Intel Core i7-10610U vs Intel Core i5-1038NG7

Intel Core i7-10610U

The Intel Core i7-10610U is a power efficient quad-core SoC for notebooks based on the Comet Lake (CML-U) generation and was announced in August 2019. Compared to the similar Whiskey Lake processors (e.g. Core i7-8665U), the only difference is support for higher memory speeds (DDR4-2666 vs 2400) and two additional cores in the top model (not in this i7-10610U). The processor cores are clocked between 1.8 and 4.9 GHz (unverified). Thanks to Hyper-Threading 8 threads can be used. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

Compared to the similar Core i7-10510U, the 10610U supports vPro.

The integrated graphics adapter however is still the same as in the previous generations. It should be still called Intel UHD Graphics 620 and clock from 300 - 1150 MHz in the i7. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a VP9 and H.265 de- and encoder and an integrated dual channel DDR4-2666 / LPDDR4x 2933 / LPDDR3-2133 memory controller.

Performance

The average 10610U in our database is in the same league as the Core i5-1035G1 and also the Core i5-8257U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term power limit of 25 W, the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G7 is among the fastest laptops built around the 10610U that we know of. It can be about 30% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This Core i7 has a default TDP of 15 W (also known as the long-term power limit). Laptop manufacturers are free to change that value to anything between 10 W and 25 W, with clock speeds and performance changing accordingly. Perhaps more importantly, short-term power consumption of 10th gen Comet Lake U processors can be as high as 80 W or even 90 W, making passively cooled designs rather unlikely to appear.

Core i7-10610U is manufactured on an old, as of late 2022, 14 nm Intel process for subpar energy efficiency.

Intel Core i5-1038NG7

The Intel Core i5-1038NG7 or Core i5-1038G7 is a quad-core SoC for laptops and Ultrabooks based on the Ice-Lake-U generation that was announced in Mai 2020 in the refreshed MacBook Pro 13. It integrates four Sunnycove processor cores (8 threads thanks to HyperThreading) clocked at 2 (base) - 3.8 (single core Turbo) GHz. According to Intel the Sunnycove cores achieve 18% more IPCs (Instructions per Clock) and therefore the CPU performance should be similar to the higher clocked Whiskey-Lake and Coffee-Lake predecessors (e.g. Core i7-8559U, 2.7 - 4.5 GHz). The Core i5-1038G7 is the second fastest 28W model of the Ice Lake family after the Core i7-1068G7.

The biggest improvement for Ice-Lake is the integrated Gen 11 graphics card called Iris Plus Graphics. The Core i5-1035G7 integrates the biggest G7 variant with 64 CUs clocked at 300 - 1100? MHz. The Iris Plus G7 should be twice as fast as the predecessors and best the AMD Vega 10 GPU in current Ryzen APUs.

Other improvements for Ice Lake are the AI hardware acceleration and the partial integration of Thunderbolt and Wifi 6 in the chip. The integrated DDR4 memory controller supports modules with up to 3200 MHz (and LPDDDR4 3733).

The Core i5-1038G7 is produced in the new  10nm process at Intel that should offer a comparable performance to the 7nm process at TSMC. The TDP is specified at 28 Watts and therefore the CPU is best used in small multimedia laptops from 13-inch upwards (e.g. like a MacBook Pro 13).