It’s official, Intel finally announces its 11th generation Tiger Lake processors
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It’s official, Intel finally announces its 11th generation Tiger Lake processors
Note: This article was first published on 3 Sept 2020.
After much teasing and anticipation, Intel has finally lifted the veil off its 11th-generation “Tiger Lake” processors.
It’s the successor to “Ice Lake” and like its predecessor, Tiger Lake was designed specifically for use in notebooks.
First things first, this is still a 10nm chip, albeit one that uses Intel’s new third-generation 10nm SuperFin process. In case you haven’t heard, Intel’s 7nm chips are delayed yet again and will only make an appearance sometime in 2022.
To improve performance and efficiency, Tiger Lake features what Intel calls SuperFin transistors that provide higher drive current, higher channel mobility, and lower resistance. It also has an improved metal stack with Super MIM capacitors and thinner barriers.
The end result of all this is that compared to Ice Lake, Tiger Lake chips will be able to hit higher frequencies at any given voltage. Intel also claims that Tiger Lake’s enhancements will deliver gains in performance that’s comparable to a full node transition.
Thanks to these enhancements, Intel says Tiger Lake processors will deliver up to 20% better CPU performance, double the graphics performance, and 5 times better AI performance.
Graphics will be a huge deal as these chips will be the first to feature Intel’s new Xe integrated graphics.
In a demo, Intel showed a system powered by its Tiger Lake processor to comfortably beat systems powered by AMD’s Ryzen 4800U and another powered by Intel’s own 10th generation processor with NVIDIA GeForce MX350 discrete graphics by over 50% in a game of Grid. If this holds true for all kinds of games, the upcoming thin-and-light notebooks powered by Tiger Lake are probably going to be the first set of ultrathin notebooks that can game comfortably without a discrete graphics unit.
Performance aside, Tiger Lake processors will also have better connectivity. Tiger Lake will feature integrated Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 4. Also, it will be the first mobile processor to integrate PCIe 4.0, enabling SSDs to hit transfer rates of up to 32Gbps (4GB/s).
Up till now, only AMD's Ryzen 3000 series processors had this capability, but when paired with a high-end chipset. To get an idea of what PCIe 4.0 SSDs feel like, hit our review here.
SKUs
There are 9 SKUs in total and they are broadly divided into two groups. The first is what is now known as "UP3" processors, which was traditionally known as U-series processors that form the bulk of ultrabooks these days. The second is "UP4", which was traditionally referred to as Y-series processors that are aimed at ultra-slim notebooks.
As such, UP3 processors will have rated TDPs between 12W and 28W, while UP4 processors have rated TDPs of between 7W and 15W.
Here are two tables detailing the processors.
| Model | Cores/Threads | Base Clock | Single-core turbo | All-core turbo | Xe EUs | Xeclock |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i7-1185G7 | 4C / 8T | 3.0GHz | 4.8GHz | 4.3GHz | 96 | 1,350MHz |
| Core i7-1165G7 | 4C / 8T | 2.8GHz | 4.7GHz | 4.1GHz | 96 | 1,300MHz |
| Core i5-1135G7 | 4C / 8T | 2.4GHz | 4.2GHz | 3.8GHz | 80 | 1,300MHz |
| Core i3-1125G4 | 4C / 8T | 2.0GHz | 3.7GHz | 3.3GHz | 48 | 1,250MHz |
| Core i3-1115G4 | 2C / 4T | 3.0GHz | 4.1GHz | 4.1GHz | 48 | 1,250MHz |
| Model | Cores/Threads | Base Clock | Single-core turbo | All-core turbo | Xe EUs | Xeclock |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i7-1160G7 | 4C / 8T | 1.2GHz | 4.4GHz | 3.6GHz | 96 | 1,100MHz |
| Core i7-1130G7 | 4C / 8T | 1.1GHz | 4.0GHz | 3.4GHz | 80 | 1,100MHz |
| Core i5-1120G74 | 4C / 8T | 1.1GHz | 3.5GHz | 3.0GHz | 48 | 1,100MHz |
| Core i3-1110G4 | 2C / 4T | 1.8GHz | 3.9GHz | 3.9GHz | 48 | 1,100MHz |
It won't be Intel if the naming scheme of the new processors wasn't confusing. Like Ice Lake, the G suffix at the end denotes the class of graphics with G7 being the highest. However, not all graphics within the class are equal.
For example, while the Core i7-1185G7 and Core i7-1165G7 processors both have G7-class graphics, the former's run at a slightly higher clockspeeds. Also, even though the Core i5-1135G7 has G7-class graphics, it only has 80 EUs instead of 96 EUs found on the Core i7 models with G7-class graphics.
Availability
Intel says its new Tiger Lake processors will feature in over 50 designs by brands like Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and more. Crucially, they will all be market by this holiday season.
