Hands-on with Intel’s i7-1185G7 Tiger Lake prototype laptop

Tiger Lake is a much better challenger for AMD—but it's still fighting uphill.

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[spiritofreason]

I'm not sure what instrumentation is available to help, but it would be really cool to see energy usage alongside time to completion (or the performance figure for the test). With TDPs and turbo frequencies all making things blurry, it's hard to tell how the components compare.

Thanks for the write-up!

 

[gregvp]

But we need to stress the word unusually: inference workloads are more common and important every year, but they shouldn't be most people's deciding factor yet.

And when they are, I guess AMD will just bung an ASIC chiplet in the package.

 

[jazzylarry]

I'm not sure what instrumentation is available to help, but it would be really cool to see energy usage alongside time to completion (or the performance figure for the test). With TDPs and turbo frequencies all making things blurry, it's hard to tell how the components compare.

Thanks for the write-up!

The energy usage alongside performance tests for laptops would be cool.

However, this story already confirms that Intel's easy days are behind it. If it can't catch AMD in this round, it's likely going to be a while.

 

[milkywayer]

Just wanted to say thank you AMD for kicking these serial milkers (intel) butts so hard it's taking them years to catch up. And we're finally out of the dual core laptop era and quad core desktop era which felt like an eternity.

 

[Autapomorphy]

Remember how the 10th generation had two completely different product lines with Comet Lake and Ice Lake? Ice Lake, to which this is the successor based on the G7 part suffix, was much more GPU focused than CPU focused. For that reason, it's really not surprising that this part ranks much better in GPU tests than CPU tests.

My burning question is whether Intel is going to have Tiger Lake be the one true 11th generation architecture, or if there's going to be an 11th generation successor to Comet Lake as well focusing on CPU performance.

 

[Bolognesus]

But we need to stress the word unusually: inference workloads are more common and important every year, but they shouldn't be most people's deciding factor yet.

And when they are, I guess AMD will just bung an ASIC chiplet in the package.

And even if your workload is unusually inference-based, wouldn't you likely still be better off offloading anything substantial enough that performance starts to really matter to some AWS instance or something similar?

It seems to me Intel is going to be grasping at straws for a while longer, by the looks of this.

 

[jhodge]

Unfortunately, IMHO, Tiger Lake looks good enough to keep AMD out of Dell XPS and the like. AMD has had trouble scoring top-tier wins for years, and with Intel back in shouting distance of Renoir, I expect they’ll be stuck in the ‘gaming’ and/or ‘bargain’ niche again.

 

[Jeff S]

A couple thoughts - I would think that a laptop plugged into wall power (aka mains power) would automatically kick up the tau/tdp for performance some?

Also, I would think at least some laptops (not budget, but maybe the mid and probably the higher end laptops) would have, if not a Windows app to set the tau/tdp, at least a uefi firmware setting for performance, that let's you choose high performance, balanced, or power saving modes or something similar.

 

[TROPtastic]

Unfortunately, IMHO, Tiger Lake looks good enough to keep AMD out of Dell XPS and the like. AMD has had trouble scoring top-tier wins for years, and with Intel back in shouting distance of Renoir, I expect they’ll be stuck in the ‘gaming’ and/or ‘bargain’ niche again.

This is also assuming that Dell and HP aren't getting sweetheart deals from Intel to lock out AMD, which has happened in the past.

 

[Deleted member 545801]

This means that one i7-1185G7 system is likely to perform very little like another—so now your less-technical colleagues not only won't pay attention to the difference between one i7 and another, they won't notice whether the exact same i7 SKU is configured for TDP of 12W, 28W, or anywhere in between.

Ugh. I - proud tech nerd and Ars subscription holder - already have trouble figuring out Intel's lineup. They have to be intentionally trying to confuse people.

 

[kazo]

For the life of me, I don't understand why Intel stock hasn't plummeted. It's been holding at around 65-50 for a year despite AMD eating its lunch. With TMSC releasing 5nm chips, Intel is now two generations behind the curve.

 

[Jim Salter]

Remember how the 10th generation had two completely different product lines with Comet Lake and Ice Lake? Ice Lake, to which this is the successor based on the G7 part suffix, was much more GPU focused than CPU focused. For that reason, it's really not surprising that this part ranks much better in GPU tests than CPU tests.

My burning question is whether Intel is going to have Tiger Lake be the one true 11th generation architecture, or if there's going to be an 11th generation successor to Comet Lake as well focusing on CPU performance.

I asked that question directly at Architecture Day, and Intel's reps said no, there will not be a successor to Comet Lake.

 

[Jim Salter]

Unfortunately, IMHO, Tiger Lake looks good enough to keep AMD out of Dell XPS and the like. AMD has had trouble scoring top-tier wins for years, and with Intel back in shouting distance of Renoir, I expect they’ll be stuck in the ‘gaming’ and/or ‘bargain’ niche again.

That's my concern as well. I'd like to see AMD claw back a bigger foothold in the OEM space.

 

[biohazard918]

For the life of me, I don't understand why Intel stock hasn't plummeted. It's been holding at around 65-50 for a year despite AMD eating its lunch. With TMSC releasing 5nm chips, Intel is now two generations behind the curve.

Because Intel still has a massive amount of the cpu market and an effectively unlimited r&d budget. Nobody expects things to remain as they are forever.

 

[Lonyo]

Just wanted to say thank you AMD for kicking these serial milkers (intel) butts so hard it's taking them years to catch up. And we're finally out of the dual core laptop era and quad core desktop era which felt like an eternity.

No disrespect to AMD, but I feel most of what's helping them at the moment is TSMC delivering on process nodes and Intel failing horrible, rather than the success of AMD's contribution. At least >50% is due to process nodes and not AMD itself.

 

[mschira]

Well it’s nice that Intel can make prototypes....that can almost keep up with what AMD is selling right now.
M.

 

[FastidiousMastiff]

CPU performance remains unimpressive relative to AMDs monsters.

Xe performance appears quite impressive, but a more comprehensive analysis with shipping systems is really required.

Quite an inversion for Intel, with inferior general performance and markedly superior graphics.

 

[purecarrot]

Well it’s nice that Intel can make prototypes....that can almost keep up with what AMD is selling right now.
M.

It's a production chip in prototype laptop. Intel does not manufacture laptops for sale, they design prototype laptops (reference designs) to help the OEMs (and Intel themselves have the use for them too). But as far as AMD vs Intel comparison is concerned, there is nothing prototype-y here.

 

[Static and Noise]

Just wanted to say thank you AMD for kicking these serial milkers (intel) butts so hard it's taking them years to catch up. And we're finally out of the dual core laptop era and quad core desktop era which felt like an eternity.

No disrespect to AMD, but I feel most of what's helping them at the moment is TSMC delivering on process nodes and Intel failing horrible, rather than the success of AMD's contribution. At least >50% is due to process nodes and not AMD itself.

Dunno. Zen and Zen+ definitely didn't have a process node advantage over Intel. And Intel starting it's... course correction happened pretty much the day the first Zen CPUs launched.

Saying it's all TSMC is the same as saying Zen was no good before Zen2. It's not like the 2700x is worthless compared to the 3700x.

 

[SraCet]

The short version: Xe delivers on its promises and then some. Whether the i7-1185G7 CPU as a whole is running at 28W TDP or 15W TDP, it beats all the other integrated graphics systems on both Time Spy and Night Raid by a healthy margin.

I'm sure your benchmark results are correct but it's worth noting that Anandtech came to a different conclusion when measuring the performance of actual games on the chips in question.

To paraphrase their results/conclusion: when playing actual games, AMD's chip is often faster by a small margin at lower resolutions, and often slower by a small margin at higher resolutions.

So it's absolutely not the slam-dunk that you would expect from Intel's slide deck or these two 3DMark results.

 

[vulpes vulpes]

This means that one i7-1185G7 system is likely to perform very little like another—so now your less-technical colleagues not only won't pay attention to the difference between one i7 and another, they won't notice whether the exact same i7 SKU is configured for TDP of 12W, 28W, or anywhere in between.

Ugh. I - proud tech nerd and Ars subscription holder - already have trouble figuring out Intel's lineup. They have to be intentionally trying to confuse people.

"The Intel, uh, Tiger Lake platform."

It's okay, even Intel doesn't know. Their presentation referred to AMD processors by name more than their own products.

 

[purecarrot]

The short version: Xe delivers on its promises and then some. Whether the i7-1185G7 CPU as a whole is running at 28W TDP or 15W TDP, it beats all the other integrated graphics systems on both Time Spy and Night Raid by a healthy margin.

I'm sure your benchmark results are correct but it's worth noting that Anandtech came to a different conclusion when measuring the performance of actual games on the chips in question.

To paraphrase their results/conclusion: when playing actual games, AMD's chip is often faster by a small margin at lower resolutions, and often slower by a small margin at higher resolutions.

So it's absolutely not the slam-dunk that you would expect from Intel's slide deck or these two 3DMark results.

As I understand, at lower resolutions game performance is more likely to be CPU limited. GPU is more critical at higher resolutions. If that is the case, then this would also confirm the assertion that Intel GPU is indeed faster.

 

[SraCet]

...
No disrespect to AMD, but I feel most of what's helping them at the moment is TSMC delivering on process nodes and Intel failing horrible, rather than the success of AMD's contribution. At least >50% is due to process nodes and not AMD itself.

If AMD had a crap chip design, no process in the world would fix that. Saying that most of AMD's current success is due to TSMC rather than AMD's efforts seems disrespectful of the excellent work that has been done by AMD.

 

[Static and Noise]

The short version: Xe delivers on its promises and then some. Whether the i7-1185G7 CPU as a whole is running at 28W TDP or 15W TDP, it beats all the other integrated graphics systems on both Time Spy and Night Raid by a healthy margin.

I'm sure your benchmark results are correct but it's worth noting that Anandtech came to a different conclusion when measuring the performance of actual games on the chips in question.

To paraphrase their results/conclusion: when playing actual games, AMD's chip is often faster by a small margin at lower resolutions, and often slower by a small margin at higher resolutions.

So it's absolutely not the slam-dunk that you would expect from Intel's slide deck or these two 3DMark results.

As I understand, at lower resolutions game performance is more likely to be CPU limited. GPU is more critical at higher resolutions. If that is the case, then this would also confirm the assertion that Intel GPU is indeed faster.

...but if the AMD chip is faster at lower resolution, it'd then mean the AMD CPU is better for gaming than the intel one. Which would be much bigger news than "Intel's integrated graphics now slightly faster than AMD's".

 

[Autapomorphy]

Remember how the 10th generation had two completely different product lines with Comet Lake and Ice Lake? Ice Lake, to which this is the successor based on the G7 part suffix, was much more GPU focused than CPU focused. For that reason, it's really not surprising that this part ranks much better in GPU tests than CPU tests.

My burning question is whether Intel is going to have Tiger Lake be the one true 11th generation architecture, or if there's going to be an 11th generation successor to Comet Lake as well focusing on CPU performance.

I asked that question directly at Architecture Day, and Intel's reps said no, there will not be a successor to Comet Lake.

That makes sense. Comet Lake felt as though Intel was just manufacturing something on 14nm to make up for their problems with the 10nm node rather than addressing a real market there. The intersection of "I need more CPU power at the expense of other things" x "I need a U-series ultra-mobile CPU instead of an H-series CPU" felt terribly contrived.

 

[alfalfacat]

Jim, can you please list a spec sheet or something in the article? I forgot, and had to dig around the internet to confirm that the i7-1185G7 is still a quad-core.

 

[altsuperego]

I guess intel sent one of these units to every tech pub to try and mitigate the recent bad press

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

Once you get to Gen 11 and beyond Intel CPUs there's no direct comparison on performance alone. Intel claims to have solved an entire raft of security problems currently plaguing all users of computing systems with Control Flow Enforcement Technology. This supposedly breaks the ability to successfully use ROP/COP/JOP and Spectre type attacks. Tiger Lake is supposed to be the first CPU generation with CET technology built in. Now whether or not this will be successful or not will take time to establish, but for now AMD doesn't have an answer.

Before people try to point out Spectre is entirely theoretical, that's no longer the case. Blindside POC was just released and it can successfully use Spectre vulnerabilities to gain root combined with ANY memory corruption bug in otherwise fully patched Linux (or any other OS) systems in under 4 minutes. It's no longer pie-in-the-sky, folks, and ROP type attacks have been around and in regular use for years already. Once POC is released, everyone from criminal gangs to script kiddies will be jumping on it.

Before I buy another computer I'm personally going to be paying very close attention to what CET does, if it works or if it turns out to be snake oil, and what the likelihood is of software providers integrating CET support into their products.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

I was curious to see if Tiger Lake was going to give Apple any regrets about switching to their own custom CPUs. Looks like they'll be pretty happy with the path they've chosen, at least for now.

Whether or not that's best for consumers is a different question. I'm just interested from a technical perspective.

 

[Dilbert]

I have a 7th gen i5. Been looking at GPU upgrades and ignored the CPU. Just checked passmark. The 10th gen i5 is exactly DOUBLE passmark score compared to 7th gen. Geeze.

 

[theyuriha]

Oh...PROTOTYPE.
You are the only one who have talked about the implications of the tests run on a prototype model.
This basically means this Tiger Lake top model can outperform AMD's proposal under the best conditions and maybe in graphics pwrformance IF AMD's chips are caped by thermal limits.
This "benchmark" was used only to slow down AMD's momentum.

 

[Dilbert]

I was curious to see if Tiger Lake was going to give Apple any regrets about switching to their own custom CPUs. Looks like they'll be pretty happy with the path they've chosen, at least for now.

Whether or not that's best for consumers is a different question. I'm just interested from a technical perspective.

Keynote 5 years from now: we are switching to intel because double something triple something else half power usage. Enthusiastic clapping.

 

[Fabermetrics]

Im glad to see AMD is pushing Intel to up their game in the laptop scene, but I still think AMD is a non-starter so long as they lack Thunderbolt 3 support. Perhaps now that its open via usb 4 we will start to see AMD laptops with them? (USB4?, USB 4.0? USB FOUR? USB OR OR OR OR? I cant keep track)

 

[malor]

Desktop idle varies from 7.5W-8.2W, and peak consumption (as measured during the first several seconds of a Cinebench R20 run) is about 66W-68W.

Just as an aside, this is a good demonstration of how fictional Intel TDPs often get. It's much worse in desktop processors. The reason they're so inaccurate is because, apparently, Intel makes up a different model workload for each processor, and then measures the power consumption with that workload. Marketing, obviously, has a lot of influence over what that workload consists of. This means that a lot of "95W" desktop CPUs can actually pull 130 watts or more, and it gets worse and worse at the high end.

AMD TDPs, on the other hand, are supposedly quite good. If they make a TDP claim, it might edge over that by, like, 5% briefly, but for the most part, it's going to be dead on whatever they claim under maximum load.

This could always change, of course, they could always go fictional like Intel does, but I'm not aware that this has happened yet.

 

[SraCet]

...
As I understand, at lower resolutions game performance is more likely to be CPU limited. GPU is more critical at higher resolutions. If that is the case, then this would also confirm the assertion that Intel GPU is indeed faster.

That's a possible explanation. Another is that higher resolutions require proportionately more memory bandwidth and fill rate, whereas lower resolutions emphasize triangle setup, etc.

So it's not clear to me what the limiting factors are.

Clearly Intel has come up with a good integrated graphics solution, but I doubt it's generally 25-50% better than AMD's solution as indicated by the 3DMark results.

 

[Jim Salter]

Jim, can you please list a spec sheet or something in the article? I forgot, and had to dig around the internet to confirm that the i7-1185G7 is still a quad-core.

D'oh! Absolutely. While I do that, here's a link to the Ark page for the 1185G7: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... h-ipu.html

 

[Deleted member 221201]

Jim, can you please list a spec sheet or something in the article? I forgot, and had to dig around the internet to confirm that the i7-1185G7 is still a quad-core.

D'oh! Absolutely. While I do that, here's a link to the Ark page for the 1185G7: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... h-ipu.html

and change the byeline to i of the Tiger

 

[SraCet]

Im glad to see AMD is pushing Intel to up their game in the laptop scene, but I still think AMD is a non-starter so long as they lack Thunderbolt 3 support. Perhaps now that its open via usb 4 we will start to see AMD laptops with them? (USB4?, USB 4.0? USB FOUR? USB OR OR OR OR? I cant keep track)

Really? Is Thunderbolt that important to you? What do you use it for?

I've never owned a single Thunderbolt peripheral. If I was given money to buy one right now I'm not sure what it would even be. Regular USB 3 can transfer 400+ MB/second. That's way more than enough for all of my peripherals.