intel's new 10 nanometer 11th gen tiger
lake mobile processors are here for
laptops
so let's find out how well the new top
end 8 core i9 chip compares against 10th
gen from last generation
i've tested games applications power
draw thermals and pretty much everything
oh and make sure you're subscribed for
the upcoming comparisons between intel
11th gen and amd's ryzen these are the
differences in specs between these two
processors
both are eight core 16 thread chips
however the new 11th gen one has 50 more
cash but it also has lower clock speeds
intel are claiming a 19 ipc boost to
multi-core performance
so in theory the lower clock speeds
aren't a problem otherwise 11th gen also
uses pcie 4 between the discrete
graphics while 10th gen uses pcie 3 and
11th gen also supports faster memory
these are the two laptops that i'm using
for testing the gigabyte arrow 17.
both laptops have nvidia rtx 3080
graphics and were tested with the exact
same
64 gig kit of dual rank memory there are
some important differences to be aware
of though
although i used the exact same memory
kit for all testing in both laptops the
10th gen aero 17 runs the memory of ddr4
2933 while 11th gen runs it a ddr4 3200
and this difference results in different
memory timings
some 10th gen i9 laptops do offer xmp
support and will let you run a ddr4 3200
but unfortunately this is not the case
with arrow 17. so my testing has been
done with the default memory speeds of
each platform
as far as i can tell both 10th and 11th
gen arrow 17 laptops have the same
cooling design
and same battery so we should be in for
a fair comparison as the processors are
the main difference
i've measured the temperatures of both
laptops while running the blender
benchmark a heavily multi-threaded test
i've tested with both laptops without
any power limit in the results above and
with both limited to a 45 watt pl one
below they're both running at about the
same temperature though the 11th gen
unit was a degree cooler with the power
limits removed these are the clock
speeds that were seen during the same
tests
with both limited to 45 watts the 10th
gen laptop was clocking a little higher
however it wasn't by much
with no power limit in place the 11th
gen unit is clocking higher though it
was also cooler and 90 degrees celsius
is the thermal throttle limit for the
arrow 17. this tells me that for the
purposes of a fair comparison you're
probably going to want to pay more
attention to the 45 watt differences
as thermals weren't an issue there and
as we saw clock speeds were higher with
older 10th gen given the same tdp
which makes sense given 10th gen's
higher clock speeds on the specs here's
what was reported for cpu package power
in the same blender test so
both were at 45 watts with the 45 watt
cap in place as expected then with no
limit the 11th gen machine is able to
hit a little higher tdp
again likely because it was a little
cooler but regardless 90 watts in a
sustained workload like this is honestly
still quite great
despite both being set to the same 45w
tdp though the 11th gen unit was drawing
more power from the wall
both laptops have the same screen and
were measured at the same brightness
so depending on other subtle variances
between the laptops i can only presume
this difference is mostly due to the
processors the higher power draw of the
11th gen aero 17 also seems to be
reflected in the battery life now this
is the first 11th gen laptop i've tested
battery on so maybe there are still
optimizations to come down the pipeline
but in the same youtube playback test
the 10th gen laptop was lasting
considerably longer and both of these
laptops have the same 99w battery inside
here's the actual difference in
performance between these two processors
in blender at the 45w tdp the 11th gen
machine is completing the classroom test
12 percent faster however it's also
using 12
more power in this test so not exactly
efficient again unless something on my
11th gen machine is drawing more power
resulting in lower battery life with no
power limit though the 11th gen laptop
is using almost
5 percent more power from the wall but
it's now completing the task 14
faster than 10th gen so perhaps it's
more efficient at higher power levels
so with no power limit 11th gen was
using a little more power
but performing a fair bit better while
also running cooler generally more power
equals more heat so this might be one of
the advantages of 10 nanometer showing
itself the performance differences in
blender are on the smaller side out of
all the applications i've tested so with
all of that understanding in place let's
get into the rest of the productivity
workloads followed by gaming afterwards
let's start out with everyone's favorite
cinebench multi-core performance was
much better for 11th gen here
scoring 18.5 percent higher than 10th
gen with the 45w tdp limit in place
close to intel's 19
game claim and when both laptops are
power limited the 11th gen machine rises
to a 25
lead single core score is lower
comparatively however it's still around
16 percent higher with 11th gen in both
cases a pretty decent improvement for a
single generation
at least compared to what we saw with
8th 9th and 10th gen the geekbench test
also covers both single and multicore
and 11th gen saw similar gains here too
with a 17
boost to single core performance with or
without the power limit in place
generally a single thread isn't enough
to trigger the power limit so that's why
both tests are scoring about the same
now
multi-core on the other hand saw a 19 to
20 percent increase with 11th gen so
again nice gains
v-ray uses the processor to render out a
scene this is a multi-threaded test and
the 11th gen processor was scoring 17
percent higher when both were capped to
a 45 watt tdp
and it had a slightly smaller 16 lead
with power limits removed the corona
benchmark also uses the processor
to render a scene and this test had one
of the smallest differences
out of all applications tested with 11th
gen completing the render 8
faster with the 45w tdp cap and 10
faster without any limits
handbrake was used to convert a 4k h.264
video file that i shot to 1080p
h.265 11th gen was completing the video
transcode task
nearly 17 faster with the power limits
in place and 21
faster than 10th gen when not subject to
power limits quite a nice
improvement 7-zip was used to test
compression and decompression speeds
when i've previously compared older
generations of intel processors
this test saw very minor differences so
it appears that 11th gen finally has
what it takes to improve performance in
this area which is probably good for
them as ryzen typically destroys intel
in this workload make sure you're
subscribed for my upcoming 11th gen
and ryzen comparisons aes encryption and
decryption is another area where intel
has typically been behind in my testing
but again that's looking to change with
11th gen now 24
faster than 10th gen the biggest
difference out of all applications that
i've tested here adobe photoshop was
tested with the puget systems benchmark
the nvidia graphics were disabled so
we're only looking at processor
differences here
interestingly both laptops scored
slightly higher with the 45 watt limit
in place
granted it's an extremely small
difference but worth noting regardless
11th gen was scoring 22 percent higher
in both cases
another nice improvement linux kernel
compilation was a bit of a mixed bag
with the power limit in place 11th gen
was faster however
was only completing the task 11 percent
faster one of the smaller differences
but then without any power limits in
place it was 28 percent faster it's
worth noting that this test was done in
ubuntu while all others were done in
windows
and i used intel rapple to modify power
limits microsoft excel was tested with
the hardware unboxed large number crunch
test i was expecting larger gains as i
believe this test depends on processor
cache
and although 11th gen was completing the
task a little faster it's the smallest
difference out of all applications
tested these are the differences when
looking at all the applications just
tested with both limited to a 45w tdp
overall i think the improvements are
quite decent at least when compared to
previous intel 14 nanometer releases
i don't remember seeing gains like this
between 8th 9th and 10th gen when
comparing mobile processors with the
same core counts
with no power limits the 11th gen
machine is further ahead but as
mentioned earlier both machines may be
subject to thermal throttling and some
of the heavier multi-threaded tests
so for the purposes of a fairer
comparison stick to the 45w differences
in any case both do have the same
thermal throttle cap and cooling design
so you could still argue that this is
still the benefit of 11th gen slash 10
nanometer although both processors are
technically
hk and can be overclocked i haven't done
this here the main reason for this was
that in a multi-core workload neither
laptop was running at the full awk or
turbo boost speed anyway you'd probably
need a thicker machine with better
cooling for that and secondly results
are going to depend on silicon lottery
anyway so what i show here might not
represent what you see
it's also worth mentioning that the
numbers i'm showing from these laptops
aren't meant to represent best case
results from the i9 processors
these laptops are relatively thin for
17-inch machines i could easily see the
case where a thicker machine with even a
lower i7 processor could outperform
either of these if it has higher power
limits and better cooling
so the goal here isn't to showcase best
case performance from 10th gen or 11th
gen the goal is simply to compare the
two as fairly as possible
let's check out gaming differences next
now unfortunately there's an important
difference between the two gpus and
these laptops despite both having rtx
3080 graphics with the same power limits
the 10th gen machine has 8 gigs of vram
while the 11th gen has 16 gigs of vram i
don't think this should make that much
of a difference given i'm testing at
1080p and i'm also including lower
setting preset levels too but it's worth
keeping in mind and all games were
tested with both processors capped with
45w tdp with optimus enabled the 11th
gen system has 16 lanes of pcie 4 for
the gpu while the 10th gen system has 16
lanes of pcie 3. and when measuring the
bandwidth with 3dmark we can see this
difference
though realistically 16 lanes of pcie 3
is still plenty for gaming laptops today
battlefield 5 was tested in campaign
mode by running through the same part of
the game on both laptops
i've got the 11th gen laptop shown in
purple and the 10th gen laptop shown in
red although 11th gen was ahead at all
setting levels in terms of one percent
lower
interestingly 10th gen was slightly
ahead in average fps at high end ultra
setting presets it was a similar deal in
red dead redemption 2 which was tested
with the game's benchmark
small differences at lower setting
levels then at higher presets the 10th
gen laptop was actually reaching higher
average frame rate shadow of the tomb
raider was also tested with the game's
benchmark the 11th gen laptop was ahead
at all setting levels except for max
where the 10th gen machine was then
instead slightly in front
far cry 5 at least finally had no better
results on 10th jump but at higher
setting presets the differences are
extremely small in any case
csgo on the other hand sees some pretty
large differences in terms of average
frame rate with 11th gen so it really
does seem to vary based on the game
i only tested five games after seeing no
strange results plus most of the other
games i test are gpu
heavy and as mentioned there is that gpu
difference here so not ideal for a cpu
comparison
in any case i'm not too sure why we're
seeing these results i double and triple
checked many of the games and got the
same numbers
so gaming didn't appear to show anywhere
near as much of a difference compared to
those productivity workloads earlier
if you've already got a 10th gen laptop
today there's no reason on upgrading to
11th gen for gaming unless you're in a
situation where time is money i would
still argue against upgrading between a
single generation but yeah in
productivity workloads the improvements
on offer from 11th gen did surprise me
compared to 10th gen i guess that's what
finally happens when you move away from
14 nanometer
but before you decide if 11th gen is for
you make sure you're subscribed for my
upcoming future comparisons between 11th
gen and amd's ryzen 5000. come and join
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one of those next