The Intel Core i9-10910, which is believed to be an Apple-exclusive chip , has shown its face on Geekbench 5 again. Without confirmation from Intel, of course, we can't be positive of the accuracy of the results, spotted by @Leakbench . But this allows us to do an early pseudo-assessment of the CPU's performance.
The Core i9-10910 in question, as well as the current Core i9-10900, belong to the 10th Generation Comet Lake-S family. The 14nm processors find their home inside the new LGA1200 CPU socket . They're equipped with 10 CPU cores , 20 threads and 20MB of L3 cache. One theory as to the Core i9-10910's existence is that Apple wants a custom chip for its iMac.
For context, the Core i9-10900 has a 2.8 GHz base clock and a 5.2 GHz TVB ( Thermal Velocity Boost ) clock. Today's Geekbench 5 submission paints the Core i9-10910 with a 3.6 GHz base clock and a boost clock that almost hits 5 GHz. The most attractive aspect of the Core i9-10900 is the fact that the processor is rated for 65W, so it isn't overly demanding on cooling or power delivery. The finer details of the Core i9-10910 are still unknown at this point, so we don't know if there is a change in the TDP (thermal design power) or not.
The two Geekbench 5 results depict exactly what the specifications already hinted. The Core i9-10910 exceled in single-threaded workloads but ultimately lost to the Core i9-10900 when multi-threaded workloads are involved.
Despite the 28.6% higher base clock, the Core i9-10910 only delivered up to 6.9% higher single-core performance than the Core i9-10900 in Geekbench 5. The tables turned when it comes to multi-core performance though. The Core i9-10900 outperformed the Core i9-10910 by 9.6%.
Assuming these results are correct, it shouldn't be hard to pick between a Core i9-10910 or Core i9-10900. You'd just have to identify the type of workloads you commonly execute on your system. The Core i9-10910 purportedly has better single-core performance, and the Core i9-10900 is expected to offer superior multi-core performance.