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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SplinesNS - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
The Sardine oil and Tiger King references make it hard for an international reader to actually make sense of content here. I am not sure who the target audience is for this website but I would kindly request you not to use very culture specific references on a technology website.Bik - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
It is subjective, but I think it fun and I'm an international reader. Without these references the article would be too dry. I think one can still get 100% technical detail and not knowing the puns.Spunjji - Saturday, September 19, 2020 - link
Seconded.Samus - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
This is criminal. They are going to sell a CPU of the same model and allow OEM's to have it perform vastly different without disclosing the actual performance? What's next, bring back the PR rating?Spunjji - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
To be fair, this isn't new. Intel CPUs have differed significantly in performance depending on cooling implementation on the final product for a while, and AMD have similar issues now.Oxford Guy - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
How new this is is less important than the fact that it's a scam.Spunjji - Sunday, September 20, 2020 - link
It's relevant when someone's talking about it like it's a new problem..?maroon1 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Clock for clock comparison is uselessThe fact that Tiger Lake beats Ice Lake at same power means than Tiger Lake is superior out of the two. Period
Also iGPU performance boost is huge. It beats 65w APU in some cases. But there is some inconsistency because some cases it does not beat 15w APU. It might be because of drivers ??!
yeeeeman - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Damn, willow cove is actually lower ipc vs sunny??? Wow, that was unexpected! Intel needs to improve the ipc of the next gen core massively if they want to stay on top. I know the rumours say 50% better than skylake but even that, if it will happen will not be sufficient.m53 - Friday, September 18, 2020 - link
Willow cove has ~20% better IPC than Zen2. Golden Cove is rumored to add another 25% taking the lead to ~45% by mid 2021. Will Zen3 be able to close the 45% IPC deficit? AMD says no. By their own best case projection they expect 15% IPC. That would pul Zen3 at a 30% IPC deficit vs Golden Cove. As you can see the IPC deficit keeps widening.