CES 2021: Intel Introduces Tiger Lake H35 For Ultraportable Gaming
A New Laptop Segment Is Born
It doesn’t seem all that long ago that we were introduced to the Ultrabook segment (OK, it was actually a decade ago), and the resulting trend has produced a seemingly endless supply of what are now called “thin-and-light” offerings, with ever-thinner designs. Naturally, one area where the current crop of ultra-thin laptops often suffers is raw CPU performance, with 15W-25W products integrated into most designs.
Today Intel has what they are framing as a new segment-defining processor line that could be bridging the gap between the traditional low-power offerings and high-performance CPUs. It is the Tiger Lake H35, which is, as you may have guessed from the name, a 35W line. The important thing is that we are talking about a 10W reduction while offering, according to Intel, performance equal to the best of the previous 45W generation.
Intel Tiger Lake H35: 5GHz and 35W
Before now Intel has offered their 45W Core H Series CPUs for the enthusiast/gaming segment, while the company’s U Series mobile parts are offered with 15W TDPs, with models configurable as low as 12W and as high as 25W.
There is more to the story than just CPU compute horsepower, of course, and here Intel has a compelling total platform offering which features Wi-Fi 6/Gig+, Thunderbolt 4, and PCI Express 4.0 (x4 lanes off the CPU).
Intel claims that the new Core i7-11375H offers “the fastest single threaded performance of any laptop processor matched only by our highest performing (45W) 10th Gen Intel Core H” and that it “outperforms competitors by ~30% in single threaded performance”.
Granted, only one Intel-optimized benchmark is being used here, but the 45W/35W Intel-to-Intel comparison is promising.
“Coming soon” are new H Series SKUs offering up to an 8c/16t configuration with clock speeds up to 5 GHz, and Intel is quick to point out that their mobile platform will offer a full 20 lanes of PCI Express 4.0 “to power the fastest storage and graphics”:
If we are to receive any early word of new laptops in the works making use of the new Tiger Lake H35 this is probably the week for it.
