 Over the last 10 years, Intel has made massive improvements to the graphics performance of their mobile processors. The problem is that while this is in fact better than this, it's nothing compared to this. Fortunately for Intel, AMD's CPU performance, not to mention their power consumption, were both terrible. That is, until a couple of months ago when AMD upended the industry with their 4000 series Ryzen mobile chips. That put Intel in the unusual position of needing to give us a reason, any reason, to recommend them, which seems to be what prompted today's 11th gen Tiger Lake performance preview. I call it a preview because this reference design laptop isn't one that you'll ever be able to buy, but apparently Intel is so confident that it'll wow us in terms of both CPU and graphics performance that they couldn't wait for partner designs to put it in our hands. So then, is it a warrior or more of a corpse? Only our benchmarks will tell. You know what exceeds every benchmark though? My segues to sponsors like Origin PC. Whether you're working from home or just want a game, Origin PC has got you covered. Their high-end desktops and laptops can be equipped with up to 2 terabytes of fast storage with Samsung 870 QVO SSDs. Learn more at the link below. LTTstore.com! We should just have the editor inject that somewhere. I forgot to mention LTTstore.com in this script! Before we begin, one thing to remember is that on mobile, AMD's lead isn't nearly as drastic as it is on the desktop. Intel does have working 10 nanometer for laptops and apparently Tiger Lake's 10 nanometer plus process is very comparable to the TSMC 7 nanometer process used by AMD. So the small CPU performance uplift could be enough to get out ahead, at least if the claims of two times better graphics with no increase in power consumption also hold true. Let's take a closer look at our test laptop here. It's got an Intel logo, but it was made by MSI, presumably based off their Prestige 14 laptops, just with some Intel specific changes. Now normally with engineering sample laptops, we aren't allowed to do much more than look at them. But here we can do everything except show you the insides or test the battery life, since those are both subject to change once this turns into a real product. We were allowed to open the device and tell you about it, however, and what interested us most was the thermal solution. One of our concerns was that Intel would send us something with a roided out cooler in an attempt to paint 11th gen performance in the most positive possible light. But as it turns out that wasn't the case and inside here is a pretty bog standard affair. Under the cooler, we found the brand spanking new Intel i7 one... Sorry, I mean i7 10... And... 1185G7. Guys, it is really time for our branding refresh here. Ignoring the bad name, this is one very interesting little chip. With four cores and eight threads, it targets thin and light laptops sipping between 12 and 28 watts of power. It has a base clock of 3 GHz, a max all core turbo of 4.3, and a single core turbo of 4.8 GHz. That's a fair bit of information to process. And that's a good thing. Intel has finally, thankfully, begun advertising both single and all core turbo frequencies for their mobile chips, as well as providing a range of wattages to give us a much better idea of how these CPUs are going to perform in various workloads, just based on the specs. Other fun features include support for higher speed DDR4 RAM and Thunderbolt 4 with the requisite PCI Express Gen 4 support. Yes, my friends, PCIe Gen 4 on Intel is finally here! In laptops! Huzzah. Now for the truly fun part, validating Intel's marketing claims. They say the new and improved integrated graphics take the things that Intel has learned while developing their discrete grade Z graphics and toss it in their new CPUs. They say two times the performance without more power draw, but we've all heard that before. Let's fire up a game, shall we? Peel it while I wait for the loading. Now that's a gimmick. Someone launched a laptop with a built-in fidget toy for while you're waiting for loading screens. Now it's pretty clear we're not going to be running at nightmare quality, but like, let's get realistic here. So let's try medium. Medium, 1080p. This is kind of crazy. This has got to be running at around 30 FPS or so. Oh, we can turn on performance metrics. This is doomed. Huh, 31 FPS. I mean, who plays Doom for this story? Yeah, I play it for the articles. Oh, okay. So there's some graphical bugs. Now, anyone used to laptops with dedicated graphics cards might not be super impressed right now, but for everyone rocking a current-gen integrated GPU, this is quite literally a game changer. Previous generation IGPUs were lucky to hit playable frame rates at medium settings at 720p, and here we've managed to turn the resolution all the way up to 1080. And like, look at this. This is Rainbow Six Seed you're looking at here running at around 80 FPS. There might be more graphics power on tap here than a last-generation console. Even when compared to AMD's latest mobile CPUs, whose historical selling point has been their superior Radeon onboard graphics, our Tiger Lake i7 pulls off a convincing lead in every game that we threw at it. Now, to be clear, I definitely wouldn't recommend either of these solutions if you're a hardcore that's set on playing the latest and greatest AAA titles. A real GPU from Nvidia, or AMD for that matter, will absolutely shred even the best onboard. But there's enough power here to unlock a large enough PC game back catalog to keep pretty much anyone but the most hardcore happy for a long time. So the integrated GPU, darn good, maybe even great. But turning our attention to the CPU, we see that that's real fortunate. Because if raw CPU horsepower is what you're after, you are still better off going for the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U. And I don't even need to look at the benchmarks to know this. In front of me I've got two CPUs with comparable TDPs, but the AMD one has quite literally twice as many processing cores. Now, during Intel's press conference for 11th Gen, they were all like... Unlike our imitators using benchmarks like Cinebench, which has a really niche usefulness in real life. To downplay the importance of it as a benchmark. And yeah, I get it. It is niche. But another reason you might bring that up is because getting your butt kicked is not a lot of fun. In fairness to Intel, their point, not terrible. Cinema 4D, the program that Cinebench is based on, isn't exactly mainstream. But what it is, is a pretty good indicator of multi-core muscle, which can at least translate to other uses. Besides Intel, how can you complain about AMD's use of Cinebench as being niche, when half, half of your representative usage guide is focused on AI photo tagging? I mean, okay, okay, okay, okay. Someday AI performance is going to matter on consumer notebooks. But for now, well, how does Tiger Lake fare in Cinebench? Not great. I absolutely love this graph that Gamers Nexus made, showing the number of times that Intel mentioned AMD and the 4800U specifically in their Tiger Lake presentation. Instead of, you know, I don't know, maybe talking about the 11th Gen processor that the presentation was supposedly about. And it's this result that shows why Intel is so worried about what their competition is doing. In anything multi-threaded, Intel gets chokesland. And the only thing that makes the battle somewhat interesting, is that Intel has spent a lot of time and money creating dedicated accelerators for a variety of common workloads. For example, HEVC video exporting or working in Premiere using Intel Quick Sync, will give Tiger Lake an edge, even if the raw CPU power wouldn't make you think it. So then if you primarily use Premiere or Photoshop, you might want to consider a completely different laptop with a GPU in it. But also Tiger Lake, I guess. You know, the funny thing actually is that right now, the Z graphics performance isn't even the most compelling reason to go 11th Gen Tiger Lake over AMD's Renoir. Here are my top two real reasons that you will buy a Tiger Lake laptop. First, the best laptop designs have Intel processors in them. I mean, look at what we have for comparison here. Representing Intel's 10th Gen is the Dell XPS 13, possibly the best thin and light laptop on the market with a stunning 16 by 10 display, a keyboard that's shockingly good given its short throw and a design that rivals Apple. And then you contrast that with the AMD powered Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7, which the Verge lovingly referred to as an unremarkable laptop with a remarkable chip. I mean, to be clear, the performance you get for $900, mwah, incredible. But if you want the best laptop designs, you need to go with Intel for the time being. And that's probably largely in part due to the second reason that you're going to buy Tiger Lake. You can actually buy it. Ever since our video on the Asus Zephyrus G14, it has been basically impossible to find that laptop in stock anywhere. And the same thing goes for the HP Envy 13. There are reports that AMD is facing massive supply shortages of their mobile processors. And those chips are only available in mid-tier laptop designs because someone like Dell can't go and invest the time to create an AMD powered XPS 13 only to sell out of their entire quarters allocation in one day and piss off everyone with a three month wait time for their freaking laptop. So until AMD is able to get their supply act together, we're going to be stuck with whatever Intel gets us, which fortunately this time is pretty decent. Before you run out and buy one though, there are a couple more things to keep in mind. We don't have a finalized laptop sample. So thermals could vary drastically depending on which one exactly you get. One thing we can assume though is that in almost all cases, you'll be hitting a hundred degrees Celsius under heavy loads. Something that probably isn't changing anytime soon on Intel or on AMD. Here's why. After I complained about the thermals in our XPS 15 review, a systems engineer reached out and said, well, he'd have been more disappointed if Dell didn't hit a hundred degrees because it would have meant that there was potentially performance that was left on the table. CPUs these days are spec'd to operate at a hundred degrees. And if it was killing chips the way that we've been worried it will, we'd see piles of MacBooks dying on their fifth birthday. That's fair enough, I suppose. So then I still don't like it, but moving forward, we will be likely quoting sustained power numbers in laptops rather than thermals. So for Tiger Lake, anything above 15 Watts all core is going to be the goal. Also, possibly the most important deciding factor for a lot of people buying a thin and light is going to be battery life. And since we were unable to test the battery life of our system, we really can only guess. Currently, AMD is in the lead for efficiency. The HP Envy 13 with a Ryzen 5 processor has longer battery life than the HP Spectre 13 with Intel, despite the Spectre sporting a larger battery. Now it's possible that Intel has improved here, but given that they aren't banging a drum talking about it, I think it's more likely that they just haven't lost any ground rather than that they've pulled off some kind of win. You know who did win today though? Children. Like, you know, mom or dad is, they're still going to run out and buy a thin and light for boring adult stuff. But now when they bring it home at the end of the day, little Timmy is going to be able to play real 3D games on it at reasonable settings in a way that previously just wasn't possible on integrated graphics. And that's awesome. What a weird outro. You know what else is weird? The segue to our sponsor, Micro Center. Micro Center is open to supply all your work from home or learn from home technology needs. Right now they have several main gear laptops available for purchase. Vector 2, Element 2, and 3, all featuring Intel 10th Gen processors, Nvidia graphics, and 16 to 32 gigs of RAM. Check out Micro Center for all their specials at the links down below. If you guys enjoyed this video and you're looking for another one to watch, go check out our review of the Asus Zephyrus G14. You can't buy one, but you can definitely just watch it and appreciate that there's, at least on paper, competition in the mobile space now.