Intel Core i7-1165G7 vs Intel Core i5-1155G7

Intel Core i7-1165G7

The Intel Core i7-1165G7 is an upper mid-range, quad-core SoC designed for use in ultra-thin laptops. The Tiger Lake-UP3 processor was unveiled in September 2020; its Hyper-Threading-enabled Willow Cove CPU cores run at 2.8 GHz (base clock speed @ 28 W TDP) to 4.7 GHz (single-core Boost frequency). The all-core Boost frequency sits at 4.1 GHz. This i7 was the second-fastest CPU of TGL-UP3 line-up when Intel initially launched the series in 2020.

The i7 is ever-so-slightly inferior to Intel Core i7-1185G7 in that the vPro support is nowhere to be found, the clock speeds are lower, and the iGPU's clock speed is a little lower as well.

Architecture

A sizeable performance-per-MHz boost is one of the many benefits of Tiger Lake generation compared to the older Ice Lake and Comet Lake product families. Core i7-1165G7 is compatible with dual-channel DDR4-3200 or quad-channel LPDDR4x-4267 RAM; Intel recommends using no more than 64 GB, for reference. The processor also supports PCI-Express 4.0 (4 lanes) and is capable of HW-accelerating certain AI workloads. Thunderbolt 4, USB 4 and Wi-Fi 6 support is partially baked into the chip. Four PCI-Express 4.0 lanes allow for read/write rates of up to 7.9 GB/s, provided a suitably fast NVMe SSD is used.

The i7 is manufactured on the second-gen 10 nm Intel process marketed as SuperFin that is supposedly comparable to TSMC's 7 nm process, the one Ryzen 4000 and Ryzen 5000 series processors are manufactured on. Both the CPU cores and the iGPU have access to 12 MB of L3 cache. The SoC is supposed to be soldered straight on to the motherboard (BGA1449 socket interface); it is thus anything but user-replaceable.

Performance

The average Core i7-1165G7 in our database is just as fast as Intel's Core i7-8559U, Core i7-10610U, Core i5-10300H when under multi-core load. Single-thread benchmarks reveal the i7 to be just as fast as Intel's Core i7-11370H and Core i9-10900K or AMD's Ryzen 5 5600H, Ryzen 7 5800X. This is a very decent CPU; provided the long-term Power Limit is high enough (> 30 W) and the cooling solution is a good one, the i7 will have no trouble chewing through some light video editing and 3D rendering job on the go with a bit of gaming possible as well (even if there is no dedicated graphics card). More on this below.

Graphics

The Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96 EUs) is based on Intel's Generation 12 architecture. It is a lot faster than the older Iris Plus G7 (Ice Lake) and UHD Graphics 620 (Comet Lake) solutions. The Xe has 96 Execution Units running at 400 MHz to 1,300 MHz, in the case of this Core i7.

The graphics adapter can drive up to 4 monitors in resolutions as high as SUHD [email protected] simultaneously, and the built-in video decoder is AV1-friendly. It will happily decode most other video codecs including HEVC, AVC, VP9, MPEG-2 and so on, too.

The Xe will let you play most games at 1080p / Low quality preset. It's nearly as fast as NVIDIA's GeForce MX350, surpassing anything we have seen from AMD's integrated graphics thus far. It is paramount that fast RAM is used as the iGPU has no VRAM of its own, and, much like with the CPU performance, Power Limits should be high and cooling solution should be decently competent.

Power Consumption

The 10 nm manufacturing process and the low core count render the i7 relatively energy-efficient. i7-1165G7 has a default TDP of 12 W to 28 W (OEMs get to set the value according to their needs), thus making the Core i7 a good fit for ultra-portable laptops and high-end tablets alike. The CPU will have performance sustainability issues if cooled passively which is something for OEMs to keep in mind.

Intel Core i5-1155G7

The Intel Core i5-1155G7 is a power efficient quad-core SoC for laptops and Ultrabooks based on the Tiger Lake-U generation that was announced in mid 2021 as part of the refresh. It integrates four Willow Cove processor cores (8 threads thanks to HyperThreading). The base clock speed depends on the TDP settings and ranges from 1 GHz (12 Watt TDP) up to 2.5 GHz (28 Watt). The Boost is always specified at 4.5 GHz.

Another novelty is the integrated Xe graphics card with 80 EUs based on the completely new Gen 12 architecture. It offers a significantly higher performance compared to the older Iris Plus G7 (Ice Lake).

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

The chip is produced in the improved 10nm SuperFin process at Intel that should be comparable to the 7nm process at TSMC (e.g. Ryzen 4000 series).

All articles on Tiger Lake can be found on our Tiger Lake architecture hub.