Intel 11th-gen Tiger Lake Vs. AMD Ryzen 4000: Which Chip Will Win?

 Now that Intel’s finally announced its new Tiger Lake CPU for laptops Thursday morning, we will finally start making the chances on which chip will win: 11th-gen Tiger Lake or AMD Ryzen 4000.

Sure, we all know laptops supported the Tiger Lake CPU aren’t even out yet (wait for a rollout on September 2), and there are much more Ryzen 4000 laptops coming too, but that’s never stopped the media from speculating. In our case, we’ll make the simplest educated guesses we will supported what we all know . 

Raja Koduri IntelThe challenger: Tiger Lake

Intel is playing its Tiger Lake cards pretty on the brink of its chest, so there still isn’t tons on the table. What we all know officially is that the 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPU is made on a 10nm process, using SuperFin technology that primarily addresses one among the shortcomings of the first 10th-gen Ice Lake chip: relatively limited clock speeds.

While the 10th-gen Ice Lake chips were more power-efficient than the older (and confusingly named) 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs, the highest speed of the simplest 15-watt part, the Core i7-1065G7, was 3.9GHz with a 1.3GHz base clock.

Intel also features a higher wattage Core i7-1068NG7 (exclusive to Apple products, including the 2020 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro) that runs at 28 watts with a turbo clock of 4.1GHz and a base clock of two .3GHz. Both are quad-core chips with Hyper-Threading and Iris Plus / Gen 11 graphics running at an equivalent clock speed.

Tiger Lake should easily make the 10th-gen chips irrelevant from a performance point of view because of the improved transistors. While no clock speeds were stated, you'll see from the knowledge Intel released Thursday that the Willow Cove cores within the new Tiger Lake chips will reach on the brink of 5GHz, while the fastest Sunny Cove cores in Ice Lake ran out of gas at 4.1GHz.

Tiger Lake Intel

Intel’s new 11th-gen CPUs with the Willow Cove cores should hit far higher clock speeds than its 10th-gen CPU with the Sunny Cove cores.

Higher clock speeds at higher power draws is straightforward , but Intel said it’s also getting more efficiency across the board. meaning Tiger Lake should actually run at higher clock speeds while using less power. All told, it's sort of a pretty decent part.

Intel also greatly beefed up the graphics with Xe LP, a redesigned core that ought to offer nearly double the performance of 10th-gen Ice lake’s graphics. In fact, Intel claims the 11th-gen Tiger Lake chip running at 15 watts will outperform a 10th-gen Ice Lake chip running at 28 watts.

su lisa ryzen 4000 cpu Gordon Mah Ung/IDGThe defending champ: Ryzen 4000This Ryzen 4000 laptop is impressive

AMD’s Ryzen 4000 “Matisse” has reset the laptop landscape unlike the other CPU in years. With 8 cores on a 7nm chip, it holds the status for multi-core performance and easily runs far cooler than Intel’s 14nm 10th-gen Comet Lake H chips. It also dances everywhere Intel’s 10nm, 10th-gen Ice Lake chips. the explanations are the core count, plus the Radeon graphics cores, and therefore the efficiency of TSMC’s 7nm process. But the proof’s within the products, and we’ve been impressed with the premium-class performance delivered by budget-class laptops just like the Acer Swift 3 and HP Envy x360 13. Sorry Intel fans, there’s a replacement champion.

11th-gen Tiger Lake U vs. Ryzen 4000 U

We’ll give our forecast supported three metrics that matter in small laptops: Multi-core performance, single-core performance, and graphics or gaming performance.

(Image credits : amazon)

Multi-core performance

We think if the rumors are true that Tiger Lake U will indeed “only” be a quad-core chip, AMD’s Ryzen 4000 U will easily have the sting . the straightforward math is 8 cores are quite 4, and we’ve yet to ascertain that fundamental rule challenged.

Intel’s Tiger Lake U might surprise us with its high clocks, though. If it can sustain the clocks, it's going to pack up the space enough to stress Ryzen 4000 U. Still, we’ll be putting our marker on AMD’s Ryzen 4000 U for this category. Sure, not everyone needs 8 cores for what you are doing on a small laptop, except for those that do, you can’t beat it.

Single-core performance

For the single-core performance that applies to most mainstream applications, Tiger Lake has a chance to punch back. Ryzen 7 4000U is about equal to and sometimes faster than Intel’s 10th-gen Ice Lake U chips, but Intel could regain advantage thanks to the SuperFin and higher clocks in Tiger Lake U. 

Intel’s argument is that you don’t need all of those cores in a tiny 13-inch laptop. Instead, you want higher boost clocks to give you the most responsive feel in most of the mainstream apps people use on tiny laptops, like Chrome, Office and even Photoshop.

(Image credits : amazon)

gen 11 vs xe lp Intel

Intel’s Xe LP will offer higher performance than its previous Gen 11 graphics in Ice Lake CPUs, while consuming less power.

Graphics performance 

We suspect that Intel, for once, will be sitting pretty with graphics. Besides upping the execution engines to 96 from 64, Intel has redesigned and optimized the entire Xe LP graphics cores for Tiger Lake laptops. Intel has already seen Ryzen 4000 U and is willing to say that Xe LP graphics in Tiger Lake will offer AAA gaming experience previously unseen laptops in this form factor.

We know Intel lawyers, and they wouldn’t let the company say that unless it was true. While there are a lot of caveats to the statement, we think Tiger Lake U gaming performance will be all about Intel—for once. 

The ringer

The ringer in all this is Tiger Lake’s support for LPDDR5/5400 and LPDDR4X/4267 memory. Both of those memory clock speeds exceed Ryzen and Ice Lake’s LPDDR4X/3733 memory support. Because integrated graphics performance relies very heavily on memory bandwidth, Intel should have the advantage there too. It does depend on how easy it is to find laptops that support the higher-clocked RAM, but we’d guess the first laptops to come will feature it.

Conclusion

With Tiger Lake winning two of the three categories, we’re going to say the odds-on favorite for the matchup this year will be Tiger Lake U. There are some exceptions. If you indeed need an 8-core powerhouse in a sub-three-pound laptop, your only choice will have the AMD logo on it. But for those who want a laptop for general use, Tiger Lake U's advantage in single-threaded performance will prevail, and it should have an edge in graphics performance, too.