Intel 11th Generation Core Tiger Lake-H Performance Review: Fast and Power Hungry
by Brett Howse & Andrei Frumusanu on May 17, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- 10nm
- Willow Cove
- SuperFin
- 11th Gen
- Tiger Lake-H
SPEC CPU - Multi-Threaded Performance
Moving onto multi-threaded SPEC CPU 2017 results, these are the same workloads as on the single-threaded test (we purposefully avoid Speed variants of the workloads in ST tests). The key to performance here is not only microarchitecture or core count, but the overall power efficiency of the system and the levels of performance we can fit into the thermal envelope of the device we’re testing.
It’s to be noted that among the four chips I put into the graph, the i9-11980HK is the only one at a 45W TDP, while the AMD competition lands in at 35W, and the i7-1185G7 comes at a lower 28W. The test takes several hours of runtime (6 hours for this TGL-H SKU) and is under constant full load, so lower duration boost mechanisms don’t come into play here.
Generally as expected, the 8-core TGL-H chip leaves the 4-core TGL-U sibling in the dust, in many cases showcasing well over double the performance. The i9-11980HK also fares extremely well against the AMD competition in workloads which are more DRAM or cache heavy, however falls behind in other workloads which are more core-local and execution throughput bound. Generally that’d be a fair even battle argument between the designs, if it weren’t for the fact that the AMD systems are running at 23% lower TDPs.
In the floating-point multi-threaded suite, we again see a similar competitive scenario where the TGL-H system battles against the best Cezanne and Renoir chips.
What’s rather odd here in the results is 503.bwaves_r and 549.fotonik_r which perform far below the numbers which we were able to measure on the TGL-U system. I think what’s happening here is that we’re hitting DRAM memory-level parallelism limits, with the smaller TGL-U system and its 8x16b LPDDR4 channel memory configuration allowing for more parallel transactions as the 2x64b DDR4 channels on the TGL-H system.
In terms of the overall performance, the 45W 11980HK actually ends up losing to AMD’s Ryzen 5980HS even with 10W more TDP headroom, at least in the integer suite.
We also had initially run the suite in 65W mode, the results here aren’t very good at all, especially when comparing it to the 45W results. For +40-44% TDP, the i9-11980HK in Intel’s reference laptop only performs +9.4% better. It’s likely here that this is due to the aforementioned heavy thermal throttling the system has to fall to, with long periods of time at 35W state, which pulls down the performance well below the expected figures. I have to be explicit here that these 65W results are not representative of the full real 65W performance capabilities of the 11980HK – just that of this particular thermal solution within this Intel reference design.
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danjw - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
No, not really. This is Intel's REFERENCE SYSTEM and it only trades blows with an AMD system that is a product. How is this competitive? You have to realize that the fans on this system aren't tuned for a consumer, they are tuned to make Intel's processor look better. If you read Andrei's conclusions, it is a processor for a laptop no one is selling anymore. It is a 65W processor battling a 35W processor.Their are two reasons this may sell well. AMD's systems are still hard to find and the fact that many consumers still believe that the Intel Inside label is important.
mode_13h - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
> You have to realize that the fans on this system aren't tuned for a consumer,> they are tuned to make Intel's processor look better.
Not to argue with your main point, but it's worth noting that even when Intel gets to design their own thermal solution, it still fell on its face @ the stock 65W settings. That's pretty bad.
mode_13h - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
Maybe they should've had the team design it who rigged up that Cascade Lake workstation demo to run all cores at like 5 GHz. Sure, it'd have been the size of a briefcase and sounded like a leaf blower, but at least the it'd clock well!Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
Just to make it clear and visible: The i9-11980HK is advertised as a default 45W CPU. The fact that the system came in 65W mode shouldn't be seen as a "stock" behaviour of that SKU.mode_13h - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
> The fact that the system came in 65W mode shouldn't be seen as a "stock" behaviour of that SKU.So, what are we to make of it? Was Intel trying to rig the benchmarks, then ???
jospoortvliet - Wednesday, May 19, 2021 - link
Pfffif they were they did it in a stunningly incompetent way... hahaSpunjji - Thursday, May 20, 2021 - link
@mode_13h - they did that with their previous Ice and Tiger Lake reference platforms (100% fan speed constantly, yes please) so it makes sense they did the same again here. 😬morello159 - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
Another thing to consider is that Intel platforms have been much more stable, for me, than AMD. My ASUS G14 with the Ryzen 4900HS, for example, *can* deliver both outstanding battery life and amazing performance. However, there are often times when the system draws extra power for seemingly no reason. There are whole forums dedicated to tweaking the G14's power settings to fix high idle draw. I've also experienced some weird freezes, lockups, etc. It's a great laptop, but I wouldn't use it in a professional setting where I need it to work all the time.My i7-10810U powered Dell Latitude 9510, while quite slow in comparison, gets 12 hours of battery life every time and can run days at a time without any hiccups.
Hifihedgehog - Monday, May 17, 2021 - link
> "Intel platforms have been much more stable, for me, than AMD"LOL. Even with Xe, I still see major graphical issues with 3D games which in some cases even refuse to render. It has gotten way better than five years ago, but AMD's graphic drivers are still far and away better. Stop reaching...
Spunjji - Tuesday, May 18, 2021 - link
This reply doesn't really contradict morello159's main point, though.I've had similar experiences - my 8th gen Intel Dell work system is rock solid, if unspectacular.
My 4800H + 5600M Dell gaming system has... issues. A lot of them appear to be Dell's fault, TBH, but not all of them are.