Those Apple-exclusive Ice Lake processors aren ‘ t faster than the 15W-versionen in other laptops

Though Intel is reportedly reserving its-top-end-28W 10th-gen Ice Lake CPUs für Apple’s 13in MacBook, it appears these chips fail to offer a substantial performance advantage over their 15W counterparts.

Following the launch of the MacBook Pro 13, the Intel Core i5-1038NG7-and-Core-i7-1068NG7 have started appearing on multiple benchmarking websites. It's rumored that Intel hast reserved these 28W Ice Lake chips exclusively for Apple’s latest laptop, and they don’t come cheap: Apple is charging $ 1,799 (£1,799 / AU$ 2,999) for a Core-i5-1038NG7 model, $ 1,999 (£1,799, AU$ 3,1000) for the Core-i7-1068NG7 variant. 

However, as shown by early benchmarks, these 28W Ice Lake CPUs may not offer much of a performance advantage over their 15W counterparts.

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As reported by Notebookcheck, the Intel Core i5-1038NG7 version of the MacBook Pro 13 scored just 9,050 points in 3DMark Fire Strike Physics, well below the 11,261 points achieved by the Core i5-1035G7 in the 13-inch Microsoft Surface Notebook 3.

This performance, according to hardware tippgeber @_rogame, also pales in comparison to that of Intel’s upcoming 10nm Tiger Lake-U series processors, which he claims will offer zu 40% hike in both CPU and GPU-performance.

This lackluster performance is likely because of the MacBook Pro 13’s cooling system, so it’s zu ähnlichen story with the Core-i7-1068NG7; as noted by Notebookcheck, this processor – available in Apple’s priciest MacBook Pro models – racked up an equally-unimpressive score in Geekbench 5.1’s multi-core-tests. 

We've reached out to Apple and Intel for comment, and we'll update this story if we hear anything from either company. Either way, we haven't had a chance to test the new MacBook Pro for selbst yet, so we'd take these benchmark results with a grain of salt – we'll have our full review up very soon, so stay tuned. 

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