Intel Core i5-8259U vs Intel Core i7-1185G7

Intel Core i5-8259U

The Intel Core i5-8259U is a quad-core SoC for notebooks based on the Coffee Lake architecture and was announced in April 2018. Compared to its predecessor Core i5-7267U, the CPU is now a quad-core with Hyperthreading support for the execution of up to 8 threads simultaneously. The base frequency is 2.3 GHz, but the Turbo goes all the way up to 3.8 GHz. It is also equipped with an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 GPU with 128 MB eDRAM, a dual-channel memory controller (DDR4) as well as VP9 and H.265 video decoding as well as encoding. The chip is still manufactured in a 14nm process with FinFET transistors.

Compared to faster Core i5 and i7 models with eDRAM and 28 Watts, the i5-8259U only features 6 MB smart cache and the slowest clock of the Iris Plus GPU.

Architecture

Intel basically uses the same micro architecture compared to Kaby Lake, so the per-MHz performance does not differ. The manufacturer only reworked the Speed Shift technology for faster dynamic adjustments of voltages and clocks, and the improved 14nm process allows much higher frequencies combined with better efficiency than before.

Performance

Considering the clocks of the Core i5-8259U, its performance should be between the 15W models Core i5-8350U and Core i7-8550U. The i5-8259U should still be faster than the i7-8550U in practice thanks to the increased TDP, especially during sustained workloads.

Graphics

The integrated Intel Iris Plus 655 Graphics is the GT3e model of the Kaby Lake GPU (Intel Gen. 9.5). It has 48 Execution Units running at 300-1050 MHz (slowest clock of the 655, the fastest is 1200 MHz in combination with the i7-8559U) and the performance is comparable to a GeForce 930M or 940MX thanks to fast eDRAM cache. However, there aren't any significant improvements compared to the old Iris Plus 650, so modern games can often not be played smoothly or only at the lowest or medium settings, respectively.

Contrary to Skylake, Kaby lake now also supports H.265/HEVC Main 10 with a 10-bit color depth as well as Google's VP9 codec. The dual-core Kaby Lake processors announced in January should also support HDCP 2.2.

Power Consumption

The chip is manufactured in an improved 14nm process with FinFET transistors, which improves the efficiency even further. Intel specifies the TDP with 28 Watts, which can be reduced to 23 Watts (cTDP Down) depending on the usage scenario. The TDP is pretty high compared to the common 15-Watt TDP for quad-core processors, but allows a better utilization of CPU and GPU Turbo.

Intel Core i7-1185G7

The Intel Core i7-1185G7 is a power-efficient quad-core SoC for laptops and Ultrabooks based on the Tiger Lake-U generation (UP3) that was introduced September 2020. It integrates four Willow Cove processor cores (8 threads thanks to Hyper-Threading). Each core can clock from 1.2 GHz (12 W base clock speed), 3 GHz (28 W base clock speed) to 4.8 GHz (single-core boost). All cores at once can clock at up to 4.3 GHz. At the time of announcement, the i7-1185G7 is the fastest model of the line-up. Since early 2021, the i7-1185G7 supports management features like vPro.

Another novelty is the integrated Iris Xe iGPU based on the completely new Gen 12 architecture. It should offer a significantly higher performance compared to the older Iris Plus G7 (Ice Lake). In the i7-1185G7 it uses 96 EUs and clocks between 400 - 1,350 MHz. The GPU and CPU can together use the 12 MB of L3 cache.

Furthermore, Tiger Lake SoCs add PCIe 4 support (four lanes), AI hardware acceleration, and the partial integration of Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 and Wi-Fi 6 in the chip.

Performance

The average 1185G7 in our database is just as fast as AMD's hexa-core Ryzen 5 4500U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. While the i7 is not the fastest Tiger Lake chip by any stretch of imagination, it's more than usable for your productivity and creative apps, with a bit of gaming possible as well.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 55 W, the Stealth 15M A11SEK is among the fastest laptops powered by the 1185G7 that we know of. It can be almost twice as fast in CPU-bound workloads as the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This little Core i7 here has a default TDP of 12 W to 28 W, the expectation being that laptop manufacturers will go for a higher value in exchange for higher performance. Either way, that's a tad too high to allow for passively cooled designs.

The chip is manufactured on Intel's third-gen 10 nm process marketed as SuperFin for average, as of late 2022, energy efficiency.