Intel has finally pulled the veil off of the final specs of its 11th-Generation Tiger Lake processors after slowly trickling out details of the new chips for an entire year. The TIger Lake chips look to slow AMD's advance with its impressive 7nm Ryzen 4000-series "Renoir" chips that have steadily gained traction over the last several months, but Intel is finally moving on to its 10nm SuperFin process that brings higher clock speeds and a big 20% boost to performance. Intel has also finally shared benchmarks that give us at least some idea of how its chips stack up against the Ryzen competition – Intel claims its quad-core models are faster than AMD's eight-core Renoir chips, and that its integrated graphics have finally taken the lead.

Intel's Tiger Lake brings a dizzying array of improvements over the company's previous-gen Ice Lake with higher clock speeds, a doubling of graphics performance, the first PCIe 4.0 support for laptops, and support for LPDDR4x memory serving as the headline advances. After Intel shared the technical details of its architecture, the new 10nm SuperFin process, and even more low-level details, we now have all the info condensed down into this article. Let's start with the chips.

Intel 11th-Gen Core Tiger Lake At A Glance

  • Willow Cove cores - quad-core and dual-core models
  • Intel Iris Xe LP graphics for 2x faster 1080p gaming
  • 10nm SuperFin process gives up to 20% increase in clock frequency
  • Support for LPDDR5 - LPDDR4x for first models
  • Industry first PCIe 4.0 for laptops
  • New media and display engine
  • WifI 6 and Thunderbolt 4
  • Release Date: 50+ designs shipping this holiday season
  • 150+ models in total
  • Price: Varies based on laptop


Intel 11th-Gen Core Tiger Lake UP3 Specifications


Intel announced a total of nine new chips. We have the nitty-gritty specs below, but first we'll break down the meaning behind the confusing mish-mash of product identifiers.

Intel's Tiger Lake comes with the Willow Cove processing cores and Xe LP graphics graphics on one larger 10nm SuperFin die, and a separate smaller 14nm PCH (platform controller hub) chipset that handles extra I/O and connectivity duties.

Intel has two basic packages: The larger package on the left is for the high-performance UP3 models (formerly U-Series) that operate within a 12 to 28W TDP, and the UP4 package (formerly Y-Series) on the right for devices that operate at 7 to 15W. These packages are then integrated onto incredibly small motherboards (second picture in the album) that find their way into the new Tiger Lake laptops and thin-and-lights.

The Tiger Lake chips span the Core i7, i5 and i3 families and come with varying levels of graphics performance. Intel splits its Xe LP graphics up into G7 and G4 families. Tiger Lake models with "G7" at the end of the product name come with either 96 or 80 execution units (EUs), with the full-fledged 90 EU models coming with Intel Iris Xe branding. Chips with "G4" at the end of the product name come with 48 EUs. Naturally, the Iris Xe models with more EUs offer the high end of performance, which we'll see in the benchmarks shortly.


You'll notice that Intel has discarded its practice of listing a single TDP value. Instead the company now defines a full dynamic range of performance that spans 12 to 28W with the UP3 models. This allows laptop makers to tailor the chips for the thermal capabilities of their products, with high-end models having sufficient cooling to enable full performance, while lower-end models with less-capable cooling can be tuned to a lower TDP setting. The TDP can even change while in use based upon device temperature, power delivery, and orientation. Intel doesn't require laptop makers to list their TDP ratings, though, so you'll have to turn to third-party reviews for the full skinny on performance.

The flagship Core i7-1185G7 leads the UP3 lineup. This chip boosts to 4.8 GHz and has a 3.0 GHz base frequency, both of which are a big increase of 700 MHz over the previous-gen model. Intel has also made a big step forward with a 4.2 GHz all-core boost clock that will help chew through demanding productivity apps. To put that in perspective - the maximum single-core boost from AMD's fastest Ryzen 4000 processor weighs in at 4.2 GHz. Intel can pull that off on all cores at once, which helps explain some of its performance advantages we'll see in the benchmarks below.

The 1185G7 also comes with the Xe LP graphics engine with the full complement of 96 EUs, so Intel brands it as Iris Xe. The graphics unit runs at 1.35GHz, an increase of 250 MHz over the previous-gen graphics on the Core i7-1068NG7. The chip comes armed with 12MB of L3 cache and supports LPDDR4X-4266.

The Core i3-1115G4 slots in as the low-end model of this line up. This dual-core quad-thread chip comes with a 3.0 GHz base, 4.1 GHz boost, and impressive 4.1 GHz maximum all-core frequency. The chip's Xe LP graphics engine comes with 48 EUs and boosts to 1.25 GHz, which is pretty agile for a low-end chip. However, these chips step back from LPDDR4x-4266 support to LPDDR4x-3733, which will hamper performance in some tasks. Notably, the Core i5 and i3 models come with 8MB and 6MB of L3 cache, respectively, which is less than the full 12MB found on the Core i7 models.