Intel launches 11th-gen Tiger Lake-H CPUs for gaming notebooks

Intel’s latest processors for gaming PCs trim clock speeds a bit, but offer what Intel says are substantial performance improvements and lower power use.

- MARK HACHMAN

Just a few short months after Intel launched the 11th-gen Core H35series microprocessors for mobile gaming, Intel is at it again: On Tuesday, Intel officially launched the 11th-gen Core Tiger Lake H-series processors for mainstream and gaming laptops.

The product line includes five new processors, including the premium unlocked Core i9-11980HK, the Core i7-11800H, and a pair of Core i5 processors. Quad-core processors have disappeared from the lineup. Instead, the new chips include hyperthreaded six-core and eight-core processors, offering double the cores of the 11th-gen Tiger Lake cores Intel launched in September (go. pcworld.com/11gn).

Versus last year’s 10th-gen Core mobile gaming chips (go.pcworld.com/cmtl), base core clock frequencies are slightly up across the board. The maximum single-core boost clock has dipped, though—possibly a black mark for gamers. However, Intel is once again publishing its all-core turbo speeds, and they’re substantial. Supported memory speeds have climbed from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200. Power has dropped, too: Virtually all of the new processors are rated at 35W rather than 45W. Overall, Intel claims that the Tiger Lake-H platform offers three times the platform bandwidth of its predecessor, with a mix of 20 PCI Express 4.0 and 24 PCI Express 3.0 lanes. Oh, and integrated graphics have returned, too.