The flagship Comet Lake PC

We look at what you can achieve with Intel’s latest processors in the world of gaming and rendering. Zak Storey

Comet Lake hath cometh, and with it Intel has brought a bevy of new features into the headlines of its latest processors. That means a new socket, a new chipset, more cores (more heat), and of course, more performance.

But is it quite enough to compete with the juggernaut that AMD has become? We already know that 3rd-gen Ryzen represents incredible multi-threaded power at a comfortable price. But the one area those zenified processors don’t quite match up is typically in the gaming department. On the whole AMD’s IPC (instructions per clock cycle), although much improved on Ryzen’s debut, still aren’t up to Intel’s level.

The big question, then, is whether Intel’s IPC advantages in its flagship 10-core processor give it the edge over the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X in both gaming and rendering, and if so, by how much? And is that enough to warrant the extra $110 in price? That’s what we’re looking to find out.

But before you dive into your email inbox, ready to lambast us for once again featuring a crazy, over-the-top gaming PC, you might want to take a quick glance over last month’s APC. There you’ll find Christian’s take on a fantastically quiet audio recording workstation, ideal for any and all after inspiration on how to throw themselves into the world of benignly silent computing.

Yes, we’ve heard your concerns, and we feel them too. Now that’s out of the way, let’s see what we included in this wee beastie of ours, and why.

“The big question, then, is whether Intel’s IPC advantages in its flagship 10-core processor give it the edge over the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X in both gaming and rendering, and if so, by how much?”