https://liliputing.com/2020/09/3rd-party-intel-tiger-lake-tests-suggest-big-p... Intel is really stumbling over their lack of shipment of real normal channel production based competitive Tiger Lake laptops -- and Intel is now making an effort to CUSTOM SUPPLY a laptop to AnandTech, Engadget, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, The Verge, and Tom’s Hardware --- this custom unit is a reference design laptop that is provided by Intel that is NON-STANDARD in several ways.
First, this is not an actual product you can go out and buy. It likely has a cherry picked processor and faster than normal memory installed in it.Second, The reference unit likely has a cherry picked CPU out of Intel’s best runs of the
most powerful 11th-gen chip – the Intel Core i7-1185G7. It’s unclear if we’ll see the same kind of performance improvements from a standard run of the mill chipset of the same model and type from Intel or from TSMC ---- much less a run of the mill Core i3, Core i5, or even other Core i7 chips in the real upcoming Tiger Lake family.
Finally, this likely "cherry picked chip" has a configurable TDP, allowing it to run at 12 to 28 watts "by direction". Ice Lake chips only go up to 25 watts, and most laptops with this processor are shipped with a 15W configuration to maximize battery life. AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series notebooks also top out at 25 watts and, again, many laptops that ship with these chips are configured to run at 15 watts to maximize battery life.
The Intel reference unit is loaded up with all sorts of AI software speedups, that will automatically play in all the testing done on this machine. The reference unit also does not seem to throttle very much as noted during initial limited testing,
which is not normal at all for a laptop as the processor heats the chassis up.
This "special effort" by Intel comes across as a whole new layer of attempted PR manipulation and most of the test houses simply state their intention to wait for a real test unit that they buy out of the normal retail chain to base their tests results upon.
One of the group states they intend to do the tests with the machine that they buy, then they intend to replace and format the hard drive of their purchased machine and install an older version of Windows Pro that
has no AI enhancements in it (nor would it be able to ask the internet to download any of such) as they are curious how much of Intel's progress is AI manipulation vs real performance increases (real progress).
Plus their own purchased laptop can be equipped with thermocouples and recording watt meters to see if any 80 watt limited time hyperclocking takes place during any of the tests as they are being run.
Nobody trusts Intel not to cheat any more --- it is too important to Intel that Intel get a win with Tiger Lake
any way they can ......
This last bit is quite interesting to note.
"A Lenovo Slim 7 laptop with a 25 watt Ryzen 7 4800U processor does come out ahead in some tests, including those that take advantage of multithreading (it’s an 8-core/16-thread chip, while Intel’s is a 4-core/8-thread processor), and video transcoding (using Handbrake, at least)."