While AMD seemed to have taken most of the gaming market with its Ryzen processors especially the 3rd gen processors, Intel hits again with something gamers couldn’t expect 3-4 years back when Intel used to price its processors ridiculously high due to AMD’s incompetence to compete with Intel in gaming.
Intel’s 9th gen processors were still the top choices for a purely gaming-focused PC when Intel didn’t release the 10th gen processors, however, the newer generation CPUs gave some hope to the gamers who can now build a powerful gaming machine in $500-$1000 which can max out games at 1080p as well as 1440 resolution. This wasn’t possible 3-4 years back when the processors used to have 4 cores or 6 cores at max with a hefty price of $200-$400 with slower single-core performance.
Intel Core i5 10600K
While I mostly recommended AMD’s 3rd gen Ryzen processors over the previous ones for gaming builds due to their capability of providing you with great performance with other things such as multitasking and CPU-intensive tasks, Intel’s 10th gen processors are now standing at an equal if not a better position than AMD.
The Ryzen 5 3600 was and is still a massive success that is among the most sold processors worldwide. It features 6 cores and 12 threads which weren’t available on any Intel processor at a price less than $250. While the 9600K was still a good choice which performed 5% better in most of the games, people gave preference to the Ryzen 5 3600 over it due to the availability of hyperthreading on the latter.
Moreover, Ryzen processors showed a better performance boost with highly overclocked memories than the Intel competitors.
Intel’s comet lake 10th gen i5 10600K is a fine start for Intel in 2020 and also a good opportunity for gamers to build a faster gaming PC than with the 9600K. Ryzen 5 3600 however, is a lot cheaper right now and can easily be bought under $200 which is again can be confusing for many gamers when selecting a good platform.
i5 10600K specs challenge Ryzen 5 3600
| Specs | Intel i5 10600K | Intel i5 9600K | Ryzen 5 3600 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cores/Threads | 6/12 | 6/6 | 6/12 |
| Base Clock | 4.10GHz | 3.70GHz | 3.60GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.80GHz | 4.60GHz | 4.20GHz |
| L3 Cache | 12MB | 9MB | 32MB |
| Lithography | 14nm | 14nm | 7nm |
| TDP | 95W | 95W | 65W |
If pricing is taken out of the comparison at an instance which is of course stupidity, to see where the i5 10600K stands, it is to be noted that it is the direct challenger from Intel’s side to the Ryzen 5 3600 as both are overclockable and specs-wise both feature 6 cores & 12 threads.
i5 10600K got a major improvement over the i5 9600K where not only hyperthreading is implemented but the clock speeds are increased drastically. The i5 9600K features 3.70GHz as the base clock while the 10600K has 4.10GHz. The boost clock of i5 9600K is 4.60GHz, while the 10600K features 4.80GHz. Although the boost clock of 10600K is increased by just 200MHz, increasing the base clock to 4.10GHz will result in a much better performance which will be more consistent than the i5 9600K.
Ryzen 5 3600 on the other hand features much lower clock speeds than the 10600K standing at 3.60GHz and 4.2GHz as base and boost clocks respectively. The only thing in which i5 10600K is still behind the Ryzen 5 3600 is the Power Consumption. Ryzen 3600 has a TDP of 65W while there is no improvement in the efficiency of 10600K over the 9600K and the TDP remains the same at 95W.
Related:- Best Motherboards for Ryzen 3600
Comparison in Gaming
When comparing the 10600K with 9600K and Ryzen 5 3600 in gaming, it does manage to beat both of them in every game with an average of 5% and 10% increase in performance respectively. It shows how just using hyperthreading does a little to purely gaming purposes. While it is better than the 9600K, it is still not a massive increase which is now getting boring due to Intel’s same pattern of trying to increase the overall performance over the past 4-5 years, unlike AMD who did manage to provide much more boost in 3 generations of Ryzen CPUs.
One thing which can be clearly seen from the above video is that 10600K is clearly a better choice than 9600K not just because of that 5% increase in performance but because of the headroom you get with hyperthreading. While the 6 cores of 9600K gets used up to 80-90% in most of the games, 10600K is utilized only up to 70% in most of the cases which is comparable to the Ryzen 5 3600.
Pricing and Conclusion
No matter what a company gives you, pricing is the deciding factor for customers most of the time. The 10600K though beats the 9600K and Ryzen 3600, it is priced much higher than the two as compared to the performance boost it provides.
While it costs $250, Ryzen 3600 costs around $200 with a performance difference of roughly 10% that justifies buying the Ryzen 3600 more than the 10600K unless Intel reduces the price somewhere near to $220. But again that will just equate the 10600K to Ryzen 3600. It will be better i
f Intel prices it at $200 for people to choose it over the Ryzen 3600 or at least over the 9600K.
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