Intel Says Tiger Lake Laptop CPUs Are Faster Than AMD Ryzen 4000

‘The 11th-gen Core processor is the best processor Intel has ever built. It’s the best processor on the market. And it’s certainly rises above all the imitators,’ Intel’s Gregory Bryant says of the new Tiger Lake processors for ultra-thin laptops that the chipmaker says are faster than AMD’s Ryzen 4000 mobile CPUs.

Intel is taking on rival AMD with its 11th-generation Core processors for ultra-thin laptops that the chipmaker says is faster than its competitors‘ Ryzen 4000 mobile processors.

The new lineup, code-named Tiger Lake and announced Wednesday, consists of nine processors that feature up to four cores, eight threads, a 3 GHz base frequency and a 4.8 GHz turbo frequency as well as a new generation of integrated graphics powered by Intel‘s Xe low-power GPU microarchitecture.

[Related: 10 Business Laptops That Use AMD's New Ryzen 4000 CPUs]

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company took on AMD directly in its reveal of the new Tiger Lake processors unlike previous launches in recent years, saying that its new flagship Core i7-1185G7 delivers up to 2.7 times faster content creation, more than two times faster gaming performance and more than 20 percent faster office productivity than AMD‘s Ryzen 7 4800U.

“When we say it‘s the world’s best processor, it isn’t an exaggeration,” Gregory Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Client Computing Group, said in a live presentation. “The 11th-gen Core processor is the best processor Intel has ever built. It’s the best processor on the market. And it’s certainly rises above all the imitators.”

More than 150 Windows- and ChromeOS-based laptops with the new processors, including 50 this year, are coming from OEMs, are expected to use Intel‘s new processors from OEMs, including Acer, Asus, Dell, Dynabook, HP Inc., Lenovo, LG, MSI, Razer and Samsung. More than 20 of these laptops coming out this year will sport Intel’s new Intel Evo platform brand, a successor of sorts to its Ultrabook brand, that verifies the designs follow the second generation of the specifications and key experience indications in the company’s Project Athena program.

While Intel is trying to change the conversation about its competitiveness with AMD — which has touted major performance gains over Intel in recent years — the company also took a swipe at Nvidia‘s discrete GPUs for ultra-thin laptops, saying that Tiger Lake’s new Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics outperform 90 percent of discrete graphics cards in the ultra-thin laptop market.

In a demonstration, Intel showed that its best Tiger Lake processor, combined with the new Iris Xe integrated graphics, can provide roughly double the frames per second, or FPS, in the GRID racing game in comparison to a laptop using a 10th-generation Intel Core processor and Nvidia MX350 card and a laptop using AMD‘s Ryzen 4800U. In another game, Gear Tactics, the Tiger Lake laptop was nearly double the Ryzen 4800U laptop and nearly 10 FPS above the Nvidia laptop.

“This time, AMD is barely playable. Nvidia is measuring in the high 40 FPS range, and our system is again running at about 55 FPS. It‘s incredible to see the difference,” Ksenia Chistyakova, product marketing engineer for AI and media, said of the Gears Tactics performance comparison. ”As you can see, we’ve built the best processor, a processor with compute power to unlock new experiences things previously unimaginable in these types of thin-and-light devices.”

Intel said the minimum experience targets for Intel Evo band laptops include nine or more hours of real-world battery life using FHD displays, fast battery charging for up to four hours under 30 minutes, consistent responsiveness and the system waking from sleep in less than one second.

The new lineup is split between five processors that have an operating thermal design power of 12-28 watts, with higher frequencies as a result, and four processors ranging from 7-15 watts, with lower frequencies. Only the Core i5 and i7 processors in each segment come with the new Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, supporting up to 1.35 GHz in graphics frequency.

The 12-28-watt processors consist of two Core i7s, one Core i5 and two Core i3s. At the highest end, the Core i7-1185G7 comes with four cores, eight threads, a 3 GHz base frequency, a 4.8 GHz max single-core turbo frequency, a 4.3 GHz max all-core turbo frequency, a 12 MB cache, 96 GPU execution units, a 1.35 GHz max graphics frequency and support for DDR-3200 and LPDDR4x-4266 RAM.

The 7-15-watt processors consist of one Core i7, one Core i5 and two Core i3s. At the highest end, the Core i7-1160G7 comes with four cores, eight threads, a 1.2 GHz base frequency, a 4.4 GHz max single-core turbo frequency, a 3.6 GHz max all-core turbo frequency, a 12 MB cache, 96 GPU execution units, a 1.1 GHz max graphics frequency and support for LPDDR4x-4266 RAM.

Beyond the new Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, other new features include the DL Boost DP4A instruction set for neural network inferencing on integrated graphics and industry-first native INT8 support, hardware-based security with Intel Control Flow Enforcement Technology and Intel Total Memory Encryption, AV1 CODEC support for power-efficient 4K playback, a new imaging processing sensor, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and a CPU-attached PCIe 4.0 interface.

The processors also come with Intel Wi-Fi 6, the Intel Gaussian and Neural Accelerator 2.0 for offloading background noise suppression and hardware-supported Dolby Vision.

The processors use Intel‘s new 10nm SuperFin technology, which the company said last month is the “largest single intranode enhancement in its history,” providing as much as 20 percent more performance than Intel‘s previous 10nm Ice Lake processors. The 10nm SuperFin technology was a significant milestone for the company as it has dealt with multiple setbacks in its ability to shrink transistor features in a timely manner, most recently with its 7nm process.

Dan Young, owner and CEO of Xidax, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based Intel system builder partner, said the new Tiger Lake processors are bringing the heat on AMD‘s latest advancements in mobile performance.

“The latest chips will really bring up the competitive level compared to competitor offerings, and this is great to see from Intel,” he said. ”That should greatly increase demand on the Intel CPU.”

Young said he thinks the major graphical improvements Intel has made with its Iris Xe integrated graphics are a big deal and should make gaming more accessible to a broader market.

“I think that could really be a game-changer for the broad market: people that want to stay affordable but have high performance,” he said.

Overall, Young said, it‘s good to see Intel claim some major performance and efficiency breakthroughs again when AMD is bringing competition to a new level.

“We‘ve always seen cyclical movement from AMD and from Intel, both great companies, but it’s great to see them challenging each other for the next tier of awesomeness,” he said. ”It just makes the world move faster and makes our jobs more fun.”