Tiger Lake Core i7 CPU could be a headache for AMD as Intel threatens to take the lead in laptop gaming

Intel’s Tiger Lake laptop CPUs will be launched later today, and we’ve just witnessed some fresh leaks which show just how much AMD might have to worry about when it comes to these mobile chips.

So upfront, we should make it clear that these are just leaks from the rumor mill, albeit reportedly from Intel itself, with the chip giant having run some comparative benchmarks showing the Core i7-1185G7 (Tiger Lake) processor beating AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800U in a number of different ways.

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Two videos of these apparent Intel tests – and we further have to bear in mind that any such internal testing should be treated with caution anyway, outside of the fact that this is an unconfirmed leak – were posted on Twitter yesterday by WalkingCat. Sadly (and not surprisingly) the video clips have since been yanked down, so we can’t embed them for you; but Tom’s Hardware reported on the results before they were removed.

The first video shows the Core i7-1185G7 using its integrated Xe Graphics (with 96 Execution Units, rumor has it) to beat out the Ryzen 7 4800U over a number of games – though the benchmarks may have been carefully picked by Intel, of course.

Furthermore, we don’t know the details of the system specs involved or how the tests were conducted (though the relative power consumption of the chips was apparently 28W for the Core i7 versus 25W for the 4800U).

Killing it on the video front

In the second video (bearing the same caveats in mind), the Tiger Lake CPU beat the Ryzen mobile chip across a whole range of general computing benchmarks, including video editing and 4K video playback. Tom’s notes that some of the victories in terms of video tests were major ones too, with Intel being up to twice as fast.

So it’s no wonder that the chatter online is that AMD should be worried about Intel’s imminent 11th-generation Tiger Lake (10nm SuperFin) silicon (which is about to launch, as we’ve mentioned, but note that chips won’t actually be in laptops on shelves until the end of the year).

Of course, if all this pans out, the winner will ultimately be the consumer, given that AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800U is already a powerful mobile chip – remember it’s an 8-core (16-thread) CPU with boost to 4.2GHz, compared to the Core i7-1185G7 which is rumored to be a quad-core (8-thread) chip with a boost clock that could reach 4.8GHz, if other recent GeekBench leaks are on the money.

We’ve seen promising leaks in the past, too, showing that the Core i7-1165G7 (the alleged model down from the 1185G7, clocked slightly slower) destroyed AMD’s 4800U in single-threaded performance (although the Ryzen chip did easily best the Tiger Lake CPU in PassMark PerformanceTest, what with AMD’s major advantage in terms of the core count).

In short, Intel looks like it’s about to take a major step forward in terms of laptop CPU performance, with the full details set to be revealed later today.

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