Acer Swift 5 Sneak Peek Preview: Tiger Lake iGPU attacks Entry-Level GeForce

Looking at the R15 Short logfile we see that CPU Package Power is increased to slightly over 40 W during the first 5 seconds, remains steady for another 15 seconds, and then slowly decreases. Dynamic tuning seems to be disabled in this chip, otherwise it would have been able to consume up to 64 W for short periods of time.

The results were identical when running Prime95. Clock speeds settled at 2.4-2.5 GHz after three minutes, and temperatures hovered around 65 °C. Like before we can see a decrease of CPU Package Power from 45 W at the beginning to 17 W towards the end.

In our Cinebench R20 benchmark, which only takes the first run into account, the 1165G7 trailed behind its 1185G7 sibling by no more than 5 %. Other benchmarks produced very different results. In Cinebench R15 and Blender the top model was 39 % and 17 % faster, respectively. These results show one thing first and foremost: a future laptop’s performance will depend primarily on its cooling system with a much lesser impact of processor nomenclature.

The Iris Xe G7 GPU (Gen 12) is supposed to perform much better than Intel’s previous generation Iris Plus G7 that Ice Lake CPUs were equipped with. The 1165G7’s Iris Xe features 96 EUs running at 400-1300 MHz. This particular iGPU managed to outperform AMD’s Radeon Vega 7 by a whopping 36 % in Cloud Gate and an even more impressive 84 % in Fire Strike. Compared to last generation’s Iris Plus G7 it was between 200-300 % faster (Time Spy and Fire Strike Graphics), and it even gave Nvidia’s MX350 a run for its money and ran 27 and 33 % faster in Cloud Gate and Fire Strike, respectively. Not bad for an iGPU, not bad indeed.

It looks as if previous entry-level solutions a la MX 330 or MX350 might have a hard time in the future. Accordingly, we expect Nvidia to introduce its new GeForce MX450 entry-level GPU very soon in order to keep up with Intel’s iGPU in the entry-level segment.

In this particular case, reasonable translates to a CPU that performed almost as fast as a Ryzen 7 4700U, one of the fastest ultra-low-voltages chips available for slim and lightweight subnotebooks at the time of writing, in short-term burst load scenarios.

However, sustained load paints a different picture, and the CPU is incapable of maintaining its high turbo boost over long periods of time and loses around 30 % of its peak performance. Even then it is still faster than a 10th generation Core i7, and as such the Tiger Lake i7-1165G7 can be considered a well-made high-performance CPU for ultra-lightweight notebooks. It is, however, not suitable as a workstation SoC.

The integrated GPU raised the bar significantly. The Intel Iris Xe G7 is set to take on the games and benchmarks of a Radeon Vega 7 and Geforce MX330/MX350 graphics solution. For the first time ever, the admittedly old yet very demanding game Witcher 3 ran smoothly in high settings and FHD resolution on an integrated GPU. Who would have thought that would be possible on an Intel GPU a mere two years ago?

The Intel Iris Xe G7 can keep up in first games and benchmarks with a Radeon Vega 7 as well as MX330/MX350 graphics solutions.

Keep in mind that our benchmarks and tests were performed on an Acer Swift 5 pre-production sample that the manufacturer had approved for benchmarks. We do not expect any significant changes, neither for the worse nor for the better, from the final retail product. Its high performance combined with 11 hours of battery life, a bright touch display, a brand-new Thunderbolt 4 port, and its decent input devices make this a very powerful subnotebook for many years to come. If prices remain similar to previous generations, we expect around $1,000 for a device configured similarly to our preview unit – a bargain. Once we have received the final Swift 5 production model, we are going to run it through its paces and provide you with a full and extensive review thereof.