Intel Core i9 11980HK Review: The Fastest Tiger Lake CPU

Today nosotros're taking a look at the Core i9-11980HK, the fastest processor Intel offers in their Tiger Lake H45 line-up. A few weeks back nosotros tested the new Core i7-11800H which did print with performance gains over Intel's previous-gen parts, withal we ultimately ended up with mixed feelings.

The i7-11800H couldn't outperform AMD's equivalent Ryzen 5000 parts in the bulk of productivity applications, and the mostly higher pricing of the Intel platform weakened its reward in gaming where Intel does well.

The Core i9-11980HK is the summit processor in Intel's mobile stack, so we want to find out how it performs when compared confronting a Ryzen 9 mobile chip or Intel's ain Core i7-11800H which is a more mainstream offering usually available in the same systems. How much has Intel been able to eek out of their best Tiger Lake 8-core silicon?

In this review we'll put particular focus on this comparison between the 11980HK and 11800H. Both CPUs are very close in their fundamental blueprint and specifications. Both are viii-core fries with 16 threads and 24 MB of L3 cache. Both have the same Intel Xe integrated graphics. The major difference is in clock speeds: the 11800H has a base frequency of 2.3 GHz and a maximum turbo clock of 4.vi GHz, the 11980HK has a base of operations of 2.half dozen GHz and a maximum turbo clock that hits 5.0 GHz, provided CPU cooling is adequate. This gives the Core i9 model a clock speed advantage of roughly 10 percent.

The other reward the 11980HK has is on the platform side. Although about specs are identical across Tiger Lake H45 processors: twenty lanes of PCIe 4.0 fastened to the CPU, Thunderbolt 4 support, DDR4-3200, 10nm SuperFin process node -- but being an HK model, the 11980HK also supports overclocking.

While all Intel H-series processors let to configure whatever power limit (including above the standard 45W even on locked parts), simply the 11980HK really allows you to modify the clock multiplier table and several other values in Intel XTU or other utilities. Typically though, this is simply relevant for the beefiest laptops as power and thermal limits are going to exist significant for nearly designs.

The test system for today'south benchmarking is the MSI GE76 Raider, a like laptop belonging to the same product family that nosotros looked at when testing the Core i9-10980HK.

Inside this laptop is the GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with 16GB of VRAM and a 135-155W power limit, and for our testing we are using 16GB of good quality dual channel DDR4-3200 retention, standardized across all H-series laptops we've tested.

This is a nice notebook, powering a 17-inch 1440p 165Hz display, which actually suits the GPU equally this sort of hardware has moved across 1080p resolutions in modern games. It's not the slimmest or lightest model, merely it's not meant to be. This is a operation-focused laptop that's still relatively portable, has a nice metal build quality, though I could take or go out the RGB light bar forth the front border.

Still this isn't a laptop review, this is a review of the Core 9-11980HK, then like all our previous laptop tests we have benchmarked this system ability normalized. What this means is we keep all boost beliefs stock, but use a long term power limit of 45W, the default for these processors.

This gives usa the ability to make apples-to-apples comparisons beyond unlike laptops, ignoring whatever OEM configurations or potential cooling/ability differences between models. As a result, information technology'due south a true test of the CPU's capabilities in comparison to others, not just a examination of how well a specific OEM can configure their system to use the nearly power.

Nosotros volition include some power scaling information later in the review, too, so you can run into how various chips perform at different power levels, which may be useful for your buying decision. On to the benchmarks!

Benchmarks

Get-go up is Cinebench R23. In this workload, the 11980HK performs reasonably well, offer a seven percent performance uplift over the Core i7-11800H. This makes the 11980HK more competitive with Ryzen, matching the performance of the Ryzen 7 5800H and falling backside the Ryzen 9 5900HX by 9 pct when looking at the same ability configuration.

The margin is downwards to but unmarried digits though, and we come across a substantial 28 percent performance uplift over the Core i9-10980HK from the previous generation in this heavy multi-threaded workload, a good sign for the efficiency improvements Intel have made here.

The single-thread functioning results in Cinebench R23 are strong for Intel, with some caveats.

The 11980HK is marginally faster than the Ryzen 9 5900HX in this exam, I recorded a 3 percent functioning difference which is close to the margin of error, just it is faster. It'southward also slightly faster than the Core i7-11800H, and 17 percent ahead of the 10980HK.

The gains seen here between the 11980HK and 11800H aren't as high as the differences in rated clock speeds would suggest. With the 11980HK being a 5.0 GHz part, and the 11800H coming in at 4.half dozen GHz, the Core i9 part should be effectually 8-nine percent faster, simply here it'south merely iii per centum faster. Why is that?

Well, that's considering the 11980HK rarely runs at its full 5.0 GHz clock speed, it can practice then in very short bursts, but it's rare to come across sustained performance sit at that clock speed. Cinebench R23 single thread takes multiple minutes to run, and so for about of that run the 11980HK sits at a lower clock speed.

In our long Handbrake CPU encoding examination, the 11980HK is slightly faster than the 11800H: 4% to be exact. This is large plenty to be outside the margin of error merely isn't a mind extraordinary departure between the 8-cadre parts and clearly over a sustained period the Cadre i9 processor is only slightly more efficient.

In the terminate, the Intel role ends up 15 percent behind the Ryzen nine 5900HX, and fifteen percent ahead of their previous generation model, the 10980HK.

We see similar results in the Blender Classroom workload. Here the 11980HK is viii percent faster than the 11800H, but xiv percent slower than the Ryzen 9 5900HX. Information technology's in these sorts of heavy multi-threaded workloads that have multiple minutes to consummate that the Ryzen processor has an efficiency advantage at 45W, and therefore a functioning reward likewise.

In Chromium code compilation which is another long term, heavily multithreaded workload, the 11980HK performs well: 6% faster than the 11800H, which allows information technology to sit down basically neck and neck with the 5900HX from AMD. With a 20 percent lead over the 10980HK, at that place are enough of reasons to upgrade to a new model laptop from Intel'southward direct prior generation, the gains here are quite large for a laptop form factor.

Equally we move into shorter tests, Intel's Tiger Lake H45 is conspicuously the way to get for Matlab this generation.

With a larger corporeality of L3 cache than AMD'south equivalents, at 24 MB vs 16 MB, the 11980HK outperforms the 5900HX past 10 percent in this workload. Combined with slap-up single thread performance, Intel does well in these sorts of tests.

Similar story in our Microsoft Excel number crunching test. This was one of the largest margins between the Core i9-11980HK and Core i7-11800H at effectually 19 percent, which appears to be a byproduct of higher clock speeds at a given power level, and the power for this MSI laptop to boost in terms of power.

The upshot is twenty percent college functioning than AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX in this workload.

For general everyday workloads as measured in PCMark 10'southward essentials test, there is no difference between Tiger Lake H45 and AMD's Ryzen 5000 line-up. So if you're simply interested in bones app loading, web browsing, video conferencing and such, either current generation office will suit you well.

We see similar results in PCMark 10's Applications workload. There isn't much separating the Ryzen nine 5900HX and Cadre i9-11980HK, which makes sense given what nosotros've seen in previous tests comparison lightly threaded performance.

In 7-Zip compression the clear winner is the Core i9-11980HK. The Core i9 office performs strong with a 14 per centum performance reward over the Ryzen nine 5900HX -- AMD's electric current generation parts are more in line with Intel's 10th-generation in this workload.

Withal that flips when looking at decompression. Now the 11980HK is 15 percent slower than the Ryzen 9 5900HX, and only a few percent ahead of the i7-11800H. AMD processors are very strong performers at decompression workloads and take been for some fourth dimension at present.

In Adobe Photoshop using the Puget Systems benchmark, the Cadre i9-11980HK performs well, slightly outperforming the Ryzen 9 5900HX, though realistically both systems provide a like level of performance.

While the 11980HK is a decent ten percent faster than the 11800H, matching the difference in clock speeds, the 11980HK isn't that much faster than the 10980HK. I believe a lot of that is down to this workload preferring frequency, where the 10th-gen Core i9 part actually has a modest advantage over 11th-gen in lightly threaded apps like this.

In DaVinci Resolve Studio 17 it's always a niggling catchy to compare across different laptops as the GPU has a meaning influence here. But what we can see is that with the same RTX 3080 Laptop GPU, the new 11980HK model does deliver better operation than the 10980HK, delivering a 13 pct college score. There is a GPU difference, only overall it seems Intel and AMD are very competitive in these sorts of workloads this generation.

Very similar result in the Adobe Premiere Export test from Puget Systems. 15% better performance comparing the 11980HK to the 10980HK allows the Intel arrangement to perform well and competitively with the Ryzen nine 5900HX, once again noting the difference in GPUs, pregnant we tin only talk generally near performance.

And finally nosotros've got Adobe After Effects. The combination of the 11980HK and RTX 3080 Laptop GPU is very powerful in this workload and delivers stiff performance, beating most of the other systems we've tested and delivering essentially higher results than the 10980HK.

Power Scaling

Ability scaling information shows how the Core i9-11980HK compares to other CPUs at a diversity of power levels. We were only able to push the MSI GE76 Raider upward to around 75W sustained, as the cooling solution in this motorcar is more focused on the GPU. Nevertheless we can see some clear trends hither...

The nuts are that at a given power level, the 11980HK is between 5 and ten percent ahead of the 11800H, with the margin shrinking at higher power levels, only still noticeable. The general power scaling behavior we observed with the 11800H also remains, in that scaling is much amend than AMD'south Ryzen 8 core processors at higher power levels, but overall the CPU is less efficient than the Ryzen nine 5900HX at lower TDPs.

In the real world, this means that laptops with bigger, beefier coolers will run into a smaller functioning margin betwixt the 5900HX and 11980HK, and somewhere around 85 to 95W I would await both to be roughly equal. Still, in slimmer and lighter systems, and even in standard size gaming laptops, AMD holds the edge. Also, the college the ability level, the further away the 11980HK pulls from the 10980HK.

Gaming Benchmarks

Now let'south await at some gaming. Nosotros'll be focusing on 1080p tests with the display connected to the CPU's integrated graphics, using technologies like Nvidia Optimus. This gives us the near CPU-limited results, but is still a realistic apply case for most laptops.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we run into a operation regression comparing the 11980HK to the 10980HK in the same laptop with the aforementioned GPU. The new 11th-gen model is v percentage slower, and sits with identical performance to the 11800H that we benchmarked earlier with the RTX 3070 Laptop GPU inside. This is a petty disappointing but not a total surprise.

Still for the well-nigh part this is non the kind of upshot you'll see...

In Borderlands 3, the 11980HK is notably faster, especially in i per centum lows, where the new model delivers 15 percent higher results that are more in line with AMD's processors. Average frame rates have also increased by iv per centum gen-on-gen.

In Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, which tends to be relatively single threaded, the 11980HK enjoys an 8 percent performance uplift over the 10980HK on boilerplate using the same RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. This once again makes it neck and cervix with the Ryzen ix 5900HX in a criterion that is CPU limited.

In Rainbow 6 Siege, Intel processors have a clear reward over AMD, delivering higher frame rates than the Ryzen 9 5900HX. The 11980HK is 10 percent faster than the 10980HK in this test when using the same GPU, a good issue for Intel'southward latest generation office.

In that location are plenty of times where yous'll be primarily GPU limited on a gaming laptop, fifty-fifty when playing at 1080p. Command is one of those examples, where there is no difference in performance between the two configurations.

If you are going to be playing these sorts of titles, or playing generally at a higher resolution like 1440p, the CPU doesn't matter too much when buying in the Core i7 or Ryzen 7 tiers and above.

Death Stranding is another solid result for the Core i9-11980HK and its performance uplift over the Core i9-10980HK, we're looking at a x percent divergence here which is on the higher side for margins that I've seen so far.

Rounding things out we take the Hitman 3 Dartmoor benchmark. I was perhaps expecting a larger performance delta betwixt 11th and 10th gen systems in what is a very CPU heavy game, but it turns out the difference is only iv percentage in favor of the new 11980HK. That keeps is in the glut of modern laptops processors along with the 5900HX and 11800H.

Functioning Comparisons

In a head to head comparison looking at the MSI GE76 with the RTX 3080 and either the Core i9-11980HK or Core i9-10980HK, on average at 1080p the newer 11th-gen model is merely 3% faster across a eighteen exam sample.

Cadre i9-11980HK vs. Core i9-10980HK

That's pretty negligible and information technology's disappointing to see a functioning regression in a scattering of titles. However, this is counterbalanced by a performance gain of vii% or higher in six of the titles, and then it will depend on the exact games you lot are playing to benefit from the IPC uplift with the new Tiger Lake processors, or whether clock speeds are more relevant, in which instance last generation models will have an advantage.

However in productivity workloads, the 11980HK is substantially faster than the 10980HK. In heavily multi-threaded tests, the new 11th-gen model is upward to xxx percent faster at 45W, and that figure will grow at higher power levels.

This goes along with single-thread performance gains of around 15 percent, which is the biggest bound Intel has made in the H-series for some time now.

Core i9-11980HK vs. Core i7-11800H

In dissimilarity, the difference betwixt the 11980HK and the model a few rungs below it, the Core i7-11800H, is small. In multi-threaded workloads nosotros generally saw just single digit gains, with some outlier tests pushing over into the double digit realm.

And then for single or lightly threaded tests, at that place isn't much of a departure, particularly in longer term single threaded tests, as the 11980HK can only hitting five GHz in brusk bursts.

Core i9-11980HK vs. Ryzen 9 5900HX

When information technology comes to comparing Intel vs AMD, we have the battle of the Core i9-11980HK and Ryzen 9 5900HX. AMD has an even higher-tier CPU, the Ryzen 9 5980HX, just that fleck seems rare and nosotros haven't been able to examination it yet. In whatsoever case, the results are mixed.

In longer term multi-thread workloads, AMD has a clear reward, with the 11980HK falling upward to 15 percent backside. Even so the 11980HK is faster in other workloads, belongings a small-scale advantage in single-threaded workloads, and a few edge case wins in other tests like Matlab and Excel which are cache heavy.

The average results of all of these numbers shows the 11980HK and 5900HX neck and neck, only it volition come up downwards to what tasks yous mostly perform on your laptop equally to which CPU is the more powerful pick.

What Nosotros Learned

Overall the Core i9-11980HK doesn't change much of what nosotros know nearly Intel's Tiger Lake H45 processors. With minor clock speed gains over the Cadre i7 model, the 11980HK is but slightly faster than the Cadre i7-11800H in the majority of productivity workloads -- typically that margin is five to 10%.

This suggests that 11980HK CPUs are better binned and more than efficient than lower tier eight-cadre CPUs, which is neat for those that desire the absolute fastest Tiger Lake chip you tin get. Merely the margin isn't large enough to significantly alter Intel's competitiveness in high functioning productivity or gaming laptops.

The proficient news is that Intel is offer a substantial upgrade for owners of tenth-gen laptops (or older) in productivity tasks. The 11980HK is at least double digit percentages faster than the 10980HK in almost every workload, with the heaviest single threaded applications seeing 30 per centum gains.

We're no longer in the era of minor Skylake iterations year after year, this is a full architectural overhaul on a new 10nm SuperFin process node with plenty of benefits in every surface area.

Exterior of that though, it'south difficult to get excited about the 11980HK. It's competitive with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX to some degree, but loses in multi-threaded workloads where information technology's clear Zen 3 is more efficient. Intel appears nigh competitive in gaming when comparison Core i9 to Ryzen ix, but fifty-fifty so we've yet to meet groundbreaking differences where the GPU often plays a much more important function.

The Core i9 11980HK besides suffers from product cannibalization. I just don't see a compelling reason to buy an 11980HK laptop when the 11800H exists and offers 95% of its performance, especially when the Core i9 CPU is unremarkably a $300+ selection in otherwise identical laptops.

The value suggestion is non great when when you compare Core i9 11980HK laptops to Ryzen 9 5900HX laptops with similar GPUs either. Typically, the AMD configuration is available for $500 or less in some circumstances, which puts the value firmly in AMD'due south courtroom at the moment.

With the two platforms delivering similar operation on the general balance, productivity favoring AMD and gaming favoring Intel, we don't recall the sizable price difference is even close to justified.

The simply remaining point to discuss is Intel's platform advantage, which is nonetheless relevant to some degree today. The 11980HK offers PCIe 4.0 support and Thunderbolt four, the latter of which may be a key selling betoken to some. Intel CPUs are also found in a wider variety of laptops and with better availability.

At the end of the twenty-four hours though, in this laptop generation we'd strongly recommend you focus primarily on Cadre i7 or Ryzen 7 offerings where summit performance and value lies for most buyers.