In my Core i9-10900 review, I declared it "my last Comet Lake review"—guess not. Intel released the Core i9-10850K just a few weeks ago, probably in an attempt to combat AMD's Ryzen 3900XT, which didn't turn out nearly as impressive as everybody expected. The new i9-10850K is pretty much identical to the i9-10900K in every regard, except it ticks at 100 MHz lower rated base and boost clock frequency—there is the lower price of course, and hopefully better availability.

Let's look at gaming performance first. Here, the Core i9-10850K matches the Core i9-10900K almost exactly. Even at 720p, which is designed to maximize the CPU bottleneck, the difference is only 0.7%—well within margin of error for our tests. Since testing isn't 100% repeatable, tiny variations in measurement are to be expected, timing and background activity have a small effect on scores. At higher resolutions, the difference to the i9-10900K is even smaller: 0.1% at 1080p, 0.2% at 1440p, and 0.4% at 4K—really nothing you could notice subjectively. I'd say gaming performance is equal, which means the i9-10850K deserves the title of "world's fastest gaming CPU" Intel marketing heavily used during the i9-10900K launch. While there's certainly some promise of future-proofing in a 10-core/20-thread gaming CPU, our data clearly shows that for today's games, you don't need that much muscle. The Core i7-10700 is just as fast in all relevant resolutions and much more affordable. If you are on a budget, you might even want to consider the Core i5-10500 and Core i5-10400 models. AMD's Ryzen processors are not that far behind, either. As you go up in resolution, the bottleneck shifts from the CPU to the GPU. For example, the Ryzen 9 3900X is 15% slower at 720p, 7% slower at 1080p, 5% faster at 1440p, and 1.5% slower at 4K—hardly a day and night difference.

Application performance is quite a pleasant surprise, too. On average, the Core i9-10850K is only 1.2% behind the Core i9-10900K, and beats the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and 3900XT by 1.2% and 0.2% respectively. It is also a significant upgrade over the i9-10900, which is held back by its power limits. The i9-10850K is held back too, just like the i9-10900K, but the performance difference is not as big as on the i9-10900—only 2.5% on average. However, the effect can be much more pronounced in specific tests, especially heavily multi-threaded ones. If you plan on buying any of the high-end Intel CPUs, definitely make sure you're not running them with stock power limits. Increasing those limits takes just a few seconds, and the processor is guaranteed to be stable at all times, just confirm your cooling can handle it. If not, no problem, the CPU won't be damaged as it will simply thermal throttle. If it does, run with a smaller power limit increase that better suits your cooler. This makes power limit adjustments an easy-to-use, fine-grained performance dial on even multiplier-locked non-K processors. It's even an option on motherboards with cheaper chipsets, like the B460 and H470.

If you've noticed the Core i9-10850K clearly beating the Core i9-10900K in some of our tests, also make sure to read the page before this one, where I go into more detail on what happened and why. It opens up interesting conclusions, but either way, the performance difference between the i9-10850K and i9-10900K is almost negligible. If you don't need an i9-10900K for your ego, the i9-10850K will be just as good.

Actually, looking at our power consumption numbers, the Core i9-10850K might be the better choice because it is much more energy efficient. Not as energy efficient in multi-threaded workloads as AMD's 7 nanometer Zen 2 lineup, but not that far away (+25%). For single-threaded workloads, Intel still has the upper hand in energy efficiency, so it really depends on the apps you're running. When considering gaming, CPU energy efficiency isn't that big a deal anyway. With a high-end GPU, CPU power usage makes up maybe 10% of the total system power draw and heat output.

Overclocking potential of our retail Core i9-10850K processor matched the Core i9-10900K almost exactly, which suggests that the i9-10900K is not "special" in any way. Thank to the unlocked multiplier, I reached 5.1 GHz easily, 100% stable with relatively small voltage increases. 5.2 GHz was in reach with a lot of voltage, but overloaded the cooling capability of my Noctua NH-U14S. So if you're planning heavy overclocking, a decent watercooling solution is highly recommended for Comet Lake. Besides the obvious "hobby" justification, I'm not completely convinced overclocking is worth it on either of these 10-core CPUs. For a meager 1% return in games, you'll be fighting temperatures and investing time to get things fully stable. For general applications, the improvement is 6.6%—significant, but is it worth the trouble? Rendering and other highly threaded applications that peg the CPU at 100% for a long time are the only exception. Here, we saw gains north of 10%, which makes overclocking a good idea, especially when time is money. Overclocking on AMD Ryzen isn't more rewarding either. It seems the times of large overclocks for high-end CPUs are over, as manufacturers are getting better and better at squeezing the last bits of performance out of their silicon in the factory.

Just like other Comet Lake CPUs, the highest boost clocks are rarely reached. In our testing, we only saw 5.0 GHz with even just one core active. While hard to measure in action, Intel's inclusions of Turbo Boost 3.0 and Thermal Velocity Boost with the Core i9-10850K are still good because these technologies help improve performance even further. Especially TVB is very elusive because it is active only for short, bursty loads that won't fully load the CPU. Whether it is reasonable to put such short bursts of 5.1 or 5.2 GHz on a specs sheet, even with "up to", is for you to decide.

With a retail price of $450, the Core i9-10850K is $50 cheaper than the Core i9-10900K. That's a 10% reduction in cost for barely a few percent in performance. Definitely consider the i9-10850K if you're in the market for an i9-10900K. What's probably more important than $50 for many people is that availability of the i9-10850K seems to be much better than for the i9-10900K. Especially in the States, as Intel CPU supply is much worse than in Europe, where you can just go out and buy an i9-10900K without having to wait for the stars to align. That's why I'm also not surprised to see terrible pricing in the U.S., no doubt from greedy merchants. Looking at our performance numbers and the pricing, I would definitely prefer the i9-10850K over the Ryzen 9 3900XT, and possibly even the Ryzen 9 3900X, for gaming and general productivity. Professionals working with rendering and simulation apps, or other similarly demanding apps, should definitely consider AMD for their rigs, as the higher thread count can make a difference. We reviewed the Core i9-10900 only recently and liked it very much. However, it's kind of obsoleted by the i9-10850K because of the small price difference. $10 more gets you an unlocked multiplier, much higher base clock, and higher power limit—just the boxed cooler is missing. Definitely worth considering. On the other hand, if the i9-10900 drops to $400, it would compete with the Ryzen 7 3800XT in an interesting reversal of 10-core Intel vs. 8-core AMD at the same price.