Intel recently released, perhaps silently added the Core i9-10850K to their Comet Lake desktop CPU family. We have seen rumors about it these past few weeks, and now it’s finally official. The i9-10850K is basically similar to the i9-10900K, but it’s just 100MHz slower and a bit cheaper. Quite the opposite to what AMD did with their 3000XT Matisse Refresh series, where they added 100MHz. More details below.
Intel Core i9-10900K vs 10850K vs 10700K Specs Compared
The Intel Core i9-10850K is a 10-core 20-thread CPU, just like the i9-10900K. But it’s 100MHz slower across its clock speeds. The i9-10850K has a base clock speed of up to 3.6 GHz and a maximum Intel Turbo Boost 3.0 of 5.1GHz. Again, those are just 100MHz less that what the 10900K offers.
Like the 10900K, the 10850K feature Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost. It has a 5.2GHz TBV for single core and 4.8GHz TVB for all cores. Speaking of all cores, the i9-10850K is capable of an all-core turbo of 4.7GHz. That’s similar to the all-core turbo of the i7-10700K.
The rest of the specs seems to be similar with the 10900K, including the TDP and Tau and PL1/PL2 values. Those are Tau of 56 seconds, PL1 of 125W and PL2 of 250W. It also has up to 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes; supports dual-channel DDR4-2933; and features Intel UHD Graphics 630.
When it comes to pricing, the i9-10900K has an MSRP of $488 per 1K units. On the other hand, the i9-10850K comes at $453 MSRP per 1K units. Now, we all know that retailers are currently selling them at a (much) higher price and supply is unfortunately very scarce.
In terms of productivity and workload performance, I think the i9-10850K would be very similar to the i9-10900K’s performance. 100MHz don’t really make a huge and noticeable difference. But thanks to two more cores and four more threads, paired with Thermal Velocity Boost feature, the i9-10850K would definitely perform a bit better than the 10700K.
When it comes to gaming, I’m positive that the difference would be negligible. Gaming performance between the 10900K, 10850K and perhaps even the 10700K would be similar. There would be no observable difference in 1080p gaming, especially at 1440p and 2160p gaming. Perhaps a couple of frames difference here and there, but no substantial difference at all.
So, this would come down to pricing and availability.
Pricing and Availability
Currently, the i9-10900K with an MSRP of $488 retails for around $550 to $600 USD. Some (smaller) retailers are overpricing the 10900K and taking advantage of the supply shortage. Meanwhile, the i9-10850K has an MSRP of $453, but I doubt we would see that price in retail stores. My estimate would be around $500 USD give or take, if retailers price it reasonably.
Meanwhile, the Core i7-10700K currently sells for around $410 USD. And so far, this is one of the 10th Gen CPUs to have a better supply and availability compared to the other CPUs; like the 10900K and 10600K.
- Intel Core i9-10900k check at Amazon.com here and Newegg.com here
- Intel Core i7-10700K check at Amazon.com here and Newegg.com here
- Intel Core i5-10600K check at Amazon.com here and Newegg.com here
