AMD vs Intel - Don’t Make a Mistake By Austin Evans

- AMD is winning. So not too long ago, AMD was really relegated to the bargain bin of laptops. However now, if you wanna buy a high end laptop, Team Red have some of the best options out there. So when HP reached out and wanted to sponsor a video on their brand new Ryzen Mobile 4000 Series Laptops, it seemed like the perfect time to explore exactly how in a matter of just a couple of years, AMD were able to leapfrog Intel not only the desktop side, but even on the laptop front. Now of course this video is sponsored by HP, but that sponsorship has no bearing on the facts and how we actually got to this point. So for many years, Intel were absolutely dominant.

Intel would bring out a brand new generation of processors, that would shrink the process node to improve that performance and that efficiency as well as redesign their course, to give you more and more performance. And this is something that we saw for almost a decade straight, up until just a little while ago. And especially at the end of that kind of run, of just complete and total dominance. AMD were in rough shape. They had some okay desktop chips, but on the laptop side, I mean, they really weren't what you would find in the budget systems and not much more beyond that.

Thankfully AMD didn't waste their time wandering in the wilderness. So back in 2006, they made a very smart decision by purchasing ATI. The graphics company, therefore giving us AMD radeon graphics as a major counterpoint to the AMD CPU side of the business. Then, there are a few reasons for this. One of which was to actually sell an APU, which was especially for laptops, a huge deal.

Now what this meant was that they could sell you a single chip that would have not only your AMD CPU cores, but also AMD graphics built into one. Which will you major advantages in not only performance, but also in power efficiency. Now they were certainly not the only company to think about something like this. So Intel had had integrated graphics for a long time. However, it's only been very recently that they actually put major effort into making those graphics better.

And even in the dark days where AMD was well behind in most categories, at the very least, they did it have better graphics than Intel, generally speaking. However, it wasn't until a little ace up the sleeve called Zen came around, that they really had all the seeds and all the things they needed to potentially catch up and ultimately they absolutely did. The advent of Zen, the CPU core inside of a Ryzen processor, was a huge step forward. Essentially, AMD totally jettisoned all of their old school design of their previous CPUs, which put... Frankly just were not competitive in favor of a much more modern processor that had a lot more performance.

But at the same time that they were making a huge step forward, they had a massive stroke of luck. Intel, well Intel started running into some problems. While AMD were able to deliver their Ryzen processors, the 14 nanometer, then 12 and now seven, unfortunately Intel were stuck on 14 nanometer for a very long time. And that older process node simply held everything back. Which leads us to today, where we have hit the very rare time in the PC space, where not only are AMD and Intel competitive, but are a lot of different ways, AMD actually has a major advantage right now.

So since I have a pretty wide variety of a Ryzen powered laptops, thanks to HP, I figured it's a perfect time to really explore just how far AMD has come. So on the AMD side, I have the HP EliteBook 845, which has the high-end Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U, which features a full eight cores and 16 threads inside the 15 watt form factor as well as I have the HP ProBook 445, which also has eight cores but this is with the Ryzen 7 4700U. Over on the Intel side, they actually have recently announced their 11th generation mobile processors. However, as we're recording this video, they're still a little ways out from actually being released. So we'll have to wait and see exactly how they've stack up.

But for now I have a couple of 10th gen laptops available. First of all, I have their slightly older school style, skylight based Core i7-10810U, which actually packs a full six cores and a 15 watt form factor. However, the graphics as you'll see shortly are definitely of the older school variety. On the other hand, we have a Core i7-1065G7 powered laptop, and this has four cores of their new Sunny Cove, 10 nanometer based chip. However, while it does it better GPU, as you'll see it is down on CPU compared to everything else here in it's comparison.

So it's a little bit of a not mixed up. I don't think that's the best way of putting it, but it's a little bit more fragmented I suppose, on the Intel side. Because 10th gen doesn't just mean 10th gen at the moment, they're two very different families of CPUs. The ones that end in U are the older school and the ones that end in G, either G3, G5 or G7, are the newer 10 nanometer chips, but they're actually as you'll see shortly have their own pros and cons. So running through the benchmarks, you can see that AMD pretty much take a clean victory.

So on the CPU front, they have a little bit of an advantage on the single threaded side, but specifically because they just have so many more cores, and that same TDP, they're able to really take advantage of multi threading applications, such as video editing, rendering, anything like that. You're going to see an advantage on the AMD side. Now on the graphic side, it's a little bit more complicated. So, the older school Intel, the 10810U is very much sort of falling behind here. Now the latest generation Intel 10th gen graphics are actually pretty decent.

But even those pretty decent graphics, can't quite hold a candle to what AMD are able to have on their Ryzen processors. So yeah, when you look at performance, it is very clear that AMD is not only just caught up but they've actually taken a pretty major step forward. The Book, I am a huge fan of the speeds and feeds. However, great silicone is nothing if you don't put it in great hardware. So that's where HP's brand new AMD powered lineup really comes in.

Unlike in previous years, AMD has decided for what I assume are a lot of the reasons I've just said over to heavily, heavily invest in AMD options up and down their lineup this year. Now I will say that these are very much designed for small businesses and enterprise customers, which means a lot of these laptops have features that you just simply don't normally see. For example, take the HP EliteBook 845 G7. Now not only can you outfit it with the top of the range Ryzen 7 PRO processors, but you also have features such as HP Sure View available. So with a single press of a button, I can not only sort of knock out any kind of peeping eyes, if someone wants to see what I'm doing on my laptop, but then all I have to do is tap it again and I have full view of my laptop.

Especially helpful if you're on like an airplane seat or something. Although unfortunately it's probably not too common at the very second. You've also got a redesigned keyboard, which features a cursor knob as well as a programmable key to launch whatever app you'd like. You also do have, not only facial recognition support but also a fingerprint sensor through Windows Hello, and a good selection of ports. Not only a couple of USB-A ports, but also two USB-C, as well as a full site of an HDMI.

And of course, one of the advantages of these new Ryzen processors is that they are very power-efficient. So you can get up to 26 hours of battery life on this guy and when it is time to top off, 30 minutes of charge will get you 50% battery capacity. Now, if you want something to touch smaller, there's the ProBook X360 435. Now as the name applies, this is a full convertible design so you can use it in tablet mode. And now that you have a little cover for the webcam here, there's also an optional second camera which will actually go on the keyboard.

Which will give you the ability to take photos, videos, video calls, all that kind of stuff in tablet mode. Now when you flip it back over to full laptop mode, what you'll see is this keyboard is very robust. Something that HP spends a lot of time on, is making sure that you can sanitize this keyboard multiple times a day for a very extended period of time. And you won't have any kind of issues with it falling apart or like the labeling come off or whatever. It's meant to really be used in a very sort of 2020 kind of way, I guess it'd be the best way to describe it.

Then there's the ProBook 445, which uses an aluminum build to give you a little bit of that extra durability and on top of that, like with these other laptops, it does take advantage of HP's essential security, which gives you lots of protection against malware and viruses, not only inside the operating system but even below the hides for things like, your BIOS will actually be able to self heal itself, if there are any problems. Last but not least, there's the ProBook 635 Aero G7. Now what makes this one special is the weight. In less than one kilogram, this is the lightest AMD powered business laptop out there and it really goes to show me, this thing is incredibly portable. Now on top of that, you have a number of interesting features, including several different screen options, including a one watt panel that will go up to 400 units of brightness.

There's of course the privacy shield if you want that. And you can even option this out with 1,000 nit brightness display. Which in layman's term, is really, really bright. On top of that, you have a very wide angle webcam, and you have things like Windows Hello, you have a little cover if you want to cover that webcam up, you have facial recognition through Windows Hello as well as fingerprint. There's a lot going for this laptop in a very, very thin form factor.

No matter if you're looking at desktops or laptops is clear that AMD has made some major strides recently and prompts to HP for recognizing that and offering a pretty wide lineup of different AMD options inside their devices. Of course, if you're interested in any of the laptops I talked about in this video, they will be available at the link in the description. But if I can leave you with anything, it is this, competition is absolutely a good thing. And now that AMD is really on top of their game, it is also pushing Intel to sort of up what they're able to do as well and the end benefit there is that we all get better stuffs. Which is hard to be upset with some of the biggest laptop upgrades we've seen in many, many years.

Source : Austin Evans