Historically speaking, the Intel vs AMD battle has typically played out like this: Intel was more expensive while offering top-end performance, while AMD processors were much more affordable. But, that’s changed recently, with AMD providing better performance and prices, while Intel is just expensive – and it doesn’t look like that’s about to change.
Renowned leaker @momomo_us spotted EU pricing for a pretty wide range of 10th-generation Intel Comet Lake processors from the low-end Celeron G5900 to the mid-range Intel Core i5-10600. And well, they’re pretty expensive.
😎😎😎😎K🤔 pic.twitter.com/bEQ5hd23OWFebruary 20, 2020
This pricing leak places the Intel Core i5-10500 at €252 (about $270, £210, AU$412), which is far more expensive than even the Ryzen 5 3600X which is currently €225 (about $240, £190, AU$370) on German retailer CaseKing. Now it’s very likely that Intel could pull out a single-core win over AMD’s chips, but even with Hyperthreading, it probably won’t win in multi-core workloads.
That’s not even considering the elephant in the room that is AMD Ryzen 4000. We still haven’t seen Intel announce a release date for its Comet Lake processors, and it’s very possible that they’ll have to face up directly against AMD’s Zen 3 processors. If that happens, AMD’s refinement of its 7nm architecture could see IPC improvements that put Intel’s chips to shame.
It’s very possible, however, that these leaked prices are simply wrong – keep in mind that Intel did absolutely slash prices on its 10th-generation Core X processors when it knew they wouldn’t compete with Threadripper 3rd Generation. Either way, we won’t know what the actual prices for Intel’s 10th-generation processors will look like, we just hope they’ll be affordable and Intel won’t price itself out of relevance.
