Intel Core i7 1165G7 "Tiger Lake" Linux Performance With The Dell XPS 13 9310

Written by Michael Larabel in Computers on 16 October 2020 at 10:55 AM EDT. Page 1 of 14. 35 Comments.

Here are our initial benchmarks of Intel Tiger Lake on Ubuntu Linux via the premium Core i7 1165G7 processor. This also appears to be the first public benchmarks of the new Dell XPS 13 9310 laptop that just-launched as the refreshed XPS notebook for Tiger Lake and with Intel EVO certification.

The Core i7 1165G7 Tiger Lake processor being tested today is a 10nm SuperFin quad-core processor with Hyper Threading and has a 4.7GHz turbo frequency and 12MB of L3 cache. Making Tiger Lake quite interesting are the Iris Xe Graphics (Gen12) found with this mobile processor.

Compared to the previous-generation Core i7 1065G7 Ice Lake processor, the Core i7 1165G7 Tiger Lake 10nm SuperFin processor has a much higher turbo frequency (4.7GHz vs. 3.9GHz), a 12MB cache rather than 8MB, LPDDR4x-4267 support rather than LPDDR4-3733 (though both do also support DDR4-3200), Thunderbolt 4, and PCIe Gen 4 as the prominent advantages.

The Dell XPS 13 9310 is the first to market with Tiger Lake that was announced at the end of September and now beginning to ship to customers. The Dell XPS 13 9310 Developer Edition as tested was configured with the Core i7 1176G7 Tiger Lake processor with Xe Graphics, 2 x 8GB LPDDR4-4267 memory, 1920 x 1200 display, Intel WiFi 6 AX201, and Kioxia KBG40ZNS256G NVMe solid-state storage. The Dell XPS 13 9310 Developer Edition as configured currently retails for $1349 USD.

Tiger Lake on Linux does work but depending upon your distribution's package versions, you may need to resort to manually upgrading. As with most new hardware launches, I recommend running the latest stable kernel and in the case of graphics support to also be using the latest kernel. In this case Linux 5.9 and Mesa 20.3-devel is where I have primarily been testing Tiger Lake so far while going back to Linux 5.6~5.8 should be fine along with Mesa 20.2 and potentially 20.1, but in general the newer packages are better.

For today's benchmarking, the Dell XPS 13 9310 and the other laptops under test were all running Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS with Linux 5.9 and Mesa 20.3-devel. This combination has been working out reliable with the Dell XPS 13 9310 in the short time of testing so far while further Linux kernel version comparisons and other distribution tests will be coming in the days/weeks ahead.

The laptops / mobile processors tested for this comparison included:

Core i7 8565U - The 2019 Dell XPS 13 9380 with Core i7 8565U, the 8th Gen 4-core / 8-core Whiskey Lake processor that has UHD Graphics and 4.6GHz max turbo frequency. The laptop under test was equipped with 2 x 8GB of RAM, UHD 620 Graphics, 256GB SK Hynix PC401 NVMe SSD, and 1080p display.

Core i7 1065G7 - The 2020 Dell XPS 13 7390 with Core i7 1065G7 as last year's XPS Ice Lake model. The laptop was equipped with 2 x 8GB RAM, Iris Plus G7 graphics, 1920 x 1200 display, and Toshiba KBG40ZPZ512G 512GB NVMe solid-state drive.

Core i7 1165G7 - The Dell XPS 13 9310 Developer Edition Tiger Lake laptop being focused on for today's article.

Ryzen 5 4500U - The Lenovo Flex 5 (81X20005US) that at least when times in stock has been found as low as $599 USD (what I paid for the laptop in fact) with the Ryzen 5 4500U, 2 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, Vega graphics, 256GB NVMe solid-state drive, and 1080p display. The Ryzen 5 4500U offers six cores, 2.3GHz base clock. 4.0GHz boost clock, 6 graphics cores for the Radeon (Vega) graphics, and 15 Watt default TDP.

Ryzen 7 4700U - Lenovo IdeaPad with the Ryzen 7 4700U with Vega graphics and having 2 x 8GB of RAM, 1080p display, 512GB NVMe SSD, and 1080p display for around $850 USD. The Ryzen 7 4700U enjoys 8 CPU cores, 2.0GHz base clock, 4.1GHz boost clock, 8MB L3 cache, 7 graphics cores for the Radeon (Vega) graphics, and a 15 Watt TDP overall.

Unfortunately I don't have any Ryzen 4800 series laptop for comparison with the laptop selection being limited due to generally having to buy the laptops under test for providing Linux coverage and benchmarks.

Each of these laptops were tested with Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS with all stable updates and also upgrading to the Linux 5.9 kernel for best support along with making use of Mesa 20.3-devel via the Oibaf PPA for the very latest hardware support and graphics.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite dozens of different benchmarks were run on these laptops with Ubuntu Linux. The CPU core temperature, CPU frequency, and CPU power consumption were all monitored during testing on a per-test basis as well. Unfortunately AMD's new amd_energy Linux driver for CPU package power consumption doesn't currently work for Renoir on Linux 5.9 thus it's just the package power consumption on the Intel laptops reported via their RAPL interfaces but a battery test comparison will be coming soon.

Additional Core i7 1165G7 Tiger Lake Linux benchmarks looking more closely at the Xe Graphics, Linux gaming, compiler comparisons, and much more will be published in the weeks ahead with this Dell XPS Tiger Lake laptop.


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