Intel’s Tiger Lake 11th Gen Core i7-1185G7 Review and Deep Dive: Baskin’ for the Exotic
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Andrei Frumusanu on September 17, 2020 9:35 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- 10nm
- Tiger Lake
- Xe-LP
- Willow Cove
- SuperFin
- 11th Gen
- i7-1185G7
- Tiger King
Section by Andrei Frumusanu
CPU MT Performance: SPEC 2006, SPEC 2017
We’ve noted the earlier discussions of Intel’s TDP handling and how Tiger Lake has 15W and 28W operating modes, and where this comes into play the most is in multi-threaded scenarios where the platform is generally power envelope limited, having to otherwise clock down.
We’re showcasing the MT performance in SPEC for both the Tiger Lake modes, comparing it to both the 15W Ice Lake and AMD Renoir chips. As a note, the 15W Ice Lake platform had a sustained power draw of 18W which makes things not quite as apples-to-apples. Also as a reminder, the Intel systems have 4 cores and are running 8 thread instances, while the AMD system has 8 cores and is running 16 threads.
At first glance, the Tiger Lake system performs quite well versus its predecessor, but that’s mostly only in the 28W mode. At 15W, the generational boost, while it is there, isn’t that significant. This might point out that efficiency isn’t all that much better this generation.
AMD’s platform scales incredibly well in execution-bound workloads as it fully takes advantage of double the core count. In more memory-heavy workloads, the Zen2 cores here seem to be lacking sufficient resources and scale below the performance of Intel’s 4-core designs in some workloads.
In the floating-point results, it’s again a matter of TDP headroom as well as memory performance scalability. In the 15W results, the Tiger Lake chip posts rather small improvements over its Ice Lake counterpart, whilst in the 28W mode the gains are more considerable and even manages to outperform the AMD system more often than not.
In the overall scores, the verdict on Tiger Lake is dependent on how you evaluate Intel’s performance gains. At an (semi)equal-TDP level between Tiger Lake and Ice Lake, the improvements in performance are 17%. Intel does reach a larger 51% generational performance boost in its 28W configuration, but at that point we’re talking about quite different cooling solutions inside of a laptop, no longer making this a valid apples-to-apples comparison.
We haven’t had opportunity to test out higher TDP -HS model of Renoir yet, but with the 15W 4800U already mostly tied with the 28W i7-1185G7, we would expect it to notably outperform the Tiger Lake chip.
Overall, Tiger Lake seems to be offering roughly 20% better performance per watt over its predecessor, with increased performance beyond that coming at a cost of higher power consumption.
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Spunjji - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Really not sure what you're chatting about here - the Renoir system on test uses LPDDR4X at the same frequency as the TGL system.The only really relevant query would be over the thermal design of the system, but even then, the power consumption charts (did you check them?) show that the TGL system sticks to its limits in 15W mode.
Basically it feels like you're scrabbling for complaints that aren't really justified.
proflogic - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
*yawn* Looks like I'll skip another generation. It looks like PCIE ACS started getting into root ports with ICL, so I was hoping for more impressive performance gains with TGL (probably shouldn't have expected much with still having 4 cores). For my intended workloads, this generation isn't worth the investment. YMMV.I'm probably waiting for whenever AMD gets USB4 into their platform.
ksec - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Those GPU benchmarks looks very strange. And some are missing the AMD 15W variants others are missing Intels.....So the graph looks very unbalanced.
IanCutress - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Limited time to test. I set the gaming benchmark script to run overnight, and until I actually look at the output data, I won't know if a particular test has failed or not run properly. Then Intel asked for the system back on Sunday.I technically went on holiday from Monday (booked ages ago), had to take the Lenovo AMD laptop with me to test in the hotel room, and lost two days of holiday to writing up the review. Turns out in the middle of nowhere you can't really download borderlands 3 in a reasonable time scale.
ksec - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Thanks Ian on the hard work.I dont know how the publisher or other people thinks. Personally I wish this would be first thing spelled out in the article. It also felt like Intel is rushing things a little bit this time.asfletch - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Wow you can still travel? Not sure whether envious...(Australian here, locked down to 5km radius).Spunjji - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Damn! That's dedication, but I sincerely hope you get some proper time out soon to make up for it. 👍MCPicoli - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Locking security fixes behind "premium" versions? How about NO?ballsystemlord - Saturday, September 19, 2020 - link
I agree. Security only for businesses is stupid.WaltC - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Wake me in six months if and when you tag a retail unit to test...;) Intel is so thoughtful to send out unfinished units for Intel-managed reviews with pre-conditions and canned scenarios to try and make it appear to equal or exceed AMD's presently shipping, finished products. Yawn...what else is new?