Compared to the earlier announced U-series Tiger Lake CPUs, the new H-series 11th gen Tiger Lake mobile CPUs double the number of cores, and aims to cover three key notebook markets, essential, thin enthusiast, and halo enthusiast, as Intel decided to call them. The first one, called essential market, aims to pair up the new CPUs with mid-range GPU, offering 1080p gaming at 60FPS at medium to high settings. The thin enthusiast market covers 15-inch+ thin notebooks that offer gaming at 1080p at higher FPS and up to 4K at 60 FPS at lower settings, while the halo enthusiast market, goes for 4K 120FPS gaming at high settings, and these two will probably come paired up with a more capable GPUs.
Five Tiger Lake-H SKUs in the consumer lineup
Intel is launching a total of five SKUs in the consumer market, the flagship Core i9-11980HK, Core i9-11900H, Core i7-11800H, Core i5-11400H, and the Core i5-11260H.
The entire lineup is based on Willow Cove CPU architecture, packing 1.25MB of L2 cache, up to 24MB of shared L3 cache, as well as Intel's latest Xe-LP graphics architectures with 32 EUs across the board. The TDP is set at 45W with range from 35W to 45W (65W+ on the flagship Core i9-11980HK), giving OEM makers a lot of wiggle room in terms of performance.
The flagship Core i9-11980HK is a 8-core/16-thread SKU which ticks at 2.6GHz base, and 4.5GHz maximum Turbo clock on all cores (5.0GHz on two cores and 4.9GHz on four cores), while the Xe-LP graphics works at 1450MHz. The Core i9-11980HK is also the only CPU in the lineup that is an overclockable CPU with a TDP of up to 65W+.
The other two 8-core/16-thread SKUs, the Core i9-11900H and the Core i7-11800H, are pretty similar, as both can be used at 35W and 45W TDP. Both also pack 24MB of L3 cache and have the same 32 EUs iGPU working at 1450MHz. The Core i9-11900H works at 2.5GHz base CPU clock at 45W and has a maximum CPU Turbo of 4.8GHz, while the Core i7-11800H works at 2.3GHz base and 4.5GHz maximum Turbo clock.
The Core i5-11400H and the Core i5-11260H are 6-core/12-thread SKUs, with 12MB of L3 cache, but still retain the same 32 EUs at 1450MHz for the iGPU. The Core i5-11400H works at 2.7GHz base and 4.3GHz Turbo, and the Core i5-11260H works at 2.6GHz base and 4.2GHz Turbo clock.
You can check out the full lineup in the table below.
The new Tiger Lake-H CPUs also get a new platform, with support for DDR4-3200 memory, overclocking support on some SKUs, 20 PCIe Gen 4 for graphics and storage, Thunderbolt 4 support, discrete Intel Killer WiFi 6E, and more.
When it comes to performance, Intel has provided some of its own benchmark numbers, and, of course, we are looking forward to seeing some review benchmarks that should come soon.
In Intel benchmarks, the Tiger Lake-H are up to 19 percent faster compared to the last generation, or Comet Lake-H CPUs, and, according to Intel, can outperform Ryzen 9 5900HX in some benchmarks. Of course, the Ryzen 9 5900HX is a 45W CPU, and Intel's SKU was probably hitting 65W+. Hopefully, we will see some more non-Intel reviews soon.
Over 80+ design wins and over 1 million 11th gen H-series CPU shipped
Intel says there are over 80 enthusiast design wins for Tiger Lake-H and some laptop makers have already announced their own laptops. Nvidia also announced its new RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050 mobile GPUs so these will probably be paired up with some of these laptops.
Intel was keen to note that it has shipped over one million 11th Gen H-series processors to partners worldwide.
In any case, Intel and laptop makers are expected to flood the market with these laptops soon.