New Tiger Lake U leak: 2.2 Ghz and 2.7 GHz configs; massive CPU performance delta hints at future OEM cooling shenanigans

Tipster @_rogame recently spotted what appear to be 3DMark Timespy scores for the exact same Tiger Lake U platform, running at different clockspeeds. Two separate runs show the Tiger Lake U system operating at 2.2 GHz and at 2.7 GHz respectively. At 2.2 GHz, the platform scored 3367 in Time Spy's CPU test, while at 2.7 GHz it scored 4076.

Interestingly, the runs show near-linear performance scaling: a 23 percent clockspeed increase for 21 percent greater perfomance. This is a strong indication of thermal/power bottlenecking.

While Intel has yet to confirm these figures, the 2.2 GHz and 2.7 GHz configurations may represent different implementations for different OEM cooling solutions. This is bad news for prospective Tiger Lake U laptop buyers: the same Tiger Lake SKU may offer as much as 20 percent lower performance in certain laptops compared to others. 

Earlier this week, we'd spotted a Tiger Lake U SoC score 4400 on the Timespy CPU test and 1300 on the GPU test. These figures demolished the Ryzen 7 3780U. They are also considerably higher than the CPU and GPU scores spotted by @rogame today.

This indicates that we might be looking at a lower-performance Tiger Lake U variant. The SoC spotted today performance slightly better than the Ryzen 7 3780U in CPU workloads and slightly worse in GPU workloads.