Intel announced their new logo yesterday, revamping their whole company’s ideology. Aside from the logo, they announced their newer 11th Generation Tiger Lake CPU. The logo isn’t important; the products are. The 11th gen Tiger Lake CPU received visual upgrades and even a core clock boost.
But the Presentation slides from Intel weren’t that great; yes, they did present significant benchmarking slides. But there were some unsure elements in the benchmarks. So before we fixate towards the benchmarks, here is the rundown on the latest Tiger Lake CPU.
Intel Core What? The Confusion naming scheme returns on Tiger Lake CPUs
Intel, Please fix your naming scheme. The newer Intel Core 11th generation has a confusing naming scheme ranging from Core i7 – 1185G7 to the Core i3 – 1110G4. Plus, now, Intel is introducing 4 Core 8 Threads Core i3 SKUs as well.
It has more confusion in the messy product lineup. Enthusiasts will surely understand the naming scheme, but to an average customer, it is tricky.
Intel is dividing their SKUs into two parts. The 11th generation comes in 2 power packages. The low powered CPUs are split into 25W and 15W packages. Great move from Intel, but the naming scheme might not please anyone.
The Core i7 – 1185G7, where the number 5 denotes a high Wattage SKU. And The Core i7 – 1160G7 the number 6 represents a low powered 15 W SKUs. Yes, it is confusing, and blame Intel for the flawed naming scheme.
There are nine processors revealed for the Tiger Lake CPU. All the CPUs have an increased graphics execution unit. The top of the line Core i7 – 1185G7 has a base clock of 3.0 GHz and boost up to 4.3 GHz all-core turbo.
Intel is handy, including the Single Core and All Core Turbo boost rating in their presentation. The Core i7 comes with the latest Intel Iris Xe GPU with 96 EUs. The processor has a bump in GPU cores.
The cache on all the CPUs gets increased for enhanced performance.
Core i3 gets a 4 cores 8 threads option
The Core i3 is a great confusion itself. Intel introduced four cores and eight threads. The Core i3 – 1125G4 and the Core i3 – 1120G4. They have added two cores and four threads but have a significantly lower clock speed.
The Core i3 – 1125G4 is a 25W processor with a base clock of 2.0 and an all-core boost of 3.3 GHz. Whereas its brother, the Core i3 – 1115G4, has a base clock of 3.0 GHz and an all-core boost of 4.1GHz.
The lower Core i3 – 1120G4 has a 1.1 GHz base clock and reaches up to a 3.0 GHz all-core boost. Its brother, Core i3 – 1110G4 has a 1.*GHz base clock and reaches up to 3.09 GHz all-core boost frequency.
There isn’t much of a difference in the power package wattage or the graphics EUs unit. Note that the Core i3 – 1110G4 has only 6MB cache.
Upgrades and Performance
So the 11th Gen Processors are getting a bit of an upgrade. The new processors are getting further upgraded with Willow Cove cores. Better performance and optimization on the 10nm process node. Intel integrated a converged chassis fabric, GNA 2.0 Power management, new memory controller, and 2 x MEDIA Encoders.
The Thunderbolt 4 is not much an upgrade from the previous Gen 3. So it isn’t counted as a considerable upgrade. Intel finally integrated the PCIe Gen 4 on their CPUs. The PCIe Gen 4 gives high bandwidth to discrete GPUs, and SSD offers much higher performance and Read/Write Speed.
Intel has improved on its Xe GPU in the past few years. The Xe GPU on the Core i7 – 1185G7 looks very promising with its lead on AMD and its VEGA GPU. The Core i7 – 1185G7 is going head to head with the Ryzen 7 4800U and outperforming it in several real work performances.
But take the benchmark with a grain of salt. In the past, the SYSmark benchmarking is seen favoring more on Intel’s processor, so the results aren’t 100% true. The Xe GPUs gain a significant lead in the gaming section.
The Xe GPU outclasses the Ryzen Vega GPU with a considerable margin. Finally, Intel GPUs can run games in 1080p giving better performance than AMD. But all the games are tested in 1080p with low graphical settings or so tweaked.
Intel even focused their processor with good AI performance. Note that the AMD processor doesn’t have good AI performance or has AI boosting cores like Intel’s. The company also focused on the processor to have better streaming performance.
But usually, the low-power Intel processors aren’t used for streaming.
Final Thoughts
Intel is finally starting to give in to pressure from AMD. The 11th generation processor is a wake-up call to AMD, and their Renior based Ryzen 4000 APU. AMD recently took Intel spot as the best Desktop processor manufacturer and took Intel’s crown in the mobile sector.
Thanks to its performance and the lower price, AMD has nested itself as a reliable chip provider in partnered companies. Intel looks to take back its spot in the mobile processor segment with its Tiger Lake CPU.
So far, the newer CPU benchmarks seem promising, and we hope to see more of these products from Intel in the future. But due to Intel’s shady practices and weak marketing team, we have to perform benchmarks to test its potential thoroughly.
The marketing wasn’t that great either. Intel kept on calling AMD. Rather than showing their potential and processor prowess, all they did was establish their dominance towards AMD. We hoped to see the 11th gen going head to head with the older Intel CPU.
But all will be benchmarked when the product releases.
