Intel Core i7-11390H Tiger Lake Refresh CPU Impresses In Early Benchmark Reveal

Intel's Tiger Lake-H family of notebook processors has been divided into two two groups: some very exciting eight-core parts with 45-watt TDPs, and some slightly less exciting but still very fast 35-watt CPUs. Both of these product groups have shown best in class single-threaded performance for high-performance and gaming notebooks. It looks like a refresh might already be on the way, however, as unannounced CPUs pop-up in online benchmark databases.

Fresh from the Geekbench score database is an unannounced Core i7-11390H processor. The CPU showed up in a notebook marked NV4XMJ,MK,MH which maps to a whitebook made by Clevo and used by a whole host of boutique notebook builders. Oddly enough, however, that model was previously host to the Core i7-1195G7 and its 28-watt TDP rather than an H-family CPU. Being a quad-core, we believe this to be a 35-watt processor rather.

The performance turned in by the Core i7-11390H was quite good for a notebook CPU. It nearly hit 1,700 -- 1,695 to be exact -- in the single-threaded Geekbench 5 test, and mounted a cool 6,062 in the multi-threaded test. Tiger Lake originally launched with the Core i7-1185G7 in a 28-watt TDP. When we reviewed the MSI Prestige 14 EVO with that CPU, we only saw around 1,550 in the single-threaded test and just under 5,900 multi-threaded performance. From a single-threaded perspective, this presumably 35-watt CPU was around 10% faster. 


This performance is more in line with the Core i7-1195G7, which made its way into Geekbench shortly before its announcement. That processor also scored right at 1,700 in single-threaded performance and around 6,000 multi-threaded. Geekbench is a synthetic benchmark so the exact performance may not be terribly relevant, but hitting those high speeds is important in the public relations war. Intel seems to have finally caught up to the 2020 Mac mini with Apple's M1 processor, a comparison that becomes more and more fitting as Apple continues to stuff this SoC into bigger computers like the iMac. 

We don't think that these refreshed H-family Tiger Lake CPUs are all that far out. The previous benchmark leak happened just a few days before the announcement of the Core i7-1195G7, so we expect Intel's announcement of upgraded H processors to not be very far off. As always, stay tuned to HotHardware as we bring the latest in the world of CPUs as it happens.