The massive pocket book launch for Intel this 12 months is Tiger Lake, its upcoming 10nm platform designed to pair a brand new graphics structure with a pleasant excessive frequency for the efficiency that prospects on this house require. Over the previous few weeks, we’ve coated the microarchitecture as introduced by Intel at its newest Intel Architecture Day 2020, in addition to the formal launch of the brand new platform in early September. The lacking piece of the puzzle was truly testing it, to see if it may possibly match the very progressive platform at the moment supplied by AMD’s Ryzen Mobile. Today is that evaluation, with one in every of Intel’s reference design laptops.
Like a Tiger Carving Through The Ice
The system we’ve got handy is one in every of Intel’s Reference Design techniques, which is similar to the Software Development System (SDS) we examined for Ice Lake final 12 months. The pocket book we have been despatched was constructed along side one in every of Intel’s OEM companions, and is supposed to behave for example system to different OEMs. This is barely completely different to the software program growth system, which was primarily for the large firm software program builders (assume Adobe) for code optimization, however the precept continues to be the identical: a excessive powered system overbuilt for thermals and powerful followers. These techniques aren’t retail, and so noise and battery life aren’t a part of the equation of our testing, but it surely additionally implies that the efficiency we take a look at must be a number of the greatest the platform has to supply.
Our reference design evaluation pattern implements Intel’s high tier Tiger Lake ‘Core 11th Gen’ processor, the Core i7-1185G7. This is a quad core processor with hyperthreading, providing eight threads whole. This processor additionally has the total sized new Xe-LP graphics, with 96 execution models working as much as 1450 MHz.
I haven’t talked about the processor frequency or the ability consumption, as a result of for this technology Intel is deciding to supply its cellular processors with a variety of supported speeds and feeds. To complicate the difficulty, Intel by definition is just publically providing it within the mix-max kind, whereas these of us who’re within the knowledge would a lot quite see a sliding scale.
| Intel Core i7-1185G7 ‘Tiger Lake’ | |
| Cores Threads |
4 Cores 8 Threads |
| Base Frequency at 12 W | 1200 MHz |
| Base Frequency at 15 W | 1800 MHz |
| Base Frequency at 28 W | 3000 MHz |
| 1C Turbo as much as 50 W | 4800 MHz |
| All-core Turbo as much as 50 W | 4300 MHz |
| L2 Cache | 1.25 MB per core (non-inclusive) |
| L3 Cache | 12 MB (non-inclusive) |
| Integrated Graphics | Xe-LP 96 Execution Units 1350 MHz Turbo |
| Memory Support | 32 GB LPDDR4X-4266 or 64 GB DDR4-3200 |
In this case, the Core i7-1185G7 shall be supplied to OEMs with thermal design factors (TDPs) from 12 W to 28 W. An OEM can select the minimal, the utmost, or one thing in-between, and one of many annoying issues about that is that as a person, with out gear measuring the CPU energy, you will be unable to inform, because the OEMs don’t give the resellers this data when selling the notebooks.
For this reference design, it has been constructed to supply each, so in impact it’s extra like a 28 W design for peak efficiency as to keep away from any thermal points.
At 12 W, Intel lists a base frequency of 1.2 GHz, whereas at 28 W, Intel lists a base frequency of three.zero GHz. Unfortunately Intel doesn’t listing the worth that we predict is most beneficial – 15 W – which might allow fairer comparisons with the earlier technology Intel {hardware} in addition to the competitors. After testing the laptop computer, we will verify that the 15 W worth as programmed into the silicon (so we’re baffled why Intel wouldn’t inform us) is 1.Eight GHz.
In each 12 W and 28 W situations, the processor can turbo as much as 4.Eight GHz on one core / two threads….
