Ice Lake performance: Does it live up to expectations?

CPU Performance

Below is a comparison of all of the Ice Lake-powered notebooks we've tested, specifically the ones we took Cinebench R20 data on. We'll be taking a specific look at some laptops that feature both Ice Lake and Kaby Lake R options with the same internal components to see the actual gains.

The 13-inch XPS laptops in this dataset seem to lead the pack in terms of performance. However, the power limits Dell sets on these laptops result in rather unstable performance. These XPS laptops tend to thermal throttle under load, rather than simply being power-limited.

As a result of this, we'll have to look at something with much more predictable performance. For that, we'll be using the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 as a point of reference. Over 15 minutes of load, this laptop maintains roughly 25 watts (which is cTDP-up on this chip) after a 20-second boost period at higher power levels.

For the other part of our comparison, let's take a look at a Cinebench R15 loop of the Dell Latitude 5490 (with a Kaby Lake R processor) versus the Surface Laptop 3. Both have 25 W power limits, so this should be a pretty fair head-to-head.

In the instance of a sustained, 25 W load under a 25 W power limit, we can see that this Ice Lake laptop maintains performance levels roughly 11.5% higher than the Kaby Lake R laptop. This isn't quite as big as the jump we've seen compared to Renoir processors, however, with leaked AMD Ryzen 7 4800U benchmark results beating our best Intel i7-10750H results. Regardless, there is a perceivable performance boost from Intel's 14-nanometer processors to its 10-nanometer processors.

Now, let's compare some Cinebench R20 results between Whiskey Lake and Ice Lake laptops. We'll only be taking a look at a small number of laptops with the best results from each category to get a clear look.

Both the Asus ZenBook 15 and the Surface Laptop 3 shown above will consistently maintain 25 W loads over extended periods, so they're probably the best for comparison here. In a Cinebench R20 multi-core test, we can see roughly a 9% relative performance improvement with Ice Lake over Whiskey Lake.

As would be expected for chips with 15 watt TDPs, the averages (at time of writing, this will change over time) for both Whiskey Lake and Ice Lake fall short of these high-power test results we're seeing above. Since all of the laptops listed in the chart above run at power levels above Intel's specified TDP, its unlikely the average will ever reach that high. However, we can see an almost 30% performance improvement from our average i7-8565U results to our average i7-1065G7 results. That's a much wider gap, but there's also a lot more variables at play than in the comparison between the ZenBook and Surface Laptop.

While the performance improvements we've seen still aren't terribly impressive, it's important to note that this is the first generation of Intel's 10-nanometer processors. Whiskey Lake performs a lot better than Sky Lake, so we expect to see fair performance gains with Tiger Lake (and any future generations) in this regard.

It's also worth noting that what we're working with isn't a perfect "apples-to-apples" type of comparison. The performance gap we're seen may be wider or tighter than it would be with a perfectly fair test.

One thing I've seen mentioned occasionally is that Ice Lake's quad-core performance at 15 watts isn't all that great. Let's take a look at some Cinebench R15 loop results for Ice Lake, Whiskey Lake, and Kaby Lake R devices to see if that statement holds up at all. All three of these machines appear to hold 15 W over time per stress test data.

Under Cinebench R15 loop conditions, the i7-1065G7 seems to fall behind the Whiskey Lake i5-8365U by almost as much as it was ahead in the 25 watt tests (roughly 8.6%). Interestingly, the Ice Lake laptop tested hovers just above the Kaby Lake R device's results. As a result, in workloads similar to R15 with an Ice Lake device, you'd likely see performance similar to Kaby Lake R.

However, Cinebench R15 is known for being influenced heavily by clock speeds more than anything else. It's pretty well known that Ice Lake doesn't hold up well frequency wise when compared to Intel's more matured 14-nanometer chips, so let's take a look at some Cinebench R20 results to get a better picture. 

Here we can see much more expected results. In a single run of Cinebench R20, the Dell Latitude 3390 is beaten by the Dell Latitude 5300 by roughly 23%, and then the Latitude 5300 is beaten by the Ice Lake-powered Lenovo IdeaPad S340 by roughly 18%. This is much more indicative of what we'd expect based on the data shown earlier.

This is a good example of why using a variety of benchmarks when comparing hardware is useful, and why using outdated benchmarks (such as Cinebench R15) as a sole data point for performance isn't the best idea. There's a reason why Maxon doesn't provide a download to R15 on its website anymore, after all.

GPU Performance

Now, let's look at the graphics side of things. The performance improvement we've seen overall has been a lot higher in graphics, and for somewhat obvious reasons. Let's take a look at some benchmark results.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2018) is consistently the best performer from our Intel UHD Graphics 620 test results. However, the performance results are more varied on the Ice Lake side with certain devices performing better than others with the same graphics chip. 

Microsoft's Surface Laptop 3 performed the best overall, outperforming the X1 Carbon by roughly 126% by 1080p Fire Strike Graphics scores, as well as by a smaller but still massive 116% performance boost over the X1 Carbon in the 1440p Time Spy Graphics results. It's clear that Intel has stepped up its graphics game with these new CPUs.

Our average results for Iris Plus Graphics G7 (at the time of writing, this is subject to change) show similar results to our top performing Ice Lake chips with roughly double the performance of the last-generation Intel UHD Graphics 620.

While these scores are impressive, we'll likely see even greater performance improvements. Comparing the review data we have on the current Surface Laptop 3 with leaked Tiger Lake 3DMark 11 results, we can see a substantial performance bump. Our score was 4612 points on the Performance GPU score, whereas the leaked result shows a score of 5540 points, or roughly a 20% performance bump. While the test conditions of this leaked benchmark are unknown, we're expecting to see decent performance gains over Ice Lake when we test Tiger Lake ourselves.

Similar results can be seen in the overall scores from these benchmarks. Gaming should be a lot more viable on these laptops, assuming they have the power budget and thermals to handle that kind of thing.

System Performance

We use PCMark 10 as an indicator of full system performance. Ice Lake's sharp increase in graphical performance rockets these laptops to the top of the Digital Content Creation scoreboard, as expected.

However, in the other two categories, Productivity and Essentials, the results are much more scrambled and closer with the Whiskey Lake Latitude 5500 leading the pack. At the same time, all of the Kaby Lake R devices remain below all other systems in scores.

An overall winner isn't clear from our PCMark 10 data. This makes sense given that the GPU saw much larger performance improvements in Ice Lake than the CPU. GPU performance isn't everything when considering full system performance, after all.

Battery Life

While a data comparison of battery life between the various Ice Lake powered laptops would be interesting in an ideal, fair testing scenario, it would be difficult to isolate how much impact Ice Lake itself has on battery life without other factors intervening. Displays, among other things, can cause battery drain outside of just CPU power consumption that could skew results. 

Regardless, based on the performance we're seeing at 15 W in the CPU benchmarks, it's fair to say that efficiency has improved to some degree. Assuming that whatever you plan on using your laptop for wouldn't cause the laptop to constantly hit power limits, there is evidence to suggest that you'd see battery life improvements. In general, checking an individual device's review for battery life numbers would be your best bet.

Verdict

Based on what we've seen here, it's clear that Ice Lake is a major step forward when it comes to integrated GPU performance. However, on the CPU side of things, the performance improvements aren't terribly large, with our numbers showing only a 9% performance improvement over Whiskey Lake. The performance looks a bit better when compared to Kaby Lake R, but it's still only roughly 11.5% better than Kaby Lake R when compared via our Cinebench R15 loop.

While it's likely that further refinement of Intel's 10-nanometer process will lead to further CPU performance gains, the fact that Ice Lake's performance is still quite far behind AMD's Renoir mobile processors can't be ignored.

We don't know for sure how Tiger Lake will perform compared to AMD's next offerings, but leaked 3DMark Time Spy benchmark results show Intel being beaten by AMD's Renoir chips by roughly 40%. It might be a while before Intel catches back up to AMD on the CPU side, but there has been data showing Tiger Lake's iGPU outperforming the latest Renoir iGPUs by 15%. We're expecting Intel to be rather competitive with AMD's graphics offerings upon release of Tiger Lake.

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