Intel Core i7-10750H vs i7-9750H Review

Today we're taking a look at what's likely going to be the nigh popular of Intel's 10th generation H-series processors, the Core i7-10750H. This half-dozen-cadre processor is the successor to the very popular Core i7-8750H and Core i7-9750H, which are about the universal pick for gaming laptops in the $1,000 to $1,800 range, and oft take a pb function in productivity-focused 15-inch ultraportables as well.

This isn't the just Core i7 processor in Intel's Comet Lake line-up. There are a few other options including the new 8-core Cadre i7-10875H that we reviewed a few weeks ago, but judging by previous generations, anything above the 10750H will typically be restricted to premium options, while the Core i5s you see here – which amazingly are still quad cores – are destined for the most basic entry-level designs.

Going into this review though, there was one key question that I kept asking myself: is the Core i7-10750H actually any better than the 9750H or the 8750H that came earlier it? After all, they're all based on a similar Skylake-derivative architecture, built using the same 14nm technology, and all pack 6 cores within a default 45W ability envelope. Without any major enhancements to the underlying technology, can the third iteration of this processor actually offer anything new?

No dubiety, that'southward what we'll be finding out today with a comprehensive comparison of the 10750H to the 9750H and 8750H, forth with a wait at how information technology stacks up to AMD's newly minted competitor in this price range, the viii-core Ryzen 7 4800H. This review will exist focused on productivity performance and then nosotros'll tackle gaming in a separate article that we're preparing considering at that place are a few interesting things going on with this latest generation of GPUs equally well.

Let'south briefly return to the spec chart to take a look at the Core i7-10750H and what we are getting. The bones specs are half-dozen cores and twelve threads, a 45W default TDP and 12 MB of L3 cache, aforementioned as the terminal two generations.

What has increased is memory support, now up to DDR4-2933, too as clock speeds. The base remains at 2.6 GHz, all the same boost clocks have increased to v.0 GHz for unmarried-core Turbo with Thermal Velocity Heave, significant nosotros'll hitting that frequency when the processor is running at below 65C. At higher temperatures, which nigh laptops run at, that frequency will drib past 200 MHz to sit at a 4.eight GHz Turbo. That's still a 7% increase on the 4.5 GHz Turbo the Core i7-9750H provided.

All-cadre turbos have also increased, now at 4.3 GHz, upwards from four.0 GHz, however nosotros believe this is influenced to some caste past Thermal Velocity Boost. In exercise, we saw all-core turbos around the four.1 to 4.2 GHz mark on most occasions, and sustained frequencies are naturally much lower than this, don't expect your 10750H CPU to only sit at 4.3 GHz on all cores all the time.

Examination Setup: MSI GS66 Stealth

The test arrangement for today's review is the MSI GS66 Stealth. This awesome laptop came packing the i7-10750H along with an RTX 2060 discrete GPU configured at 80W. There's also 16GB of dual-aqueduct DDR4-2666 by default (which we swapped to DDR4-2933 to brand the most of the CPU), a 512GB SSD, and a 1080p 240Hz display which is pretty nice.

Nosotros're huge fans of the MSI GS Stealth range. Nosotros think they look great and this is no exception. Nosotros won't review this laptop in full today, but we can tell you it's got a very overnice chassis, great display, huge 99.9 Wh bombardment, and mostly decent keyboard. This remains one of my favorite ultraportables from a design and functionality standpoint.

In terms of performance and power limits we're non getting meridian hardware capabilities given the slim and light design. The CPU can easily run at the default 45W limit, simply tops out around 53W maximum with the Turbo modes. Nosotros've seen some thicker designs do upwardly to 70W or more. The GPU is fine sitting at 80W though, no concerns there.

The CPU simply topping out at 53W in the CoolerBoost mode is basically irrelevant though for this testing, every bit we run all CPUs using stock settings, then in this example for the Core i7-10750H that's a 45W long term PL1 power limit. The MSI GS66 was configured to use a huge 135W short term PL2 out of the box, however in practice we didn't see the CPU go over 70W very often. Still, this is a bit college than the 56-60W we normally saw with 9750H systems.

The reason why we use stock settings and similar power limits is so we can compare processor performance at a given power level. Different with desktops, power consumption is crucial in laptops: more than power hungry parts require larger coolers and therefore larger laptops. Comparing fries on an equivalent power level allows united states to see how they would perform in an equivalent type of blueprint. The more a CPU can exercise inside a certain power limit, the more efficient information technology is, and the more you tin exercise with a smaller, lighter design.

This is naturally i of the many challenges with laptop testing, it'southward quite hard to get apples-to-apples comparisons given the differences in configurations, so we effort our best to put everything on an fifty-fifty playing field. The post-obit performance charts contain averages from equivalent hardware configurations to provide a generalized look at performance from a given CPU. Y'all tin see here the full list of laptops nosotros tested.

One last quick note nigh undervolting before we caput to benchmark results. As we discussed in our Cadre i7-10875H review, more OEMs are locking down undervolting this generation, likely to foreclose Plundervolt exploits. This was the example on the MSI GS66 Stealth. You may re-enable undervolting through the advanced options in MSI's BIOS though.

Benchmarks

Let'southward get-go with a expect at Cinebench R20, a favorite for testing multi-threading although Intel likes to think it's pretty irrelevant. The Core i7-10750H isn't providing much of an improvement over the Core i7-9750H when we are looking at default 45W power limits. In the multi-thread test the new 10th-gen function is less than 2 pct faster -- margin of fault blazon of result -- while in single-thread we're seeing a small 3 percent operation increase.

Information technology'south not much better confronting the 8750H either: iv% faster in the multi-thread test, and 12% faster in the single-thread test thanks to a clock speed increase from a maximum of 4.1 GHz to 4.8-ish GHz. In both tests it'south easily browbeaten by the higher tier Core i7-10875H with eight cores, only it's crushed besides by the Ryzen 7 4800H, which sits in a similar tier. Ryzen is not only over 60 percent faster in multi-thread, it besides holds a 7% pb in single-core.

Non a lot is different in Cinebench R15, on this occasion the 10750H is really slower on average in the multi-thread test compared to the 9750H, only it nevertheless holds a atomic number 82 in single-thread. All of these margins are single-digit type stuff, so marginal alter amongst them.

In a longer-term workload like Handbrake, we don't meet much of an improvement comparing the 10750H to the 9750H. Ryzen holds an absolute lead over Intel'south most pop Core i7, finishing this x265 transcode over 50% faster.

Blender delivers almost identical results to Handbrake when testing Intel's current and last generation half dozen-cadre processors. Yous just aren't gaining anything substantial from this movement. Nosotros hateful, this isn't a surprise as information technology's basically the aforementioned silicon.

Lawmaking compilation was one of the best results we've seen for the 10750H. In this GCC compilation, which is a mixture of single and multi-threaded sections, the 10750H ended up 10 pct ahead of the 9750H a combination of higher boost and clock speeds in some situations. Even so it still easily loses to the Ryzen vii 4800H, which is faster for both multi and lightly threaded workloads in most cases.

Microsoft Excel was a workload where the 10750H concluded up a little bit behind the 9750H on average out of the laptops that we've tested. A few variances in heave behaviour volition be causing this. Equally Excel is generally multi-threaded, performance falls backside both the 10875H and 4800H by double digit margins.

In PCMark x'southward lighter workloads, the slight single-thread performance improvement does help out in some situations. We're looking at equivalent performance in the productivity exam to the 9750H, although it remains around 10 percent behind both the 10875H and 4800H here. In the Essentials exam, that clock speed bump helps evangelize 3% ameliorate performance, only again, information technology falls backside Intel'south faster viii-core model and the new Ryzen 7 from AMD.

7-Zip shows performance to be very similar between the 10750H, 9750H and 8750H, not much in information technology here. Every bit this examination is multi-threaded, performance is a tad backside Intel's 8-core 10875H, up to 25% slower, and information technology's also behind Ryzen 7 4800H.

MATLAB shows no existent performance gain for the 10750H over the 9750H, and like to other tests we've just been looking at, information technology's slower than 8 core CPU options past a double digit margin. Given the Ryzen 7 results, vi-cores at this toll indicate is looking a bit dated.

One of the more than pregnant victories for the 10750H is in Acrobat PDF exporting, which is a fully single threaded workload. With clock speeds 7% higher with the 10750H over the 9750H, and both CPUs beingness able to run at these clocks within the power limit on a single core, the 10750H was seven% faster in this test. This allows it to claim ane of the simply performance leads over the Ryzen 7 4800H that I saw.

In AES functioning, again we're not seeing much departure between the 9750H and 10750H, or even to the 10875H. That'southward considering this is a hardware accelerated part and it doesn't seem like in that location's been whatever gains hither at all, probably as the compages is the same. Cryptography is some other area where Ryzen is much faster in laptops, 35% faster when multi-threaded.

Photoshop is one of the rare workloads where the needle shifted marginally in favor of the new 10th-gen CPU, in Puget'south benchmark nosotros're seeing ix% college functioning with the same RTX 2060 GPU. This allowed information technology to friction match the Ryzen seven 4800H configuration with a lower tier GTX 1660 Ti, which on face value is reasonable until you lot realize it'southward outperformed by a cheaper Ryzen configuration.

DaVinci Resolve Studio using the Puget workload is some other rare example where our Core i7-10750H configuration was slower than our Core i7-9750H system with the aforementioned RTX 2060 GPU. It wasn't massively slower, but information technology was slower overall which is an odd result. Nevertheless, both CPU options roughshod behind the Ryzen vii 4800H which is typical of video encoding applications.

And finally we get to our set of Premiere workloads. For exporting, there'southward no real divergence between the 10750H and 9750H when paired with the aforementioned GPU, you lot're looking at margin of error type stuff using the latest Premiere beta version which adds hardware acceleration for Nvidia GPUs. Like with DaVinci Resolve, the Ryzen seven 4800H is a better selection hither as it can chew through the CPU limited parts of the encode faster.

Live Playback operation is as well quite like between most of these options, the Ryzen 7 4800H is marginally ahead but not past much. If you're similar usa and stick to purely software encoding for maximum quality, over again in that location's merely not much to exist gained between the 10750H and 9750H, we saw a 6% improvement here which is really on the higher side, but with 25% lower operation than a Ryzen 7 4800H configuration it just doesn't end up being that impressive overall.

And finally we have the Warp Stabilizer upshot, which is lightly threaded. No performance gains over the Cadre i7-9750H, and similar we've been talking virtually in seemingly every unmarried criterion throughout this video, it just can't continue upwards with the Ryzen seven 4800H in this exam. When running a single warp stabilizer example, the 4800H was 22% faster.

What Nosotros Learned

The main reason why we aren't getting improve performance with this generation is the uncomplicated fact that Intel has non inverse the architecture or manufacturing tech for years. When in that location are no IPC gains to be had, and minimal improvements to efficiency, y'all're stuck with most zero performance gains in a ability limited form gene like a laptop. And this is most obvious when viewing clock speeds.

In Cinebench R20, the 10750H performs most exactly like a Core i7-9750H, which itself performs similar a Core i7-8750H. Those two last generation processors clocked around 3.1 GHz long term across vi cores within the 45W power limit. The 10750H ends up clocking around 3.two GHz long term, and so a 100 MHz increase in this case. With that equating to a 3% clock speed gain, information technology's no surprise we often saw multi-cadre performance improvements in the 2-3 percent range, which is negligible.

Looking at the overall performance summary, in the best case scenario we're seeing a 10% proceeds in lightly or single-threaded apps, simply this does vary depending on the test and for the most part we'd say the processors are almost a match. And this carries through to looking at limited 8750H testing. Multi-core performance has only improved past a few percent in Cinebench, the major gains have come from raising the clock speed limit for unmarried-core.

Compared to Intel'southward other Cadre i7 CPU which offers 8 cores, the Cadre i7-10875H, the 10750H is universally slower as expected. At times information technology's around 10 percent slower in single-thread workloads, but can exist up around xx to 25 percentage slower in multi-thread. Given nigh college-end 10750H laptops do have a more expensive 10875H option or even something with the Core i9-10980HK, this is the sort of performance you're missing out on.

And then comparing the Cadre i7-10750H to the Ryzen 7 4800H, information technology's a fleck of a bloodbath for the Intel processor. With both CPUs limited to 45W, Ryzen is offering better multicore functioning and better unmarried-cadre operation in almost every instance. If you have productivity workloads that are more often than not multi-core, the functioning benefit Ryzen provides with viii Zen 2 cores on 7nm is very pregnant.

Our overall thoughts on the Cadre i7-10750H can be summarized neatly in a single word: unimpressive. Intel is offering the same operation as the last-generation i7-9750H with a few very small-scale improvements, which in effect is the aforementioned performance as the Core i7-8750H from 2 generations ago. For productivity performance, at that place is no reason to consider an upgrade.

The only way you'll be getting more functioning with a new Intel bit in this segment is if you buy a laptop that allows to run the CPU with a higher ability limit. If yous had a 45W laptop and can upgrade to something with enough cooling to allow 60W or 70W, you'll be facing a 15 to 20 percent improvement. But this isn't an actual functioning proceeds from the 10th-gen CPU, it's a performance gain from having a laptop with a amend cooler.

Considering Intel has kept offering two-year-one-time performance at the same price betoken, AMD has been able to swoop in and shake upwards the laptop marketplace with a much faster processor in this category. The Ryzen 7 4800H is, for the nigh part, double digit percentages faster with the aforementioned ability usage and this pb can exist 50% or higher when fed a workload that tin utilize all of its 8 cores.

This conversation can become a bit muddied when you factor in all the power limits and configurations that OEMs offer. But given nosotros've seen Intel still failing to beat AMD's 45W processor with a 90W 8-core pick.

The credible reality this generation is that any laptop using a Cadre i7-10750H could most likely be faster and better for productivity or creator workloads had information technology used a Ryzen seven 4800H instead. Even with this MSI GS66 Stealth, and we'll exist honest it's a very nice laptop, nonetheless it'south missing out on the l% productivity performance bump from Ryzen.

Or to await at information technology another way, in the portable H-series category, the MSI GS66 is easily beaten for productivity past the smaller and more than affordable Asus Zephyrus G14. The G14 is $300 cheaper, a 14-inch design instead of 15-inches and weighs 500 grams less. That's the real-world do good AMD is providing right at present, albeit in a limited number of systems.