Skip to main content

Intel’s concerns about AMD CPU performance, laptop battery life raise eyebrows

 

Intel’s attempt to one-up AMD may have backfired. Intel suggested in a recent presentation that it could be very concerned about the performance of AMD CPUs on certain laptops. Intel’s slides highlight what it claims are notable performance differences when both AMD and Intel laptops are powered by battery, rather than plugged in at the wall. While Intel claims victory, the results and the methodology are dubious.

Recommended Videos

Despite holding ground with recent advancements like Iris Xe graphics, the presentation suggests that AMD’s CPUs could offer better battery life in laptops when compared to Intel’s but at the cost of CPU performance. More specifically, Intel claims that AMD’s CPUs drop their performance by about 40% to 50% versus its own, which it claims drop just 8% when only powered via battery.

^

The core conclusion is that in benchmarking without AC power, Intel’s chipsets perform better. Intel also claims that AMD’s CPUs take 7 to 10 seconds to engage in a turbo mode, which allows for performance loss on the battery. Intel’s own systems, meanwhile, are able to do this much faster, in line with how most people use their laptops, it suggests.

As ExtremeTech argues, however, Intel’s methodology in all these tests is flawed, and its conclusions heavily biased. By averaging results, it disregards instances where the AMD CPU pulls ahead in benchmark results and draws a very broad suggestion that battery results are the be-all and end-all of laptop performance metrics. It also fails to mention that manufacturers set many of the parameters of laptop power draw and performance, and specifically chose to test on Lenovo AMD-powered laptops, while looking at a much greater array of Intel systems.

Again, Intel could be purposely skewing these results to make AMD look bad and reignite the AMD versus Intel debate. Its own portfolio is also much larger than AMD’s, with its chips being found in more laptops. Though Intel holds its own in onboard GPU gaming, AMD is pulling ahead in many key areas in the mobile space. Considering it just dominated Intel on desktop with its Ryzen 5000 CPUs, it appears Intel is rather worried it could do the same on laptops.

Arif Bacchus
Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…
Intel announces sudden departure of CEO amid financial turmoil
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger holding a chip.

Intel has announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired. The executive, who first joined Intel in 1979 at 18 years old, is being replaced by David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Holthaus and Zinsner will serve as interim co-CEOs while the board of directors works "diligently and expeditiously" to find a successor.

Gelsinger became CEO in early 2021. At the time, Intel was struggling to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the desktop market, as well as push a more ambitious manufacturing timeline to catch up with foreign chipmakers like TSMC. Under Gelsinger's leadership, the company made some big strides. Intel's 12th generation of processors marked a significant turning point in the company's desktop processors, and an aggressive foundry roadmap has pushed smaller nodes out of U.S.-based plants.

Read more
Everyone hates this AMD CPU, but I still use it in my PC
A small form factor build inside the Fractal Terra.

Gamers Nexus called it a "wasted opportunity." Hardware Unboxed declared it a "flop." Even in our own Ryzen 7 9700X review, I said the CPU doesn't have "enough meat on the bone to justify an upgrade." So, why does the Ryzen 7 9700X top the list of the best processors? And more importantly, why am I using one in my personal PC?

I'll do my best to answer these forced questions. The disappointment in the Ryzen 7 9700X isn't truly universal -- no opinions about PC hardware are -- but there's no doubt that it's the outcast in AMD's lineup of Ryzen 9000 CPUs. It's not great for gaming in the face of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and you can save $50 to $70 with the Ryzen 7 7700X while getting largely similar productivity performance. But AMD's trusty little Zen 5 octa-core is still at the heart of my high-end gaming PC, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
A flexible little devil

Read more
AMD Ryzen AI claimed to offer ‘up to 75% faster gaming’ than Intel
A render of the new Ryzen AI 300 chip on a gradient background.

AMD has just unveiled some internal benchmarks of its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. Although it's been a few months since the release of the Ryzen AI 300 series, AMD now compares its CPU to Intel's Lunar Lake, and the benchmarks are highly favorable for AMD's best processor for thin-and-light laptops. Let's check them out.

For starters, AMD compared the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 to the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. The AMD CPU comes with 12 cores (four Zen 5 and eight Zen 5c cores) and 24 threads, as well as 36MB of combined cache. The maximum clock speed tops out at 5.1GHz, and the CPU offers a configurable thermal design power (TDP) ranging from 15 watts to 54W. Meanwhile, the Intel chip sports eight cores (four performance cores and four efficiency cores), eight threads, a max frequency of 4.8GHz, 12MB of cache, and a TDP ranging from 17W to 37W. Both come with a neural processing unit (NPU), and AMD scores a win here too, as its NPU provides 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS), while Intel's sits at 47 TOPS. It's a small difference, though.

Read more