Intel's new 10th Generation i7 processor in India

 

Intel 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7 review: Taking the fight to AMD's Ryzen CPUs

Intel's new 10th Gen i7 processors are found on many high-end laptops in India right now. Read our review to find out if they are worth investing in.

8/10

HIGHLIGHTS

• Intel's 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7 is found on many high end laptops in India.
• The processor brings four cores and 8 virtual threads.
• The processor is extremely power efficient and is rated at 15W TDP.

The last year or so has not been easy for Intel. Its once seemingly impenetrable line-up of laptop and CPU processors have now started to show signs of weakness. The problem hasn't necessarily been a drop-off, or stagnation in the performance of the company's silicons, but rather the fact that its primary competitor, AMD, has made significant architectural gains with its Ryzen lineup of mobile and desktop processors.

AMD's Ryzen processors have pushed Intel just that much harder, forcing the company to focus on improving the performance of its latest 10th Generation processor line-up of chipsets. While a lot of the headlines are dominated by the action seen in the enthusiast segment of the market, it cannot be ignored that Intel has devoted significant resources to come up with powerful 10th Gen Core i5 and i7 processors for both laptops and desktops.

Today have with us the Acer Swift 5 (SF514-54T) notebook that hides beneath its compact enclosure the mighty Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor. This 10th Generation Intel chip is currently available on a number of high-end laptops in India right now, making it one of the most talked-about chips found in the market right now. Read our review to find out if the Acer Swift 5, or other competing offerings with this processor is worth spending money on.

Intel 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7: Specifications and performance

Part of Intel’s Ice Lake architecture of CPUs, this is a chip that's made using the company's 10nm node. Compared to older Intel processors fabricated using 14nm processes, the new Ice Lake mobile CPUs offer better thermal efficiency and performance as they pack a greater number of transistors on a die that's similar in size to older variants.

Although the new 10th Gen line-up brings a number of processors, we're focusing on the Core i7-1065G7, which is a quad-core chip that's supplemented by Intel's in house Iris Plus Graphics on this particular Acer Swift 5 laptop. While we'll delve into the compute performance and even crunch a few numbers to understand the GPU's limits, we would overall try and keep things simple, to effectively answer the most important question -- are laptops powered by this processor worth investing in?

In terms of the numbers, this one is a 4 core chip with 2 virtual computing threads per core. Each core is rated to push clocks up to 3.9 GHz. The CPU supports 8MB of cache and DDR4 memory running at a maximum of 3200Mhz. This support for fast RAM helps the processor clock better scores on benchmarks and overall gives it that extra in games and other applications.

This particular chip is rated at 15W TDP making it quite effective when it comes to thermal performance. While we did not get the chance to bench the chip against a lot of other competing processors, we believe it would have finished among the top end of the table of modern mobile processors if had tested it against the likes of AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS and other Core i9 and i7 chips from Intel.

In our time with the Acer Swift 5 which comes with 16GB of DDR RAM running in dual channel mode, we found the 10th Gen i7-1065G7 CPU to perform quite well in day-to-day tasks. Web browsing, basic editing, and multimedia consumption is a breeze on the laptop. It doesn't hang, doesn't slow down, and generally keeps running like new despite being bogged down by the eventual bloat that generally brings the performance of a Windows PC down over time. However, what is most impressive is the fact that because of the extra computing power that this CPU packs, the laptop does handle heavy computing as well, with both photo and video editing also handled quite effectively by the CPU.

Intel 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7 review: Gaming

Although a lot of laptops being powered by the Core i7-1065G7 do bring with themselves external graphics from Nvidia, there are others that don't. Like the Acer Swift 5 model sent to us for review, these come with Intel's Iris Plus (G7) integrated graphics that as we found out is quite a capable GPU in itself. For on the go gaming, this onboard solution is quite interesting as it offers impressive performance at very little cost to the battery life.

Although it's not the most powerful mobile GPU out there, it can still hold its own when fighting against discreet GPUs from the likes of Nvidia. With its 64 graphics processing cores, the Iris Plus G7 provides superior performance to older generation onboard graphics solution from Intel and is good enough to run games such as Fifa 20 on medium-high graphics and above 1080p resolutions without seeing a significant drop-off in frame rate.

But still, we won't recommend the Iris Plus GPU to those looking for a laptop to play demanding games on. After all, it is a basic onboard graphics solution that promises performance to match the description. It is no match for gaming laptops, and as such is only good enough if you're looking for a laptop to run basic games, or maybe demanding games but at low-medium graphics levels.

Intel 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7 review: Worth investing in?

Well, the answer to this depends totally on the laptop you find this processor fitted in. With Asus' AMD Ryzen 4900HS powered Zephyrus G14 now retailing for around Rs 1 Lakh in India, it becomes difficult to recommend the Intel 10th Gen Core i7-1065G7 on a laptop that's retailing for a price similar to the Zephyrus G14. This is because this 8-core monster not only offers powerful computing performance but also a discreet GPU to power long gaming sessions.

However, what that laptop does not offer is the ultra-portability of i7-1065G7 powered laptops from the likes of Acer and even Asus. Our review unit which comes with a 14-inch screen weighs less than a KG, making it an extremely portable laptop. Add to that the fact that the i7-1065G7 offers impressive thermal efficiency, battery life, and even overall performance, making it an easy option to recommend to a lot of buyers who value these above all else in a laptop.