon. It is probably the last desktop outing of the five-year old "Skylake" CPU core that held Intel's fort against the AMD "Zen" onslaught. Over time, Intel has been making continuous improvements: more cores or threads to the dollar, more cache, and higher clock speeds. With the 10th Generation, Intel maxed core counts to 10 for the Core i9 brand extension, L3 cache to 20 MB, and clock speeds firmly north of 5 GHz.



Back to the Core i9-10850K—besides lower clock speeds, we are hard pressed to find any difference between the i9-10850K and i9-10900K. The i9-10850K has the same core configuration as all other Core i9-10900 CPUs: 10 cores, 20 threads, and 20 MB cache. Just like the Core i9-10900K, the i9-10850K features all three boosting algorithms for the 10 Gen Core i9 series: Turbo Boost 2.0, Turbo Boost Max 3.0, and Thermal Velocity Boost. The only difference is that the maximum boost is now 5.2 GHz, whereas the i9-10900K tops out at 5.3 GHz. 5.2 GHz is the same maximum boost the i9-10900 and 10900F are rated for.

Speaking of clock speeds, the Core i9-10850K comes with a base frequency of 3.60 GHz, just 100 MHz lower than the i9-10900K and a healthy 700 MHz higher than the locked i9-10900. The chip embarks on a fascinating journey toward 5.20 GHz from here. First, the classic Turbo Boost 2.0 algorithm responds to the parallelized nature of workloads and boosts frequency up to 5.00 GHz. From here, the two best-performing or favored cores receive a further 100 MHz uplift from the Turbo Boost Max 3.0 algorithm. Lastly, if your cooling is up to the job, the Thermal Velocity Boost feature opportunistically boosts a core to 5.20 GHz. Intel is pricing the Core i9-10850K at $465 (1000-unit tray pricing), but we got our chip at a retail price of €445 (including VAT), which converts to $450 and is $50 lower than the i9-10900K currently (€506 including VAT, which converts to $505).

In this review, we take a close look at the Core i9-10850K and investigate if you can potentially save yourself $50 by choosing this chip over the i9-10900K. Since the last string of Intel reviews, AMD launched its 3rd Gen Ryzen 3000XT processors, and we've added our testing data for the new chips in this review.

The i9-10850K is tested in three ways. The first set of data (green bar) is for the processor out of the box, with its power limit settings untouched (i.e., PL1=125 W, PL2=250 W). In the second set of data (red bar), we let the various Turbo Boost algorithms of the processor have free reign by relaxing the power limits, which is representative of a "max turbo" scenario. The third set of data (blue bar) represents a manual overclock of the processor to 5.1 GHz, taking advantage of the unlocked multiplier and relaxed power limits.

A Closer Look

Our Core i9-10850K sample came in a tray-only package. The retail packaging includes no heatsink, which means you'll have to spend more money on buying a cooling solution. The i9-10850K package design is also a simpler-looking paperboard box, unlike the i9-10900K that comes with a fancy hardboard box with acrylic cutouts.


The Core i9-10850K looks like any LGA1xxx processor released by Intel in the past decade. The processor is only compatible with Socket LGA1200 motherboards because the position of the round notches has been changed. It will not work with an older motherboard.


Luckily, Socket LGA1200 retains cooler compatibility with all older LGA115x-series sockets. This means you're going to be spoiled for choice when picking a cooler to go with this processor.

Architecture

Under the hood of the Core i9-10850K is the 10-core "Comet Lake-S" silicon built on the same 14 nm++ process as the previous two generations, but there is a key difference.


Intel physically thinned the die along the Z-axis by removing as much of the silicon bulk as possible, with the idea being that heat generated by the die travels through less silicon. The more conductive copper integrated heatspreader has been made thicker, and a solder thermal interface material (STIM) is used between the two. The die area is estimated by AnandTech to be around 198.4 mm², and from the looks of it, Intel can't add any more cores on this package by stretching the die without chopping off the iGPU.


The "Comet Lake-S" silicon is laid out similar to the past four generations of Intel mainstream processors, with two rows of CPU cores flanked by the iGPU on one side and the system agent (integrated northbridge) on the other, and a Ringbus Interconnect serving as town square between the various components. The last-level cache is scattered across as slices, adding up to 20 MB of unified L3 cache all cores can access equally.

Much of the processor's uncore components are clumped into the system agent, which contains the memory controller, PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex, DMI interface, and memory PHY. On the other end of the ringbus is the Gen 9.5 integrated graphics, which has practically been carried over for the past three generations, featuring 24 execution units in the GT2 trim. All SKUs in the desktop 10th Gen processor series appear to have the top GT2 trim. Don't expect to play PUBG at 4K on this; the "UHD" moniker only indicates that the IGP can handle 4K Ultra HD displays, features modern connectivity options, such as DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, and can playback 4K video in new formats with 10-bpc color and HDR10/Dolby Vision standards.


The core itself is identical in design to "Skylake," and there are hence no IPC increases to be had. As we explained in the introduction, all of Intel's efforts to increase gaming, single-threaded, and less-parallelized application performance revolve around increasing clock speeds and deploying as many as three intelligent boosting algorithms to achieve the advertised clock speeds.

Boost Algorithms

The Core i9-10850K has a nameplate base frequency (aka nominal clock) of 3.60 GHz, but will in reality run much faster. The processor leverages Turbo Boost 2.0 to raise clock speeds up to 5.00 GHz, with varying boost multipliers along the way to workloads scaling across multiple cores. Beyond this, the Turbo Boost Max 3.0 algorithm, carried over from the company's Core X HEDT processors, is engaged. The algorithm raises frequencies of the processor's two favored cores up to 5.10 GHz, and the processor invokes Thermal Velocity Boost, a brand-new algorithm that opportunistically overclocks the processor to 5.20 GHz in short bursts provided the processor's cooling solution is effective enough to keep temperatures below 70°C, with the processor's power budget permitting.

With "Comet Lake," Intel is introducing favored cores to its mainstream desktop processor segment, which was until now restricted to its HEDT and server processors. AMD supports this tech across its Zen product stack. Two of the best-performing cores on the silicon are identified at the time of each die's manufacturing, their information is hardcoded. Favored cores aware operating systems (Windows 1709 or later and Linux kernels since January 2018) are able to identify this information, and send the most traffic to these two cores as they are able to sustain boost frequencies the best.

PL1, or power level one, spreads a 125 W power budget to support them across a default 56-second Tau—a time value for which the processor is allowed to sustain its boost frequencies before having to fall back to nominal clocks. PL2, on the other hand, is something else. Set at 250 W, motherboard manufacturers have been given the freedom to override PL2 and Tau as they see fit, so various motherboards implement power limits differently depending on the effectiveness of their VRM solution. You are hence rewarded for buying a pricier motherboard that has a better VRM coupled with a more aggressive vendor-supplied power management. Of course, all boards come with Intel-spec fallbacks. We will examine the boosting behavior at Intel spec and compare it with the "ASUS enhanced" specs of the ROG Maximus XII Extreme later on in this review.

Intel introduced a handful of overclocker-friendly features with the 10th generation, including the ability to toggle HyperThreading on a per-core basis rather than globally. This could be an interesting option for those gaming and streaming, where a certain number of cores have HTT disabled for the best gaming performance and certain cores have them enabled, with Windows process core affinity settings taking care of the rest.

The company also introduced the ability to overclock the DMI chipset bus. DMI is a PCIe-based interconnect that handles transfers between the processor and the chipset (PCH). The LGA1200 platform uses DMI 3.0 (comparable to PCI-Express 3.0 x4 in terms of bandwidth). Intel has apparently decoupled PCIe clock domains to enable you to overclock the DMI and PEG (that topmost x16 PCIe slot) without destabilizing your PCIe setup for graphics cards. Multiplier-based overclocking is made easy because of the unlocked base-clock multiplier.

The Z490, H470, and B460 Platforms

Z490 is the top 400-series chipset targeted at gaming desktops and PC enthusiasts, as it enables serious overclocking and multi-GPU support. In terms of I/O capabilities, the chipset is nearly identical to the Z390, with 24 downstream PCIe gen 3.0 lanes, six SATA ports, six USB 3.2 gen 2 ports that can be converted to three USB 3.2 gen 2x2 ports, ten USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, and fourteen USB 2.0 ports. Intel is recommending its i225-V 2.5 Gbps Ethernet chip as the wired networking solution to go with Z490, and the company's AX201 802.11ax WiFi 6 WLAN solution to go with the chipset's CNVio interface.


You are more likely to pair locked Intel Core processors with the B460 or H470 chipsets. B460 has motherboards start at around the $90 mark. It comes with 16 downstream PCIe gen 3.0 lanes, compared to just 12 on the previous-generation B360. Compared to Z490, you get fewer PCIe lanes (16 vs. 24) from the chipset, and fewer USB 3.2 ports (8x 5 Gbps ports and no 10 Gbps ports compared to 6x 10 Gbps and 10x 5 Gbps ports on the Z490). You also lose out on CPU overclocking features and multi-GPU capabilities, such as SLI. B460 motherboards also come with memory frequency restrictions set to DDR4-2933. The H470 is an interesting middle ground between the Z490 and B460. You still lose out on multi-GPU and overclocking, but get more platform PCIe lanes (20 vs. 16 on the B460 and 24 on the Z490), as well as four 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports in addition to what you get from the B460.

Since the Core i9-10850K is an unlocked processor, it's recommended that you pair the CPU with a motherboard based on the Z490 chipset to take advantage of the unlocked multiplier.

Test Setup

• All applications, games, and processors are tested with the drivers and hardware listed below—no performance results were recycled between test systems.
• All games and applications are tested using the same version.
• All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.