https://www.anandtech.com/show/16063/intel-launches-11th-gen-core-tiger-lake-processors-and-evo-brandingWell, sort of. You still can't buy them, and there's no word on when you will be able to. Today's announcement basically means that OEMs are free to start selling laptops based on Tiger Lake as soon as they are ready to do so. Which will probably come sometime after they get their hands on actual CPUs in sufficient volume.
On the CPU side, Tiger Lake has basically the same CPU cores as Ice Lake, and still tops out at four cores. The difference is that with an improved process node, the max turbo can go as high as 4.8 GHz, up from 4.1 GHz on Ice Lake. The clock speeds are still lower than Sky Lake Refresh Refresh Refresh (and also if you add another Refresh), but the IPC is considerably higher. That should allow Tiger Lake CPUs to offer the highest single-threaded performance on the market, at least if they can actually show up before AMD's Zen 3 CPUs do later this year.
On the GPU side, this is Intel's first product with their new Xe GPU architecture. Intel is hyping this as their first attempt at building good GPUs in about a decade, and they're hoping to finally be competitive with AMD. Tiger Lake GPUs top out at 768 shaders, while fourth gen mobile Ryzen only goes up to 512, so at least on paper, there's the potential for Intel to be competitive. Whether it works that way in actual games remains to be seen.
Intel is also announcing their new EVO branding for laptops. Laptops that use an Intel CPU and have the properties that Intel thinks are important for laptops can now carry the EVO branding, rather than just the older Core branding. The EVO branding means that Intel has verified that that particular laptop has the things that Intel thinks are important, such as Thunderbolt 4 and hardware acceleration for AI. Of course, Samsung SSDs have long established that EVO means "not the one you actually want, but the one you might settle for", so good job to Intel on running with that.
Left unsaid in today's launch are prices and availability, among other things. Given that the other products that Intel has released on 10 nm were very expensive, Tiger Lake probably will be, too. But it should at least have the enough performance to not be ridiculous at a high price tag. If Intel can be at least competitive on price, then this could be a credible competitor for fourth gen Ryzen mobile laptops. Once the laptops eventually show up, that is.
Comments
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Of course, if more than two years after Cannon Lake, Intel still isn't yet willing to go over four cores, then Ice Lake-SP must really be in trouble. That's the successor to the mostly canceled Cooper Lake, which is the successor to Cascade Lake, which went up to 28 cores.