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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huangcjz - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Jim Salter, the author at Ars, replied in the comments on their article that the reason why they disclosed that it was MSI was because they specifically asked Intel to check with MSI whether they could disclose that it was made by them (because MSI might not want this to be compared to their finished products when this is a prototype), whereas other reviewers didn't explicitly ask Intel if they could do so:"I wonder why Anandtech felt the need to conceal the system manufacturer's name."
"They were being respectful, since prototype recipients were asked not to take pictures of innards, not do battery tests, and a few other things due to this very much not being a production laptop.
I would have done the same, except that I specifically asked my Intel rep whether MSI would prefer to be named or not. My rep took a day to find answers, then came back and said that naming MSI was fine as long as we made it clear that this wasn't a retail system."
Spunjji - Saturday, September 19, 2020 - link
Nice! Thanks for the context.Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
The name of the manufacturer isn't the point.m53 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Intel don't want to provide free marketing to MSI which might make the other OEMs unhappy. That's why they can't say that it is an MSI system.huangcjz - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Jim Salter, the author at Ars, replied in the comments on their article that the reason why they disclosed that it was MSI was because they specifically asked Intel to check with MSI whether they could disclose that it was made by them (because MSI might not want this to be compared to their finished products when this is a prototype), whereas other reviewers didn't explicitly ask Intel if they could do so:"I wonder why Anandtech felt the need to conceal the system manufacturer's name."
"They were being respectful, since prototype recipients were asked not to take pictures of innards, not do battery tests, and a few other things due to this very much not being a production laptop.
I would have done the same, except that I specifically asked my Intel rep whether MSI would prefer to be named or not. My rep took a day to find answers, then came back and said that naming MSI was fine as long as we made it clear that this wasn't a retail system."
Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
The name of the manufacturer isn't the point.wow&wow - Thursday, September 17, 2020 - link
Two chips in a package, so it isn't a monolithic chip even with 10nm?RedOnlyFan - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
That's soc and the pch dies. The compute is still monolithic.Spunjji - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
But AMD have the PCH on-die... 😬RedOnlyFan - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Intel needed a kick where it hurts, now it's safe to put the stick back in the storeroom?