2.8 GHz Tiger Lake U chip with 4 Willow Cove cores and 8 threads spotted: leaves 8-core 16-thread 4.2 GHz Ryzen 7 4800U unfazed

Tipster @_rogame spotted what appears to be one of the fastest Intel Tiger Lake U CPUs we've seen yet. According to a benchmark listing, the unspecified Tiger Lake U part appears to feature 4 cores and 8 threads, running at up to 2.8 GHz.

The Tiger Lake U chip will feature new, redesigned Willow Lake cores delivering a substantial improvement to IPC compared to Ice Lake. The chip is also set to feature 12th-gen Intel Xe graphics, delivering up to two times the GPU power of current Ice Lake platforms.

The real question, though, is how Tiger Lake U will fare up against AMD's Ryzen 4000 Mobile lineup. The Ryzen 7 4800U, built on a frugal 7nm process, runs 8 cores and sixteen threads at up to 4.2 GHz. In multi-threaded workloads, this Zen 2 part will almost certainly outdo quad core Tiger Lake parts.

In terms of GPU capabilities, benchmarks indicate that the Xe Graphics G7 GPU on high-end Tiger Lake U SoCs is about 5-10 percent faster than the Ryzen 7 4800U's RX Vega 8.

From what we know so far, Tiger Lake U will likely deliver somewhat better GPU performance but at the cost of multi-threaded CPU performance, compared to Ryzen 4000 Mobile chips. Pricing, then will be a key factor in determining Tiger Lake U's success.