Intel Core i5-10200H vs Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

Intel Core i5-10200H

The Intel Core i5-10200H is a fast quad-core processor for laptops with four cores based on the Comet Lake-H series (4th generation of Skylake architecture). The processor clocks at between 2.4 and 4.1 GHz  and can execute up to eight threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. According to Intel, the CPU is manufactured on 14nm (14nm++) process.

The Comet Lake architecture is similar to Coffee Lake and offers the same features and is produced in the same 14nm process. Other than the improved clock rates, the memory controller now also supports faster DDR4-2933 RAM. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

The Core i5-10200H supports no vPro, TXT or SIPP. These business features are available in the faster (and later released) Core i5-10400H (2.6 - 4.6 GHz).

Performance

The performance is only minimal better than the Core i5-9300H thanks to the support for faster DDR4-2933 RAM. This means, the CPU is well suited for demanding tasks, although the faster versions offer a significantly higher Turbo Boost clock speed for faster single core execution. 

Power consumption

This 10th gen Comet Lake processor has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 45 W, a value that laptop manufacturers are allowed to reduce somewhat, 35 W being the lower limit. Doing so will result in lower clock speeds and lower performance. Either way, this CPU is too power-hungry to be used as the base of a passively cooled laptop.

Intel Core i5-10200H is built with an old, as of late 2022, 14 nm Intel process for subpar energy efficiency.

Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

The Apple M3 Pro (12 Core) is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was launched in late 2023. It integrates a new 12-core CPU with 6 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 6 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a slimmed-down 11-core variant with a 14-core GPU.

Compared to the M2 Pro the M3 Pro has been slimmed down somewhat and swaps two performance cores for efficiency cores. This is due to the changed core configuration, as 6 cores are now used per cluster (the M2 Pro and M3 still have 4 cores per cluster). Furthermore, the memory bus has been reduced from 256 bits to 192 bits (150 GB/s vs. 200 GB/s). However, thanks to the new architecture and higher clock rates, the new M3 Pro is still slightly faster.

The M3 Pro also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the top model, all 18 cores of the chip are used and support up to 3 displays simultaneously (internal and 2 external).

GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 18 or 36 GB variants and offers 150 GB/s maximum bandwidth (192 bit bus).

The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (compared to 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now also supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded.

Unfortunately, the integrated WLAN only continues to support WiFi 6E (no WiFi 7), unlike the small M3 SoC thunderbolt 4 is also supported (max 40 Gbit/s).

The chip is manufactured in the current 3nm process (N3B) at TSMC and contains 37 billion transistors (-7.5% vs. Apple M2 Pro).