We’ve covered Tiger Lake-U slim laptops and today Intel is expanding that with the Tiger Lake-H CPUs made for enthusiasts and gaming laptops. The main highlight of the Tiger Lake-H platform is the true inception of 10nm Willow Cove as well as PCI-Express Gen4 on laptops.
11th-Gen Core H-Series Features
Other features also include the list below:
- 20 PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes with Intel® Rapid Storage Technology bootable in Raid 0 — and up to 44 total PCIe lanes that include 24 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes from a dedicated platform controller hub.
- Memory support up to DDR4-3200.
- Thunderbolt™ 4 with transfer speeds up to 40Gbps.
- Discrete Intel® Killer™ Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+).
- Dual Embedded Display Port integrated for power optimized companion display.
Built on Intel’s 10nm SuperFin Willow Cove architecture, the Tiger Lake-H CPUs featuring up to 19% performance improvement over last-gen. The key takeaway here is that both Rocket Lake on desktop and Tiger Lake-H share the same architecture but a different fabrication node with desktop still built on 14nm. This means that Tiger Lake-H is the true form of Intel’s Willow Cove core and head-to-head reviews against AMD’s Cezanne offering.
Intel’s Tiger Lake-H will also include PCIe Gen4 and will allow configuration of a single 16x GPU and a 4x Gen4 SSD or and 8x Gen4 GPU arrangement with a pair of 4x SSDs.

Tiger Lake-H will also feature Xe graphics-based Intel UHD graphics. The new CPUs will also bring in improved voltage control and will be tweaked to a granular level on the Core i9-11980HK.
The Core i9-11980HK will helm the Tiger Lake-H lineup as the flagship CPU featuring a max boost of 5Ghz on dual-core loads and a 4.5Ghz all-core boost. The CPU will be rated for 65W and is a 8-core/16-thread part.

Intel is claiming up to a 26% lead over the Ryzen 9 5900HX on gaming as well as a 21% improvement over last generation. There’s a 10W difference with the TGP of the RTX 3080 used for the comparison, giving Intel a small handicap either to make it look good or its still pumping some heat so partners are not able to allot more power to the GPU.
Intel also shares a Core i5-11400H performance comparison with the Ryzen 9 5900HS. The Core i5-11400HS is a 35W part but still a decent lead over the significantly more power Ryzen 9. Intel wants us to look at gaming numbers though as the Ryzen 9 will most likely mutilate the Tiger Lake i5 on content creation benchmarks.
Content Creation with Tiger Lake-H
Putting us back again with the Core i9-11980HK, Intel’s slides pits it against the Ryzen 9 5900HX in content creation workloads and we’re shown an overall average of 21% performance improvement against the AMD part. Not much is shared but Intel’s press deck details a couple of example of AI improvements that allows it to improve the content creation workflow on compatible applications.

The SKUs are listed above and we’ll see a pair of Core i9, a single Core i7 and a pair of i5. The major take here aside from the IPC improvement which led to Intel’s claims is the RAM support as well as UHD graphics based on Intel Xe.
Stay tuned to Back2Gaming for our performance analysis of Intel Tiger Lake-H laptops when we receive them.
For now you can check our latest laptop reviews of the current highest performing graphics design on a laptop, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro or Intel’s last-gen entry-level combo with an RTX 3060 for mobile with Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop.
Source: Intel Press Brief