Intel Core i5-L16G7, disappointing single core performance

Intel, with the new Lakefield processor, intends to offer on the market a chip with a particularly low energy consumption - TDP of only 7 W - and suitable for use in very thin devices and without a dissipation system with fan, such as Microsoft Surface Neo or Samsung Galaxy Book S. The CPU, for this reason, is proposed as an alternative to ARM processors, of which it also shares the structure, in which fast cores are combined with slower, but more efficient ones.

In fact, the processor Lakefield Core i5-L16G7 combines a Sunny Cove core (with frequency up to 3.0 GHz), also used on Ice Lake U CPUs, with four Tremont cores (with maximum frequency of 1.8 GHz). There is not even an integrated GPU: it is the Iris Plus Graphics G7 with 64 processing units but with a clock limited to 500 MHz. The SoC was created with Intel Hybrid and Foveros 3D technologies, which allow manufacturers to stack multiple dies logical and memory one on top of the other. This saves space and reduces latency between dies, bringing undoubted advantages to low-power and small-sized devices.

Notebook Check colleagues have recently had the opportunity to test the Samsung Book S by pressing the new processor from the Santa Clara company, but the results have been rather disappointing. As you can see from the graphs below, Lakefield's single-threaded performance has been 67% lower than Amber Lake, despite information previously released by Intel. This is due to the fact that the chip did not run at the maximum expected frequency of 3.0 Ghz, but at about 2.4 GHz.

in Spite of this, considering the low consumption, the performance, however, remain interesting, but definitely still a need for tuning. Pretty good graphics, can be faster by about 23% compared to the Acer Swift 7, laptop equipped with a CPU Amber Lake, at least according to the test FireStrike in 3D Mark. It will be interesting to see if the devices out soon with the same processor will offer better performance and reach the frequency of 3 GHz so much boasted of by the parent.

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