According to recent rumors, the Intel Comet Lake launch date is fast approaching: El Chapuzas Informatico reports that Intel's long-awaited 10th generation desktop CPU will be announced on April 30, 2020. However, details on performance will have to wait until May.

We have yet to get a final confirmation from Chipzilla itself about the Intel Comet Lake release date. If you had told me last year that Intel's 10th generation desktops would not be announced before March 2020, I probably would have expected an April release.

A possible April announcement, with review and availability in May, would also coincide with the May release of the 400 series motherboard availability dates advocated earlier this year. So, everything is coming together.

Intel Comet Lake is officially confirmed to have up to 10 cores and 20 threads at this time. This will be the Core i9 10900K for enthusiasts, but we can also expect to see 6- and 4-core chips with Hyperthreading. For example, the Core i3 10100 could be a 4-core/8-thread CPU comparable to the Core i7 in Skylake.

The Core i9 10900K has been shown to perform as one would expect from a chip with two additional cores and a light additional MHz; in a recent benchmark dug up by TUM_APISAK on Twitter, the Geekbench Core i9 10900K scored only slightly higher than the Core i9 9900KS in the single-core test, but in the multi-threaded test it scored 11,390 versus the 9th generation chip's 9,458.

Intel's announcement, however, is somewhat overshadowed by the release of what is believed to be the Intel Rocket Lake platform specification: a 14nm Core to follow Comet Lake, with a 10nm mobile component (likely Willow Cove and is expected to be a backport for the new and improved Core architecture.

So with Intel's Skylake refresh likely to end relatively soon, how much interest is there for Intel Comet Lake? These chips still have the potential to deliver the highest frame rates in gaming, even if you have to pay for the privilege, and entry-level processors could be the savior of low-budget gaming PC builds.