$700 Core i7-1065G7 vs. $1400 Core i7-1065G7: What's the difference?

On paper, the Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15IIL and Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15 both use the same Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU even though the latter retails for about two times the price of the former. Uninformed shoppers may be quick to assume that the two 15-inch laptops would have identical CPU performance, but our data below proves otherwise by larger-than-expected margins.

When running CineBench R15 or CineBench R20, the cheaper Lenovo laptop is only within 10 percent of the pricier Microsoft laptop. The issue arises when running these same benchmarks in a loop. As shown by our graph below, the IdeaPad system would start out very closely to the Microsoft system, but its CPU scores would degrade over time by as much as 37 percent. Meanwhile, the Microsoft system can maintain higher scores for longer periods.

A closer look at CPU clock rates via HWiNFO unveils what's going on. When running Prime95 on both systems, we can observe the IdeaPad boosting up to 3.5 GHz for only about five seconds before steadily falling to as low as 1.7 GHz. In comparison, the Surface Laptop would stabilize at a higher clock rate of 2.7 GHz. Power consumption is also higher on the Surface Laptop (43 W vs. 29 W) when running Prime95 to reflect its faster processor performance.

If you plan on using either laptop primarily for streaming, word processing or web browsing, then the processor performance differences between the IdeaPad and Surface would be negligible. If you occasionally game or edit videos and photos, however, we recommend skipping the IdeaPad and going for the Yoga C940 or Surface Laptop instead to get the most out of Intel's 10th gen Ice Lake series.