Intel Tiger Lake beats AMD Ryzen 4000-series CPU in latest benchmark leak — but there’s a catch

(Image credit: Intel)

While there is certainly reason to be excited for the Tiger Lake CPUs we expect Intel to officially unveil next month, that anticipation has been mostly built on its graphics capabilities and not raw CPU power.

Previous outings against AMD's Ryzen 4000-series CPUs haven't gone so well, but a new PassMark score from regular benchmark leaker @Tum_APISAK shows at least one bright spot for Tiger Lake against its formidable Ryzen 7 opponent (Notebookcheck).

Now, to be clear, this is a pretty specific win that Tiger Lake has chalked up with its Core i7-1165G7 CPU going up against the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U. It's the same pairing that we have seen tip consistently in AMD's favor in previous leaks over the last few months.

But this time around, in the single-threaded PassMark results, the Tiger Lake CPU managed to come out ahead with a score of 3,273 to the Ryzen processors 2,631, which is roughly a 24.4% advantage in Intel's favor. 

(Image credit: CPUbenchmark)

Before any Intel fans pop the champagne and take a victory lap, the multi-threaded and overall scores were less rosy for Intel. Here the Ryzen 7 4800U dominated with its eight cores and 16 threads to the four cores and eight threads of the Intel Core i7-1165G7.

The overall scores for the two were a total of 17,552 points for the Ryzen 7 4800U and 13,372 points for the Core i7-1165G7, amounting to a 31.3% victory for AMD.

One additional caveat to this result is that the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U has 55 total tests in the PassMark system and its score is an average among all of those tests. Meanwhile, this was the first test for the Core i7-1165G7 CPU, so there is a considerable margin for error compared to the AMD score, which could go for or against Intel.

Unfortunately for Intel, single-threaded performance is not going to be a massive selling point for most users, but at this point, any win is likely a good win. Tiger Lake does have other advantages, including improved security and the aforementioned graphics power for gamers who want to stick to a thin and light option, so regardless of AMD's benchmark edge we still can't wait to hear more about Tiger Lake next month.

Sean Riley

Sean Riley has been covering tech professionally for over a decade now. Most of that time was as a freelancer covering varied topics including phones, wearables, tablets, smart home devices, laptops, AR, VR, mobile payments, fintech, and more.  Sean is the resident mobile expert at Laptop Mag, specializing in phones and wearables, you'll find plenty of news, reviews, how-to, and opinion pieces on these subjects from him here. But Laptop Mag has also proven a perfect fit for that broad range of interests with reviews and news on the latest laptops, VR games, and computer accessories along with coverage on everything from NFTs to cybersecurity and more.