Following up to our first Tiger Lake review, today we're taking a expect at Intel's flagship 11th generation mobile processor, the Core i7-1185G7. The CPU we looked at before, the Cadre i7-1165G7, is seen in far more laptops on the market and is going be the chief focus for most laptop buyers, however the 1185G7 is technically the faster CPU and the chip that sits right at the elevation of the table.

If yous missed the previous review and want to learn more about Tiger Lake's architecture and new features, nosotros strongly recommend you lot check that out first. In detail, the review of the Cadre i7-1165G7 talks most the differences between this 11th-gen line and previous tenth-gen parts like Water ice Lake. Our main focus in this article will exist comparing the 1185G7 to the 1165G7, to see if this faster CPU is actually worth buying.

And then how does the 1185G7 differ to the parts below it? Well, non in many means to be honest. Nosotros're still looking at the aforementioned design, sporting four Willow Cove CPU cores with viii threads, and an Xe-LP GPU with 96 execution units. The only real divergence is in frequency: the max single cadre turbo increases from 4.vii to 4.8 GHz, while the base clock at 28W rises from 2.8 to three.0 GHz. There's besides a l MHz proceeds to max graphics frequency, which is inappreciably worth talking about. Feature back up otherwise is identical, as is the 12MB of L3 cache.

Intel UP3 Graphics Cores / Threads Graphics (EUs) Cache Operating Range Base Freq (GHz) Max Single Core (GHz) Max All Cadre (GHz) Graphics Max (GHz)
Core i7-1185G7 Iris 10eastward four/8 96 12MB 12-28W iii.0 iv.8 4.three ane.35
Core i7-1165G7 Iris Tene 4/8 96 12MB 12-28W 2.8 4.7 4.1 1.thirty
Core i5-1135G7 Iris Tene 4/viii eighty 8MB 12-28W 2.4 four.2 iii.viii ane.xxx
Core i3-1125G4 UHD 4/8 48 8MB 12-28W 2.0 3.7 iii.3 i.25
Core i3-1115G4 UHD ii/4 48 6MB 12-28W iii.0 4.1 4.one i.25

Judging purely on specifications, the 1185G7 is essentially a better binned version of the 1165G7 that allows those slightly higher clocks inside the same power envelope.

Intel are likely taking the best Tiger Lake silicon they have, the best that 10nm SuperFin tin do in this ability class, and allocating those every bit Core i7-1185G7 CPUs.

While the customer cost for this role is the same every bit the 1165G7 -- $426 equally listed in Ark -- the realities of OEM pricing are complex with all sorts of bulk deals and discounts, so in practice it's unlikely that an 1165G7 would actually be the same toll to integrate as Intel'due south better CPU, otherwise every vendor would merely utilize the faster part.

For today's testing we're using the MSI Stealth 15M, a unique laptop that'southward a hybrid of MSI's gaming laptop designs with their more than ultraportable designs. This is a very compact blueprint for something with a xv-inch brandish, at just iii.8 lbs and 16mm thick. But inside y'all're getting a Core i7-1185G7 and GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics, with at least 16GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory.

Rather than using an H-serial CPU in this laptop, MSI accept prioritized graphics functioning given the automobile'south dimensions and cooling, opting for the 1185G7 instead.

Default power configurations for the Stealth 15M let the CPU to push up to and across 40W of sustained power at times, above the maximum official cTDP spec upward to 28W.

Nosotros'd love to have tested this mode and likewise test with the discrete GPU enabled, but due to the limited amount of fourth dimension we had with the laptop, nosotros had to stick to our regular configurations that focused on the 1185G7 at relevant power levels. This means that like our testing for every other laptop CPU and so far, nosotros've got data for the 1185G7 running at 15W and 28W, with the heave behavior left in tact.

The thought here is to give a general look at functioning that tries to remove as many OEM-specific configurations and bottlenecks as possible. This normalized testing allows you to see how much performance you tin can get out of a given laptop cooling pattern, as of grade more power hungry parts require larger, heavier and often louder coolers, so it's non really off-white to compare a 15W CPU to a 28W CPU, for example.

This is the usual spiel for our laptop testing, if you seen our benchmark reviews before this is how nosotros've been doing it for quite some time now. Those after laptops that are super thin and portable should more focus on the 15W numbers, while those later on a larger, more premium blueprint should look at the 28W operation.

Benchmarks

We'll start off benchmarking with Cinebench R20 where the 1185G7 delivers the same performance equally the 1165G7. A little slower at 15W on average, and a niggling faster at 28W, though this could exist down to the laptops nosotros tested, the boost periods, and and so on.

The takeaway for multi-thread performance is that you probably won't be getting a significantly improved experience opting for the 1185G7 over the 1165G7, unless your 1185G7 laptop gives you access to more power, similar the Stealth M15 does past default.

Single thread performance is more than interesting. At 28W equally expected, the 1185G7 is able to clock 100 MHz higher on a single core, which in our testing led to a small just perceptible comeback to Cinebench R20 single-thread. We're merely talking ~2 percent higher clock speeds, and so the gains are in line with that.

At 15W, the 1185G7 organisation was really slower than the average 1165G7 effect we've seen, with both of those configurations ability constrained and unable to hit their maximum turbo clock.

In Handbrake, the 1185G7 is slightly faster than the 1165G7, pointing to slightly meliorate binning that allows for college clock speeds in sustained multithreaded workloads within the same power limit.

At both power limits the 1185G7 concluded upwards five percent faster, although this doesn't allow Tiger Lake to make whatever meaningful strides at endmost the gap to Ryzen Mobile 4000 in multi-thread tests: we're notwithstanding at least 40 per centum behind the flagship Ryzen vii 4800U with its 8 core CPU.

In Blender, the two top end Core i7 parts from Intel's Tiger Lake line deliver essentially the same performance.

Like with Handbrake, Ryzen is considerably faster in this workload, so you lot should consider them instead of Intel if this application matters to you.

For code compilation there's a marginal difference between the i7-1185G7 and i7-1165G7 in both of our benchmarks. Here with compiling GCC, the 1185G7 is slightly slower than the 1165G7, while with Chromium compilation it'south slightly faster. Not groundbreaking stuff actually.

Let'southward cakewalk through some more tests. In Microsoft Excel, the 1185G7 is marginally slower at 15W and marginally faster at 28W compared to the 1165G7, just the difference is basically negligible.

In PCMark's Essentials workload the 1185G7 concluded up slightly slower than the 1165G7.

1 of the biggest wins for the 1185G7 is in PCMark 10'southward Applications workload, which benchmarks the Microsoft Office suite besides equally Border browser.

The 1185G7 was measurably faster, nine percent faster at 28W and viii percent faster at 15W, which is a handy boost to performance. This extended the atomic number 82 Intel holds over Ryzen, with a huge 24 percent functioning gap to the Ryzen 7 4800U at the higher power configuration.

In vii-Nada, nosotros're back to narrow margins between the 1185G7 and 1165G7. The college terminate SKU creeps slightly upwards the charts but the difference doesn't meaningfully change Intel'due south position in the marketplace versus Ryzen.

Acrobat PDF exporting is similar to other single-threaded tests in that the 1185G7 is faster than the 1165G7, but just when the boosted frequency tin be accessed.

For that to happen, the CPU needs to be configured in its college ability state, those gains aren't there at 15W. Then what nosotros end upwardly with is a negligible gain at 15W, but 4 percent more performance at 28W.

Adobe Photoshop performance was slightly foreign in that the 1185G7 wasn't faster than the 1165G7 at 28W, although nosotros are talking about less than a five per centum difference. I believe the LPDDR4X configurations that are being averaged into these numbers for the 1165G7 are impacting performance somewhat, although at 15W performance is very like.

Our last test is hardware accelerated Handbrake encoding, where we see no operation difference between the 2 Tiger Lake CPUs.

While we didn't do all-encompassing GPU or game testing for this review, we couldn't spot any significant differences between media acceleration and integrated GPU performance, as these elements are identical in both CPUs.

Performance Summary

Core i7-1185G7 vs Core i7-1165G7

We could have gone deeper with testing merely our fourth dimension with the MSI laptop was express and for the battery of tests that nosotros did run, as you can run into, nosotros don't think there's much more to be learned. There's not much separating the 1165G7 and 1185G7 in practice.

When looking at a criterion breakup between the two parts, information technology'south indicative of two products that evangelize roughly the same performance. Due to differences in laptop configurations, at times the 1185G7 is slower, and at times the 1185G7 is faster.

You're more likely to see these gains in unmarried-threaded or longer term workloads, where the 1185G7 was up to 9 pct faster. But on average beyond these benchmarks, the 1185G7 was a mere 1.2 percentage faster, which is within the margin of error.

It'southward the same story at 15W, simply with fifty-fifty narrower margins. On boilerplate these two parts deliver the aforementioned performance in this power class based on our testing. That'due south not an exciting conclusion, but it's useful information if yous're ownership a new laptop and wonder if paying extra for the "faster" chip in the aforementioned laptop is worth your time and money (... or not).

Tiger Lake vs. Ryzen

As the 1185G7 doesn't significantly ameliorate upon the performance of the 1165G7, it as well doesn't change the comparison between Tiger Lake and AMD's Ryzen 7 4800U.

Intel's Tiger Lake remains the faster platform for single threaded workloads like Microsoft Office and Cinebench single thread, while Ryzen is substantially faster in most multi-threaded tests like CPU-based video encoding.

The margins are the slimmest at 28W, and grow more in favor of AMD at 15W, every bit AMD's blueprint is more efficient and scales meliorate down to lower power classes.

What We Learned

Overall the Intel Core i7-1185G7 is not a very heady product, at least in comparison to the i7-1165G7 which we covered previously. The differences betwixt these parts are minimal in terms of both specs and ultimately, operation.

This makes the i7-1185G7 kind of pointless. If there were two laptops configurations available offering both chips, simply the 1185G7 laptop was more expensive due to its higher tier processor, at that place is no way nosotros'd recommend spending the extra cash on the flagship CPU because it offers very little tangible advantage.

Of course, if both laptop options were sold for the same price, by all means go with the 1185G7. If you were choosing an upgrade, other factors like build quality, battery life, display and other hardware are all far more of import than getting an 1185G7 over 1165G7.

The narrow margins separating these two parts as well makes it catchy for buyers to know exactly which laptop selection will exist faster in exercise... for example, a premium Cadre i7-1165G7 model running at 28W volition near certainly be faster than a mid-range Core i7-1185G7 laptop that only goes up to 20W, despite the mid-range system having the "better" processor.

This makes it very of import to read reviews and exercise your inquiry, equally the naming and Tiger Lake SKU list will exist of little assist.

The flip side to this example is as well possible, and that's the example with the MSI Stealth 15M. To differentiate this product, MSI have pushed the ability limit upwardly to 40W, making the 1185G7 in this organisation noticeably faster than the 1165G7. But it's disquisitional to understand this comes down to a departure in power limits and cooling capacity, every bit opposed to the CPU itself.

The Stealth 15M would likely have been merely as good with the 1165G7 inside, so maybe MSI felt the need to include the 1185G7 to give this organisation a differentiating cistron over other models. After all, this is ane of few laptops nosotros've seen with the 85G7 in it, almost every other premium Tiger Lake model has opted for the 65G7 instead, including Intel'due south ain NUC reference design.

Lesser line, our thoughts about the 1165G7 also employ to the 1185G7. We think these loftier end Tiger Lake processors are well suited to everyday laptop users who primarily web browse, use role applications and might want to practice some light gaming.

Meanwhile, for heavy CPU processing work on the go, AMD provides more of an H-series similar experience and are faster than 11th-gen options. It will take Intel an bodily eight core pattern to compete, so nosotros'll have to wait and encounter what happens in that location. We also have Zen 3 mobile chips on the way, which volition heat up the mobile processor battle further. We're certainly looking forward to see all that new technology in 2022.

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