Back in June we reviewed the ASUS Zenbook 13 which came with a USB-C DAC Dongle for headphones and we had a lot of things to talk about – now the very same laptop has been refreshed with the new lineup of Intel 11th Generation Tiger Lake processor and ASUS announced the refresh for both the Vivobook and Zenbook 13. ASUS Malaysia graced us with the 11th Generation i7-1165G7 variant of the Zenbook 13 and we are going to talk about that. Solely on the performance only. That said, if you do want to learn more about the rest about the laptop – you can click here to read that.

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Specification

The only thing that changed with the Zenbook 13 is the processor and the GPU which is pretty much the main highlight of the new Zenbook 13:

  • Intel Core i7-1165G7 Processor
  • Intel Iris Xe Graphics
  • 8GB DDR4 RAM (Soldered)
  • 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Tiger Lake Processor

Before we jump into the performance and the comparison, let us talk about the new Tiger Lake processor. This is the new processor from Intel that is said to offer better performance than AMD’s own lineup of Mobile Series processor. We are very sure that looking at the lineup you are confused and this time around we have to admit that Intel’s naming scheme and the layout of the processors are not looking great with a lot of confusing titles and differentiating from each other. So, we are going to only talk about the 2 i7 Processors in the table.

The Zenbook 13 comes with the 1165G7 variant rather than the 1185G7 and as you can notice the difference – the 1185G7 has a marginally better base clock speed, maximum single and all core turbo frequency. As for the rest it is pretty much the same 4 Core 8 thread processor under the hood. Intel did not go for a much efficient process, and they are sticking with the same 10nm Process which we have seen on the 10th Generation processor. For some odd reason, Intel decided to not disclose the exact TDP these processors run on and that actually brought up a huge challenge which we will talk a little later but now let’s talk about the performance leap in comparison to the 1065G7.

Performance

In comparison with Intel 10th Generation Core i7-1065G7

While this may not be the year that Intel finally jumps to a much efficient process for their processors, they sure have done some things interesting in the performance department – that, the 11th generation processor is miles better. To prove that, we ran the following benchmarks – Cinebench R20, Blender BMW Render, PC MARK and 3DMARK. That said let us take a look at the CPU intensive benchmark.

The scores on both the Blender and Cinebench R20 are miles better in comparison with the 10th gen Intel Core i7 Processor. In single core performance, the 11th Gen has 185 points higher and in multicore performance it has 618 points higher. Then in Blender, the new processor managed to shave off 4 minutes and ended the whole render in 11 minutes versus the 15 minutes on the 10th Gen. This gives an idea on how much improvement the performance is between both the 10th and the 11th Generation.

It doesn’t end there – in 3DMARK Time Spy, you will notice a higher score and this is all possible to the new Intel Iris Xe Graphics that’s running under the hood – which we will talk about it in another video and article. Finally, in the PCMARK 10 Extended, it has 1122 points difference. From these synthetic benchmark, we can definitely tell that the new 11th Generation processors are here to bring some heat to the competition with better performance and while it still may look like they are miles better than the 10th Generation series, comparing with the “imitators” as Intel likes to call them, AMD still gets away with a much better processor architecture (7nm TSMC Process) and a much efficient power draw.

And speaking of the power draw, the folks over at Tech Critter brought to light that the recently announced Vivobook with the very same processor behaves oddly and has different power draw despite the same processor and driver. During our test with the Zenbook 13, we realized that this device hovers in at 18-20W which may seem okay at first but until you realize that the Vivobook runs at 28W and you can game better, makes us wonder about what’s going on. But for what its worth, its interesting to see that Intel is getting their things together to put up a good lineup of processors. Don’t forget though, that the Intel Iris Xe has some potential game changing moves to it and we want to explore more but in order for that to happen – make sure to stay tuned to us via FB or join our Telegram Group.

Conclusion

The whole question right now is this – should I go for the 10th Generation or the 11th Generation ASUS Zenbook 13? Now either way, which ever laptop that you go for – the experience is going to be pretty much the same but one thing to remember is that, the Iris Xe on the 11th Gen is much more appealing as compared to the 10th Gen Intel UHD Graphics that has inferior performance. Plus, the extra boost performance makes the 11th Generation Intel Laptop finally a good choice to recommend.

Until we see what the contenders has to offer with their new processors, this is it.