PC World - USA (2020-11)

38 PCWorld NOVEMBER 2020

REVIEWS PREVIEW: INTEL 11TH-GEN CORE I7-1185G7 TIGER LAKE

Iris Plus graphics, and a “Renoir” 8-core Ryzen

7 4800U in a Lenovo Slim 7 with Radeon

graphics. All of the laptops were running

updated display drivers, the latest UEFI/

BIOSes, and Windows 10 2004.

All three were also run on their highest

performance settings. For the Dells that’s

“Ultra Performance,” and for the Lenovo that’s

“Extreme Performance.” Looking at what the

laptops reported, the 14nm Comet Lake U

told HWInfo it had a PL1 power limit of 22

watts. You can think of power limits like the

gears of a car, and PL1 is very much like a

second or third gear. A laptop will first hit PL2

for just a few milliseconds and then perhaps

push PL1 for 28 seconds, or as long as it can

sustain a certain thermal and power

threshold. The XPS 13 7390’s 6-core CPU

shows the weakness of the hot 14nm chip

with its 22-watt PL1. The 10nm 10th-gen Ice

Lake in the XPS 13 2-in-1 7390 says it can hit

46 watts in PL1 for 28 seconds. We actually

don’t think it’s 46 watts—we suspect HWInfo

is reading the laptop’s Adaptix technology.

Can you figure out who built Intel’s reference laptop?