The XMG Core 14 is a powerful 14-inch portable system that packs both an 1165G7 at up to 28W, and a GeForce GTX 1650 discrete GPU.
16GB of LPDDR4X memory and plenty of adequate cooling which keeps it pretty quiet, plus a 1080p display. It has the 1165G7 running at 28W or higher, although we've left it at 28W in the default power profile. This is Intel's 15-inch Tiger Lake reference design that they are offering to OEMs, which is quite nice overall with that MacBook aesthetic. Tiger Lake Powered Laptopsįirst up, we have Intel's new NUC M15 branded as the Schenker Vision 15. We're glad to report we're basing this review on four different i7-1165G7 laptops, which gives us the most comprehensive data we've had for this sort of launch. There's a lot of benchmarking to get through so strap yourselves in. Unfortunately, the name didn't receive the same treatment: Core i7-1165G7 remains one of the worst named CPUs in the industry right now.įor today's review we'll be going through both productivity and gaming benchmarks, comparing the 1165G7 at both 15W and 28W power levels to other U-series mobile CPUs like Ryzen, Ice Lake, Comet Lake, and so on. This isn't a simple 100-200 MHz frequency bump on existing architectures like we got for years in the Skylake era, this is a substantial overhaul. These are the basics of the new Core i7-1165G7. Like with the CPU core, Intel are touting higher frequencies at all voltages with the new Xe design. This brings a host of improvements, including 96 execution units versus 64 previously and a frequency bump from 1.1 to 1.3 GHz max. The Tiger Lake GPU has upgraded from a Gen11 design to Xe-LP. Boost clocks with the 1165G7 now top out at 4.7 GHz on a single thread, compared to a rather pathetic 3.9 GHz with the 1065G7, in comparison. Ice Lake's fairly restrictive frequency cap has been lifted thanks to 10nm SuperFin. However, the base frequency gain is much lower at 12W, just 200 MHz higher than before. There's a 2.8 GHz base at 28W, which is much higher than the 1.50 GHz base that the Ice Lake Core i7-1065G7 offered at 25W. With this generation, Intel have changed how they are reporting key metrics like base clock, instead giving us this value for just 28W and 12W configurations, instead of the default 15W. However, Intel are attempting to make up for that with high clock speeds. It packs four Willow Cove CPU cores and eight threads, which is a deficit on AMD's 8-core design they are currently offering in this power class. UP3 is what used to be called the U-series, in the ~15W power range. The Core i7-1165G7 that we're reviewing is Intel's second-from-top and most widely used Tiger Lake UP3 processor. We also get a much larger GPU design based on Intel Xe architecture, packing 96 execution units, higher frequency memory support, Thunderbolt 4 and PCIe 4.0, and better hardware acceleration for video encoding and decoding. Most notably, cache sizes have increased from 8MB 元 on top-end quad-cores, up to 12MB. There have been minor updates to the CPU core design as well, moving from Sunny Cove up to Willow Cove. On this node, Intel is able to significantly increase both CPU and GPU clock speeds compared to 10nm Ice Lake products at the same power class, which provides the bulk of the performance improvements on offer with the Core i7-1165G7 over the i7-1065G7 (yea, we don't love the names either). 10nm has been problematic for Intel to say the least, but for a low power mobile CPU, 10nm SuperFin seems up to the task for next-generation CPU architectures.
Key to this new series is Intel's new 10nm SuperFin process. With AMD storming into the laptop market with Ryzen 4000 in 2020, Tiger Lake is Intel's big response that's filled with new features. Tiger Lake and the Core i7-1165G7 represent an overhaul of Intel's mobile offerings, in particular Ice Lake, which wasn't that great. Intel announced Tiger Lake months ago and systems are now readily available with the new chips. It's time we check out Intel's new Tiger Lake mobile CPUs, starting with the Core i7-1165G7, a part that will be mostly found on mainstream to high-end ultraportables.