Intel's Tiger Lake U processors are beginning to appear online, and this low-power chip with 12th generation (Intel Xe) graphics has been seen performing nearly as well as the AMD Ryzen 4800U.

Following in the footsteps of the 10th generation Ice Lake processors, perhaps the 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake mobile CPUs will again enhance Intel's on-chip CPU and GPU offerings by providing a new core, Willow Cove, and new 12th generation graphics capabilities The company promises to It is also the second generation of mobile processors using Intel's 10nm process, still a distant hope for us desktop gamers.

So how much can Intel outperform Ice Lake with its 11th generation chips? An unknown Intel Tiger Lake processor reported at 2.7 GHz (spotted by serial leaker TUM_APISAK) recorded a 3DMark Time Spy graphics score of 1,237; an Intel Core i7 in a Dell XPS 2-in-1 1065G7's graphics score was 28% better than the 966. This is likely due to the 50% increase in EU count with Tiger Lake (from a total of 64 EU to a maximum of 96 EU), but the exact specifications cannot be confirmed from the leaked results.

Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye - perhaps the chip is not running at the full power overhead it could be given. For example, Ice Lake chips are available in 15W and 25W. The performance of these low-power chips may depend on the chip's thermal solution and cTDP once it is installed in an OEM laptop. [But most importantly for Intel, this chip will probably perform about the same as AMD's "Renoir" Ryzen 7 4800U in the thin and light market. This is a low-power model, not the high-performance "H-series" specification that the gaming notebook market has been waiting for; according to Apisak's figures, the eight Vega-better GPU cores in AMD's 4800U score 1,227 points.

Nothing is set in stone, especially the performance of the unannounced processors, so everything is subject to change. Intel and its partners must be getting close to final validation of the Intel Tiger Lake chips, but these appear to be OEM results that are currently appearing in benchmark databases and not the first batch of engineering samples.

GPU performance on thin and light processors has been on the rise over the past few years, so we are seeing performance that is nearly manageable for low-end performance in competitive (not heavily loaded) gaming. Still, this is quite a feat for such a thin laptop.

The inclusion of Intel's discrete GPU, DG1 (aka Intel Xe), may also enhance performance. While we can't expect phenomenal performance from these first-generation dGPU parts, especially in laptop land, Intel did show off Destiny 2 running on a relatively small Tiger Lake laptop at CES 2020. At least we can expect it.

Whatever the final performance, Intel will need to boost the performance of Tiger Lake to compete with AMD's Ryzen 4000 Renoir mobile processors, which use the Zen 2 architecture and (in a sense) the new and improved Vega GPU core.