These processors are quite powerful, offering strong performance for modern tasks.
These processors are quite powerful, offering strong performance for modern tasks.
When in doubt, 10th and 11th generation laptops use CPUs that differ from traditional desktop chips. The 10th gen featured Ice Lake, marking Intel's initial 10nm series. It offered a notable boost in instructions per clock (IPC) compared to earlier models, though it lacked high turbo speeds. The 11th gen Tiger Lake builds on this by adding larger caches and improving clock speed and efficiency, delivering better performance per clock, higher clocks, and improved power use. Overall, it's a strong upgrade package. If you don't require more than 4 cores, the 11th gen remains a solid choice. It tends to be pricier partly because it's newer, and the integrated graphics have seen significant improvements.
It's not completely accurate; they still maintain designs on 14nm, which are essentially backports from the 10nm architecture. In fact, they share the same IPC as their earlier versions. While some newer designs incorporate 10nm features, not every update uses them.
I forgot Comet Lake also existed as a mobile product sold as 10th gen. Yeah, they're not a good choice. They're not a backport, since they were a 14nm CPU built on 14nm process. The only backport I'm aware of in recent times is the impending Rocket Lake desktop, essentially taking a 10nm design and implementing it on 14nm. Ice Lake did have higher IPC but offset from lower clocks. Tiger Lake addresses both of those, with higher IPC again as well as more clock, and better efficiency. Haven't seen anyone do a direct head to head but I'd expect Tiger Lake to be more than competitive against Zen 2 at equal core counts (Zen 3 would be a harder fight). Of course, Ryzen currently wins for more scalable workloads if you need more than 4 cores at least until the 8 core Tiger Lake comes out soon. If I were to buy a quad core laptop today, I'd have no hesitation in considering Tiger Lake. I wouldn't pick Ice Lake since it is old already, certainly not Comet Lake.
Compare the Gen10 i7 10510U with a MX350 to the Gen11 i7 1165G7 with a MX450 in 13" HP laptops. Also see how it stacks against the Ryzen 7 4500U without a dedicated GPU. All set on the Envy and Probook 635 Aero.
Laptop specifications alone don<|pad|> a clear picture. The same processor in two different models behaves very differently based on whether power caps and voltage settings are enabled or not. Intel's 11th Gen U and G7 series disable voltage control, while many Dell and other models restrict turbo power. A 10th Gen 10510U handles heavy workloads well beyond its 15W TDP, whereas a restricted 11th Gen would struggle to keep up.