Intel Finally Catches AMD – Intel i9-11900H Tested vs Ryzen
I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited to see Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake CPUs. They are, in theory, going to bring strong competition to AMD’s Ryzen lineup meaning us gamers have more viable options. But, those aren’t here yet – what is, is this 11900H laptop CPU. It’s a 10 nm chip from Intel that while doesn’t include any ‘E cores’, is pretty fast and in some cases runs faster than anything team red has to offer. Let me run you through it, starting with a rundown of it’s specs.
The 11900H is still an 8 core, 16 thread chip that can boost up to 4.9GHz. It’s got 24MB of cache, supports up to 128GB of 3200 MT/s RAM and has a max TDP of 45W. It’s still got the same PL1 and PL2 levels for boosting, which in the “performance” mode is 107W for both, or in “Turbo” mode is 90W PL1 and 135W PL2. The ‘big’ advantage that these chips have over 5th gen Ryzen mobile is PCIe Gen 4 support – at least direct to the CPU. The chipset connections are still gen 3, but you have 20 total lanes direct from the CPU to play with meaning you can split it to say x8 for the GPU and 3×4 for 3 full speed gen 4 SSDs.
That’s all well and good, but how does it perform? Let’s take a look starting with Cinebench R20 single threaded. Both in its performance and turbo modes it’s the fastest chip on the grid. It’s hardly lightyears ahead, but it is between 3 and 5% faster than the fastest Ryzen chip I’ve had in. What it is lightyears ahead of is the fake i7, the 11370H quad core which is also a Tiger Lake chip like this one, as it runs almost 25% faster even on a single thread. It’s also around 30% faster than the last gen 10750H which is a really good sign as that’s just single threaded performance.
Moving onto the multi threaded results, that’s where it gets interesting. The 5900HX in the well cooled Zephyrus Duo holds a 100 point lead over the 11900H in turbo mode – that’s a really small lead at around 2% or close enough that something like ambient temperature could vary them both enough to trade places. What surprised me the most was the gap between the performance and turbo modes on this chip – 10% more performance in turbo. That’s significant. In performance mode, which I should add is much, much more usable thanks to the insane fan noise in turbo, the 11900H trades blows with the whole 8 core 5th gen Ryzen lineup. Both the 11900H and the 5th gen Ryzen chips blow the 10th gen Intel chips (and the 11370H) out the water though with a multi-thousand point lead.
Moving onto blender and the BMW scene you might start to notice a trend, one that’ll continue into the next few tests. The 5900HX in the Zephyrus Duo leads, this time by a more significant 8% margin, with the Turbo and performance results being only 1% apart, and on the whole closer to the 5th gen Ryzen pack. It’s still a shedload faster than the now last gen 10875H and 10750H to the order of 20 and 30%, and almost exactly twice as fast as the quad core 11370H “i7”.
Moving over to the Gooseberry scene, that trend I was talking about is even more clear. The 11900H is now in the mid-field, rather than leading the pack, and what’s worse the turbo result is actually slower than the performance mode result! The 5900HX in the Zephyrus Duo still holds a healthy lead, but now the 5900HX in the SCAR 15 and the 5900HS in the Zephyrus G15 are both ahead of the i9 by around 4%. What’s happening here is all to do with power and thermals.
In really short all core workloads, like Cinebench’s ~30 second render, the 11900H boosts well and is able to stay up on boost for enough of the render to give such impressive results. The catch is just how much power it draws to do that, and in a thin chassis like this that power can’t be dissipated fast enough in longer tests causing it to hit 95°c and thermal throttle. Even in turbo mode, which I’ll enable now just so you can hear how painfully loud it is, it never made it to it’s PL2 of 135W at least for more than a split second. The highest I recorded was 120W and even that wasn’t for all that long.
Even when you compare that to the peak power I saw from the 5900HX in the Zephyrus Duo at 100W, that’s still 20% more power for, in some cases, less performance and even in the best case it’s nowhere near 20% faster in the majority of results I’ve gathered. What’s even more insane is that Zephyrus Duo result is a complete outlier. Every other Ryzen 5000 series laptop chip I’ve tested draws more like 60W with some like the 5900HS in the Zephyrus G15 peaking at just 44W for remarkably similar performance. Even if you take the worst “normal” result from the Ryzen chips at 65W peak, that is almost half the power of this 11900H, or to put it the other way the 11900H peaks at almost double the power of a higher end Ryzen chip.
As you can see, for a longer render like the Gooseberry scene the clock speeds boost up at the start, holding on until the CPU hits 95°c then drops down hard – from around 4.4GHz at the peak to a constant 3.75GHz, and sits there at around 80°c and around 70W of power consumption.
Interestingly though, there are some significant performance gains to be had in some programs. Premiere offers a convincing lead over the Ryzen pack, especially on turbo mode. I can’t say I’d personally ever use it on turbo mode in Premiere unless I was wearing headphones but the performance is there. The gap closes in after effects as the performance mode result is central compared to the turbo result up at the top, although it’s back to leading by 7% in photoshop and is around 30% faster than the 10750H here too.
Moving onto the gaming results, I want to make it clear that you should not take these results as gospel. Because I don’t have access to any of the laptops I’ve previously tested, the results you are seeing weren’t run at the same time, with the same game or driver versions, at the same ambient temperatures or doing the exact same thing in game. I do my best to keep everything as similar as possible, but there are some variances here so please keep that in mind.
Now, starting with Watchdogs Legion at 1080p ultra settings, the RTX 3070 100W the 11900H is paired with does a decent job keeping up with even the RTX 3080 equipped machines. I’ve had some rather interesting performance differences in the past so it’s hard to read too much into this, but on the whole it’s doing a good job.
In Cyberpunk again at 1080p ultra settings it does well, this time actually topping the pack in turbo mode with a pretty convincing lead. I’m fairly confident in saying this chip is at least slightly faster for gaming than anything I’ve had in before, although specifically for Cyberpunk there has been at least one major patch and multiple driver updates since I’ve tested most if not all of the other results so that may play a role in this lead.
In CSGO though, the difference is clear. The 11900H and RTX 3070 is around 25% faster than even a 5900HX and RTX 3080, at 1080p on high settings. That’s a significant lead, and one that barring the external factors like ambient temperature and what happens in game, is something Intel will be very happy to see.
Microsoft Flight is also a significant lead, like really significant. It runs at around 50FPS compared to the next best at around 30FPS. Again this game has also seen a few patches that in other testing has made it more performant, but even factoring that in it’s still a healthy lead. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more laptops in to update all these results!
Finally in Fortnite the M16 is squarely mid-pack offering 117 FPS and 126 FPS in its performance and turbo modes respectively. That’s not bad, but I’ve had better albeit from generally higher end GPUs either the tier up or a higher TDP. Again it’s hard to read too far into this, but it’s interesting to see such impressive performance in some titles but more measured in others.
I think it’s pretty unquestionable that this 11900H is a faster CPU for gaming. Even based on the better single core performance alone it should offer a few percent more FPS than most others especially in the turbo mode. Again I’m not sure how often I’d enable the turbo mode thanks to the noise, and I should also add that the keyboard on this particular machine got unbearably hot while testing. The right side was hitting up to 55°c, and even the F key was too hot to touch at around 47°c. Cyberpunk was practically unplayable as you use F a whole lot and you have to hold it for a second to register an action rather than a quick tap. That would be a deal breaker for me personally.
As for the CPU for productivity, it’s clear it can perform well, but for anything more than short bursty workloads like Premiere, it ends up running too hot to offer any real performance advantage. On balance, I’d personally get a more mid-range Ryzen machine like the STRIX G15 rather than this as what performance you might lose in games is gained in lower power consumption and therefore thermals and noise, and is more balanced for productivity too as that’s an important factor for me. If you don’t mind the extra heat and gaming is your sole objective, definitely take a look at the newest 11th gen chips. Perhaps the 11700H instead as I’d imagine that’s a bit better balanced for power and thermals, but still.
-
TechteamGB Score
