i7 13700Hx or Ryzen 7840HS?

[Phoenix Nano]

Which one is better for gaming and productivity tasks?
I can get a laptop for similar price with each of those CPUs but im unsure which one is the better choice, they will be paired with a RTX 4060 for what its worth

Im currently leaning towards intel because added 8 E cores for productivity (8P + 8E) compared to AMD 8 cores. Performance wise the 8P cores seem nearly on par with 7840HS and its not like a 4060 will push the limits of the CPU anyways. Im thinking gaming wise CPU performance will be more limited by thermal throttling than anything else

Another reason im leaning towards the intel configuration is the included Thunderbolt 4 ports (which is very nice) while the AMD configuration is limited to USB 3.2 (10Gbps), for some unknown reason OEMs dont include USB4.0 with AMD

Now for AMDs advantage, Im thinking better energy efficiency and lower power consumption will lead to better temps while gaming and less throttling? Also higher base clock and slightly higher turbo .

Tried to find a laptop/cpu section to no avail, so I hope this is posted in the right section

 

[tabascosauz]

Which one is better for gaming and productivity tasks?
I can get a laptop for similar price with each of those CPUs but im unsure which one is the better choice, they will be paired with a RTX 4060 for what its worth
Im currently leaning towards intel because added 8 E cores for productivity (8P + 8E) compared to AMD 8 cores. Performance wise the 8P cores seem nearly on par with 7840HS and its not like a 4060 will push the limits of the CPU anyways. Im thinking gaming wise CPU performance will be more limited by thermal throttling than anything else

Another reason im leaning towards the intel configuration is the included Thunderbolt 4 ports (which is very nice) while the AMD configuration is limited to USB 3.2 (10Gbps), for some unknown reason OEMs dont include USB4.0 with AMD

Now for AMDs advantage, Im thinking better energy efficiency and lower power consumption will lead to better temps while gaming and less throttling? Also higher base clock and slightly higher turbo .

Tried to find a laptop/cpu section to no avail, so I hope this is posted in the right section

The USB4 advantage isn't that big a deal if you don't already have an ecosystem of 40Gbps hardware, or don't plan to eGPU. 7840HS is generally better than almost the entire Raptor Lake mobile lineup for battery life, but that assumes a bunch of things:

• Both laptops have normal, decent idle at sub-10W power draw
• Both laptops are MUX switched to completely disable iGPU or dGPU on demand (ie. Advanced Optimus), otherwise you would just be comparing 4060 to 4060
• Both laptops have a big enough battery (e.g. 75Wh minimum) that is appropriately sized for the hardware to provide decent runtime in light use
• Both laptops have appropriate cooling solutions
• Other relevant specs are comparable on both (screen, keyboard, charging, noise, build quality, etc.)

If you are plugged into the wall and doing real CPU-heavy workloads it really doesn't matter if theoretically the 13700HX runs hotter (which itself is completely dependent on the specific cooling solutions), the extra E-cores will thrash Phoenix under any scenario, period. On the flipside, if you are not plugged into the wall and the laptops do have decent battery life, it's next to impossible to match the 7840HS' efficiency under normal laptop usage - which usually translates into lower fan speeds/consistent fanless, lower temps, and lower power draw. For 2 generations now AMD's RDNA-based iGPUs have improved significantly in video playback.

7840HS and 13700HX aren't even in the same segment of CPUs. The former sounds like it's closer to a normal laptop and the latter sounds like it's stuck firmly in thick gaming laptop/desktop replacement land. You didn't say anything about what the two laptops in question actually are, hard to say anything about either laptop based on that. Like choosing a car exclusively based on manufacturer's torque rating.

General Hardware is fine.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

productivity

If you would care to expand on this...

What software you plan to use can make a huge difference.

 

[Phoenix Nano]

I don't really care about battery life since most of the heavy lifting will be done while plugged to the wall, I wont be doing any gaming or intensive tasks on battery, if on battery just light workloads and can always just set power mode to better battery withouth noticing the impact for such tasks. What i care most is the performance while plugged to the wall for productivity and gaming, giving more weight to gaming since for my uses both CPUs should get the job done in productivity.

They are the same laptop brand and model, so same build quality, display, same cooling setup but different CPU configuration. So all else being equal would the Intel CPU offer similar gaming performance or would it throttle more due to its higher energy consumption?

Thats the one thing making me consider AMD if its lower energy consumption means its sustained performance during gaming will be better

As for intel advantage there's better multicore performance for productivity and Thunderbolt 4 which is nice for future proofing, considering i tend to keep laptops for 5 years minimum

7840HS and 13700HX aren't even in the same segment of CPUs.

Which is funny considering both laptop brand models Im looking at (Lenovo and HP) offer both CPUs configurations at similar price
So either Intel is undercutting AMD, or AMD Phoenix is very expensive to make. Which makes it such a wasted opportunity to not offer as entry level option without discrete GPU. If both have discrete GPU Phoenix loses one of its main advantages

. You didn't say anything about what the two laptops in question actually are, hard to say anything about either laptop based on that. Like choosing a car exclusively based on manufacturer's torque rating.

Either HP Omen 16 or Lenovo Legion. Both have the same i7 and Ryzen interchangeable configuration for approximately the same price
So if the Intel will perform similarly on gaming with a 4060, im thinking its the better deal for the same price because of the added E cores and Thunderbolt 4

On the flip side if 7840HS lower power consumption translates to better temps, less throttling and better gaming performance by at least 5% or more, that would make me consider it for the same price

If you would care to expand on this...

What software you plan to use can make a huge difference.

Just some occasional photo/video edition, encoding and future proofing mostly
Productivity its not the main thing for me, 7840HS is more than capable to fill my productivity needs as well but if both CPUs offer equal gaming performance might as well get the extra cores for the same price, thats my reasoning. Also i assume the E cores help with background tasks leaving more of the 8P cores to do heavy lifting so thats also nice

If 7840HS however is faster in gaming i would go for it instead, unfortunately there isnt much data but looking at specs both CPUs look like they offer similar gaming performance.

However AMD lower power consumption could translate into better performance because of less throttling?

 

[tabascosauz]

However AMD lower power consumption could translate into better performance because of less throttling?

All modern laptop CPUs "throttle" in the same way that AMD CPPC dynamically adjusts frequency at all times, just more aggressively due to thermal and power constraints.

Both should be similar gaming-wise. But I think it goes without saying that the 7840HS should see less max power draw than the 13700HX and possibly run cooler. Still I doubt there's a normal scenario in which the 13700HX throttles so hard in games as to let the 7840HS take a meaningful lead.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Legion-Pro-5-16IRX8-laptop-review-A-hefty-US-1600-for-the-GeForce-RTX-4060.712713.0.html

The idle wattage numbers look a bit abnormal at 30W, looks like maybe a bug as the laptop does have a MUX. Dunno how the 7840HS model behaves. The similarly muxed LOQ with 7840HS is around 15W idle.

iirc both can be tweaked and undervolted. 13700HX should have options of Throttlestop or Lenovo software to do so. 7840HS should use something like UXTU, but CO support seems spotty for Ryzen mobile so I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Deleted member 232534]

Either HP Omen 16 or Lenovo Legion.

I don't recommend a brand from authoritarian regime in the first place, so i write this just for reference - 7840hs is in legion 5 slim version and so is there 13700h non x, afaik

 

[R0H1T]

7840hs would probably be better IMO, also the latest 7x4x mobile chips generally come with USB4 on a lot of laptops. Did you check for any legion with that? If so losing TB4 isn't that big a deal.

13700hx - Geekbench 6 CPU Search - Geekbench

7840HS - Geekbench 6 CPU Search - Geekbench

Ryzen should be more consistent across a number of tasks. Of course it's just GB6 so YMWV.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Just some occasional photo/video edition, encoding and future proofing mostly

FWIW, Photoshop and Premiere Pro are both pretty much single-core dependent. Most of the parts that can benefit from more cores are offloaded to the GPU anyways.

DaVinci Resolve can benefit from more cores in some specific uses, but I would call it mostly single-core limited as well. Again, most of the encoding and other heavy lifting is GPU accelerated.

 

[Phoenix Nano]

I don't recommend a brand from authoritarian regime in the first place, so i write this just for reference - 7840hs is in legion 5 slim version and so is there 13700h non x, afaik

The Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 has the 13700Hx
Though im leaning more towards HP Omen 16 since they have slightly better prices

7840hs would probably be better IMO, also the latest 7x4x mobile chips generally come with USB4 on a lot of laptops.

What do you mean better though? looking at the benchmarks you shared the 13700HX seems to score higher in both Single and Multicore tests if you compare the same laptop

Specifically the Omen 16 which is offering both CPU for roughly the same price.

Ryzen should be more consistent across a number of tasks. Of course it's just GB6 so YMWV.

Can you elaborate on this please, what sort of tasks do you think the 7840HS would edge the 13700HX on

FWIW, Photoshop and Premiere Pro are both pretty much single-core dependent. Most of the parts that can benefit from more cores are offloaded to the GPU anyways.

DaVinci Resolve can benefit from more cores in some specific uses, but I would call it mostly single-core limited as well. Again, most of the encoding and other heavy lifting is GPU accelerated.

Yeah for my use cases i think both CPUs are great BUT considering they are going for the same price might as well get extra E cores and TB4 ports
Why settle for less when i can get more for the same money? At least thats my logic

and im also thinking it will be better for future proofing as Windows gets more bloated to offload background tasks on the E cores

 

[evernessince]

I'd go with the 7840HS as it's going to provide you the same level of performance in your use case as the 13700HX without having to worry about variance. The 13700HX had a much wider range of variance than the 7840HS, which means you can get a laptop that's anywhere from 25% slower than default spec to 5% faster. On the other hand, the 7840HS will at best be -5% to 5% within spec, which means you are much more likely to get what you expect. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-13700HX-Processor-Benchmarks-and-Specs.671658.0.html

The power consumption difference is nothing to ignore even if you only plan to use light applications while not plugged in. The 7840HS consumes 96W while the 13700HX consumes 171w. That means it's much harder to cool. Not only is the performance highly dependent on the OEM implementing a good cooling solution, it will be a pain during the summer months. You are talking a 3 hour 41 minute battery life vs a 7 hour battery life while simply surfing the web. A laptop with that low a battery life almost defeats the purpose, especially as the battery will more quickly degrade as it's during through cycles more quickly. Your typical laptop battery last 500 cycles and having half the battery life means you are burning through cycles twice as fast. Under typical use cases, a laptop battery lasts 3 years. One with only 3 hrs 41 minutes of battery life might last 1 and 1/2 years only.

Yeah for my use cases i think both CPUs are great BUT considering they are going for the same price might as well get extra E cores and TB4 ports
Why settle for less when i can get more for the same money? At least thats my logic

and im also thinking it will be better for future proofing as Windows gets more bloated to offload background tasks on the E cores

Even the most demanding consumer applications (like games) do not saturate 6 cores, let alone 8 or more. You really only want more than 8 cores if you are a professional doing something like video encoding as part of their job. By the time those extra e-cores start to provide any performance benefit for your use case, you will have needed to replace the Intel system's battery at least twice. It's should also be stated that even in applications that can use all those cores like Cinebench, the 13700HX is only 17% faster. 17% faster while consuming nearly twice the power. It is very hard to justify in the laptop space where efficiency is tantamount given the limited life cycle of batteries, the limitations on cooling, and the laptops usefulness primarily being it not having to be plugged in. The higher the power consumption the more bulky the laptop must be which is counter-intuitive to being portable.

Let's assume for a second that your hypothetical scenario comes to pass and windows starts loading up more than 8 cores with processors or regular apps start using that many cores. Would you really want a 171w jet engine running all the time when you are using your laptop with maybe a 20 minute off the charger battery life?

 

[tabascosauz]

What do you mean better though? looking at the benchmarks you shared the 13700HX seems to score higher in both Single and Multicore tests if you compare the same laptop

Yeah for my use cases i think both CPUs are great BUT considering they are going for the same price might as well get extra E cores and TB4 ports
Why settle for less when i can get more for the same money? At least thats my logic

and im also thinking it will be better for future proofing as Windows gets more bloated to offload background tasks on the E cores

Intel CPUs are more unpredictable on performance due to higher power and cooling requirements. ie. you can't really pick the 13700HX and always expect a certain level of performance, unless the specific laptop's design is up to the task - reviews must confirm that performance in the specific model is good. 5000/6000/7000 AMD APUs are a bit easier to implement and more consistent due to lower power, but certainly not faultless either in implementation. It doesn't take much to make a cost-cutting cooling design that results in poor performance even for a 15-25W -U APU. 8-core Phoenix -HS usually is somewhere around the 35W long-term power limit and maybe 70-80W short-term boost, compared to usually around 45W long term and 150W short term for 13700HX.

But, at least for the Legion, performance on the 13700HX is a known factor already, so that's a non-issue.

In the laptops it's better to think of them not as E-cores but just "more cores". They're not so much for power efficiency, just more cores. Like with 2CCD Ryzens like 7950X/7945HX, those extra cores will only make a difference if your workloads make real use of them. In Intel's case, that's if Thread Director knows how to schedule well between them; in AMD's case, that's only if the workload does not involve gaming or is not latency sensitive. Premiere and Photoshop are really not what comes to mind when one thinks of a "heavy, all-core workload" that might make best use of the 13700HX's cores.

The power draw question is up to you, really. The battery life and longevity arguments are kind of moot considering that you are overwhelmingly planning to be plugged in for max performance, and neither are physically very portable designs at all. Some vendors have BIOS settings that optimize charging depending on use case (battery life, always plugged-in, fast charging, etc.). The cooling argument is still relevant, it just depends on how important it is to you.

Best not to speculate on how Windows will use those cores in the future, in either case. On many occasions Windows has been proven to be no ally to either AMD or Intel scheduling.

 

[mechtech]

been looking at laptops as well, but the pricing is pretty ludicrous. Seen a base 7040 and it was about $2k CAD............

 

[Phoenix Nano]

he 13700HX had a much wider range of variance than the 7840HS, which means you can get a laptop that's anywhere from 25% slower than default spec to 5% faster.

OK but does that mean variance per brand/model or per serial unit?
If the former its not much of a worry considering a user has already been kind enough to post aggregate benchmarks for different brands
For the one im interested currently because of my budget (Omen 16) The 13700HX scores higher in both multi and single core tests

That means it's much harder to cool. Not only is the performance highly dependent on the OEM implementing a good cooling solution, it will be a pain during the summer months.

This is my main worry that would make me consider AMD, if the i7 13700HX throttles to the point its gaming performance falls below 7840HS

You are talking a 3 hour 41 minute battery life vs a 7 hour battery life while simply surfing the web. A laptop with that low a battery life almost defeats the purpose, especially as the battery will more quickly degrade as it's during through cycles more quickly.

This is really a non issue for me, since as long as I can remember I have always used Laptops plugged to the wall. Whenever im using my current laptop im indoors 90% of time at home. Dont really see the point of wasting charge cycles if im at home only to plug in again to charge even if the CPU is super efficient seems like a waste to run on battery at home barring some exceptions for convenience

Specially not for gaming I don't see the point of running on Battery

Seldom I would use on battery for some light tasks, not that its a deal breaker but why do you think battery life would be so poor browsing the web? From what I understand Windows and modern CPUs have very good power management, if you arent doing anything pushing hard on the CPU its power consumption will be relatively low and Power Saver mode also helps for such cases.

In any case the 13700HX base clock TDP is 55W not much more than 7840HS 35-54W TDP. For seldom on Battery use i can always make a custom power plan that disables turbo boosting. The performance at base clocks will be overkill for anything I do on battery anyways, and multiple times greater than my current laptop

Even the most demanding consumer applications (like games) do not saturate 6 cores, let alone 8 or more. You really only want more than 8 cores if you are a professional doing something like video encoding as part of their job.

I don't expect to use more than 8 cores, I already said for my use cases both CPUs are great and more than enough HOWEVER considering they are going for the same price might as well get the extra E cores.

Let's assume for a second that your hypothetical scenario comes to pass and windows starts loading up more than 8 cores with processors or regular apps start using that many cores. Would you really want a 171w jet engine running all the time when you are using your laptop with maybe a 20 minute off the charger battery life?

Having E cores offloading background tasks, means the 8P cores will always be 100% available when needed for gaming or any other heavy task
That's the immediate benefit i see. Im not saying all cores will be taxed 100%, im only pointing out the value of E cores offloading background tasks leaving P cores resource availability to 100%. Also great for multitasking

For my use case (plugged to the wall) and budget, why would i not take 8 free E cores even if their net benefit today is only 1% its still free cores for my money.

the laptops usefulness primarily being it not having to be plugged in.

Eh... I disagree with that, specially for Gaming laptops they are meant to be plugged in and its not like its some hassle to plug the laptop in the place where it will be used 90% of the time

The benefit for a laptop from my experience is portability. I can take it to different rooms in the house, or to a friends/family house, school/work if needed.
All places where i would use the wall outlet anyways.

The battery is very convenient for light tasks (web browsing, office) if you're moving it around a lot but for my day to day use case its just sitting in the same desk/table.

The higher the power consumption the more bulky the laptop must be which is counter-intuitive to being portable.

In this case im looking at the exact same brand and model that offers different CPU configuration so this would not be a differentiator
The main reason i made this thread is because of it. I found this model that met my budget and perfomance expectations and offered the two CPU configurations

But, at least for the Legion, performance on the 13700HX is a known factor already, so that's a non-issue.

Do you happen to know anything about Omen 16? Someone already posted geekbench scores do those count?

The power draw question is up to you, really. The battery life and longevity arguments are kind of moot considering that you are overwhelmingly planning to be plugged in for max performance, and neither are physically very portable designs at all.

Pretty much

The cooling argument is still relevant, it just depends on how important it is to you.

Its very important to me if it means it will throttle gaming performance below the 7840HS, main reason I made this thread was because of that worry actually

Best not to speculate on how Windows will use those cores in the future, in either case. On many occasions Windows has been proven to be no ally to either AMD or Intel scheduling.

More than anything i just meant having additional cores means the P core resource availability will always be 100% thats true today and will be true in 5 years.
Its a nice to have but not game changer kinda thing

In the laptops it's better to think of them not as E-cores but just "more cores".

Agree, its just easier for me to talk and differentiate between the two since its so short to just say E or P

been looking at laptops as well, but the pricing is pretty ludicrous. Seen a base 7040 and it was about $2k CAD............

This so much, AMD/OEMs marketing is so bad
AMD has such good CPUs marketed terribly to the wrong segments, completely missed opportunity

One of Phoenix main differentiators is its superb iGPU performance, its such a waste to not offer a entry level option without discrete graphics for say $800. I was initially on the market for something in the $800 price range preferably Phoenix but after I realized my only option in that sector was intel (i7 13700H) I decided to invest a bit more on a discrete GPU model (considering Intels iGPU is very underwhelming). So now my only choice is to buy a laptop with a discrete GPU

I dont know what AMD future plans are but 780M is the greatest dumbest thing they made. If they were planning to just offer Phoenix with discrete graphics they should have just made the GPU with 2 CUs instead of 12CUs and save the die space to make manufacturing cheaper and offer a cheaper alternative to Intel

Right now Phoenix lost its biggest advantage imo because of AMD/OEMs terrible market read

 

[Mussels]

Which one is better for gaming and productivity tasks?
I can get a laptop for similar price with each of those CPUs but im unsure which one is the better choice, they will be paired with a RTX 4060 for what its worth

Im currently leaning towards intel because added 8 E cores for productivity (8P + 8E) compared to AMD 8 cores. Performance wise the 8P cores seem nearly on par with 7840HS and its not like a 4060 will push the limits of the CPU anyways. Im thinking gaming wise CPU performance will be more limited by thermal throttling than anything else

Another reason im leaning towards the intel configuration is the included Thunderbolt 4 ports (which is very nice) while the AMD configuration is limited to USB 3.2 (10Gbps), for some unknown reason OEMs dont include USB4.0 with AMD

Now for AMDs advantage, Im thinking better energy efficiency and lower power consumption will lead to better temps while gaming and less throttling? Also higher base clock and slightly higher turbo .

Tried to find a laptop/cpu section to no avail, so I hope this is posted in the right section

My brother got one of the newer AMD laptops, the 7000 series 6 core.

He's been gaming on the IGP with the Nvidia GPU disabled and still maintaining 120FPS in the lighter games he plays like battlebits on battery, with it coming nowhere near its power limits or throttling - while our throttlestop forum is full of people with power limit and overheating issues on the intel laptops.

Hardly a comprehensive review, but i'd absolutely be finding a CPU that can run at it's full potential without power or thermal limits crippling it.

 

[Phoenix Nano]

My brother got one of the newer AMD laptops, the 7000 series 6 core.

He's been gaming on the IGP with the Nvidia GPU disabled and still maintaining 120FPS in the lighter games he plays like battlebits on battery, with it coming nowhere near its power limits or throttling - while our throttlestop forum is full of people with power limit and overheating issues on the intel laptops.

Bruh you have no idea how much i wanted a Phoenix Laptop for its great hyped iGPU at a entry price point of $800. That was my initial intent, didn't really want to spend more than $800 but since AMD decided to lock Phoenix behind discrete GPU configurations (dumbest idea) that was a no go

Its dumbfounding to me why they don't offer Phoenix without discrete graphics, it would make a killing as a entry level gaming laptop. Currently its wasted potential and die space

Hardly a comprehensive review, but i'd absolutely be finding a CPU that can run at it's full potential without power or thermal limits crippling it.

Main reason I made the thread was ask if the 13700HX sustained gaming performance (with RTX4060) is on par with 7840HS
My worry was that thermal throttling would make it underperform compared to the 7840HS

Since im looking at the exact same Laptop model and pricing with different CPU configurations. If they are on par for gaming i would go intel otherwise AMD

 

[tabascosauz]

Bruh you have no idea how much i wanted a Phoenix Laptop for its great hyped iGPU at a entry price point of $800. That was my initial intent, didn't really want to spend more than $800 but since AMD decided to lock Phoenix behind discrete GPU configurations (dumbest idea) that was a no go

Its dumbfounding to me why they don't offer Phoenix without discrete graphics, it would make a killing as a entry level gaming laptop. Currently its wasted potential and die space

Main reason I made the thread was ask if the 13700HX sustained gaming performance (with RTX4060) is on par with 7840HS
My worry was that thermal throttling would make it underperform compared to the 7840HS

Since im looking at the exact same Laptop model and pricing with different CPU configurations. If they are on par for gaming i would go intel otherwise AMD

155W is only sustainable for about a minute (tau) because it's the short term power limit. It's not desktop Intel. But that is irrelevant for gaming, only for productivity, because games don't draw that much power out of the 13700HX.

Neither does the 7840HS sustain some sort of arbitrary max power in games, both run naturally at steady state at lower power and lower clocks in games, like most CPUs ever in most games. For productivity Phoenix is similar, sustaining higher max boost only for a very short time, but instead of dropping dramatically after Tau, it gradually scales back power and clocks as expected from AMD Precision Boost on any Ryzen.

 

[evernessince]

OK but does that mean variance per brand/model or per serial unit?

Per model

This is really a non issue for me, since as long as I can remember I have always used Laptops plugged to the wall.

That really depends on the design of the laptop. Some laptops like newer MacBooks only run off the battery even when plugged in. They will not start if the battery is removed while plugged into the wall. In addition, heat causes degradation of the battery itself. This is why so many gaming laptops become bricks attached to the wall 24/7, not only do they hammer the battery with high power usage but also high temps.

Seldom I would use on battery for some light tasks, not that its a deal breaker but why do you think battery life would be so poor browsing the web? From what I understand Windows and modern CPUs have very good power management, if you arent doing anything pushing hard on the CPU its power consumption will be relatively low and Power Saver mode also helps for such cases.

That's not a figure I made up, it's from the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 16IRX8 link provided earlier in this very thread that has the 13700HX. The 13700HX sucks down power. Modern CPUs do have good power management but Intel's current architecture requires a lot of power to match AMD's IPC and it's e-cores suck down power. The 13700HX uses 21w idle while the 7840HS uses 9.6w. If you have to enable power saving mode on the Intel system why not just get the AMD system and not have to make compromises to performance and screen brightness?

I don't expect to use more than 8 cores, I already said for my use cases both CPUs are great and more than enough HOWEVER considering they are going for the same price might as well get the extra E cores.

The AMD CPU will provide you more than twice the battery life and reduced heat output and fan noise. Compared to extra cores you will never use, I think I would heavily favor the former.

Having E cores offloading background tasks, means the 8P cores will always be 100% available when needed for gaming or any other heavy task
That's the immediate benefit i see. Im not saying all cores will be taxed 100%, im only pointing out the value of E cores offloading background tasks leaving P cores resource availability to 100%. Also great for multitasking

For my use case (plugged to the wall) and budget, why would i not take 8 free E cores even if their net benefit today is only 1% its still free cores for my money.

You are assuming that Intel's thread director always assigns the correct tasks to the correct cores and that both the Intel and AMD CPUs have equal IPC. The reality of the situation is that AMD's cores are much more powerful, hence why the 8 core AMD CPU is only 17% slower in heavily threaded applications despite having half the cores. In mixed workloads that your typical user would have the AMD CPU and Intel CPU perform similarly so really those extra E cores are not providing the benefit you think they are.

Eh... I disagree with that, specially for Gaming laptops they are meant to be plugged in and its not like its some hassle to plug the laptop in the place where it will be used 90% of the time

Gaming laptops are often forced to be wall bricks due to the power consumption of the components, not because someone specifically thought it would be a good idea to make a laptop that way. There are definitely laptop models coming out where that isn't nearly as necessary with AMD releasing high end CPUs that are quite efficient and the continue march of graphics cards providing an acceptable level of performance in a lower power envelope.

 

[tabascosauz]

That's not a figure I made up, it's from the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 16IRX8 link provided earlier in this very thread that has the 13700HX. The 13700HX sucks down power. Modern CPUs do have good power management but Intel's current architecture requires a lot of power to match AMD's IPC and it's e-cores suck down power. The 13700HX uses 21w idle while the 7840HS uses 9.6w. If you have to enable power saving mode on the Intel system why not just get the AMD system and not have to make compromises to performance and screen brightness?

This isn't a valid comparison and nothing to do with hardware choice unless notebookcheck reviews the 7840HS model of this laptop specifically. Every model varies in total system idle power draw on the same CPU, regardless of Ryzen or RPL. On gaming laptops even with a MUX there's a lot of dependence on implementation for idle power. Sub-10W would be an excellent result for a gaming laptop; the LOQ is around 15W for 7840HS.

 

[evernessince]

This isn't a valid comparison and nothing to do with hardware choice unless notebookcheck reviews the 7840HS model of this laptop specifically. Every model varies in total system idle power draw on the same CPU, regardless of Ryzen or RPL. On gaming laptops even with a MUX there's a lot of dependence on implementation for idle power. Sub-10W would be an excellent result for a gaming laptop; the LOQ is around 15W for 7840HS.

Yes, every model varies which is why notebookcheck provides a range comprised of data from multiple laptop reviews.

Even desktop CPUs vary significantly in power consumption due to silicon lottery. Derbaur found as much as a 30% difference in power consumption between multiple Ryzen 5600 CPUs to maintain the same clocks. That said if you take an average of multiple samples it will give you a more accurate picture of what to expect.

If 7840HS is more efficient across a range of reviews it stands to reason that the same would apply to a laptop where the only part swapped is the CPU.

 

[Phoenix Nano]

In addition, heat causes degradation of the battery itself. This is why so many gaming laptops become bricks attached to the wall 24/7, not only do they hammer the battery with high power usage but also high temps.

Interesting... Gaming laptops Batteries should be easily removable to prevent this
This will affect the 7840HS to tho

If you have to enable power saving mode on the Intel system why not just get the AMD system and not have to make compromises to performance and screen brightness?

Because like I said earlier i seldom use laptop on battery and if i do its for light compute tasks that wont feel the impact of running a power profile with Turbo Boost disabled.

For my use case the most important metric is performance plugged to the wall since thats how i use laptops 99% of the time.

The AMD CPU will provide you more than twice the battery

Again not really a factor for me, considering i wont be doing any heavy lifting on Battery and can always make a custom battery power profile with turbo disabled. Light tasks such as MS Office, YT or Web Browsing wont feel a difference between stock clocks or turbo anyways

reduced heat output and fan noise.

Thats compelling... will try to find reviews comparing Omen 16 with Intel and amd
What i care the most is that heat doesn't impact performance to the point it performs below 7840HS

The reality of the situation is that AMD's cores are much more powerful, hence why the 8 core AMD CPU is only 17% slower in heavily threaded applications despite having half the cores.

Interesting, I just wish they were cheaper to make them more compelling, Intel is either undercutting AMD or AMD is being very stupid with their pricing strategy
From my perspective im looking at a same laptop model with both CPUs, same price
Intel offers slightly better single core performance in a variety benchmarks i seen and has extra E cores, plus Thunderbolt 4 ports

Considering this, the AMD config should be cheaper but its not therefor its hard to chose it and forego the extra performance, e cores and io

In mixed workloads that your typical user would have the AMD CPU and Intel CPU perform similarly so really those extra E cores are not providing the benefit you think they are.

If 7840HS cores arent being fully taxed it wont make a difference anyways
Its more of a future proof nice to have peace of mind that the day a game or task extensively uses 8 cores those E cores will come in handy offloading any background tasks

and again its free cores because given the current market Intel config is the same cost or cheaper
I would be more receptive of your talking point if the intel configuration was going for a higher price

Gaming laptops are often forced to be wall bricks due to the power consumption of the components, not because someone specifically thought it would be a good idea to make a laptop that way

Gaming laptops push the physics, if you want any decent performance gaming* you'll want to be plugged in
*Compute heavy games

 

[Deleted member 232534]

I don't recommend a brand from authoritarian regime in the first place, so i write this just for reference - 7840hs is in legion 5 slim version and so is there 13700h non x, afaik

The Legion Pro 5i Gen 8 has the 13700Hx
Though im leaning more towards HP Omen 16 since they have slightly better prices

?? if you are ok with bigger device than you have the answer

 

[tabascosauz]

Yes, every model varies which is why notebookcheck provides a range comprised of data from multiple laptop reviews.

View attachment 309930

Even desktop CPUs vary significantly in power consumption due to silicon lottery. Derbaur found as much as a 30% difference in power consumption between multiple Ryzen 5600 CPUs to maintain the same clocks. That said if you take an average of multiple samples it will give you a more accurate picture of what to expect.

If 7840HS is more efficient across a range of reviews it stands to reason that the same would apply to a laptop where the only part swapped is the CPU.

No? Like I said, speculation isn't useful. The specific laptop is either reviewed or it isn't.

Around 15-20W is expected for a gaming laptop. This is full system idle, not CPU package power, not load PPT so not sure how 5600 disparancies are relevant. There are a variety of hardware/firmware/software factors that affect system power that have nothing to do with the CPU. At just a glance the reviewed Phoenix platforms w/ dGPU is also in that ballpark, around 15W for G14 2023, LOQ, and Legion Slim.

In any case, it seems that OP cares very little about battery runtimes so any platform that gets down to 15-20W is fine. But the Legion in question is pretty clearly an exception with minimum at 24W and average close to 30W, it's not something I would be confidently and immediately recommending even if it was Phoenix-swapped (which isn't that simple and will use a different board, and possibly cooling)......if battery life was a concern, which it isn't, but if firmware/software factors are responsible then it may affect other aspects of perf.

Interesting... Gaming laptops Batteries should be easily removable to prevent this
This will affect the 7840HS to tho

Because like I said earlier i seldom use laptop on battery and if i do its for light compute tasks that wont feel the impact of running a power profile with Turbo Boost disabled.

For my use case the most important metric is performance plugged to the wall since thats how i use laptops 99% of the time.

Again not really a factor for me, considering i wont be doing any heavy lifting on Battery and can always make a custom battery power profile with turbo disabled. Light tasks such as MS Office, YT or Web Browsing wont feel a difference between stock clocks or turbo anyways

Thats compelling... will try to find reviews comparing Omen 16 with Intel and amd
What i care the most is that heat doesn't impact performance to the point it performs below 7840HS

Interesting, I just wish they were cheaper to make them more compelling, Intel is either undercutting AMD or AMD is being very stupid with their pricing strategy
From my perspective im looking at a same laptop model with both CPUs, same price
Intel offers slightly better single core performance in a variety benchmarks i seen and has extra E cores, plus Thunderbolt 4 ports

Considering this, the AMD config should be cheaper but its not therefor its hard to chose it and forego the extra performance, e cores and io

If 7840HS cores arent being fully taxed it wont make a difference anyways
Its more of a future proof nice to have peace of mind that the day a game or task extensively uses 8 cores those E cores will come in handy offloading any background tasks

and again its free cores because given the current market Intel config is the same cost or cheaper
I would be more receptive of your talking point if the intel configuration was going for a higher price

Gaming laptops push the physics, if you want any decent performance gaming* you'll want to be plugged in
*Compute heavy games

The free cores do not make as much an impact at the i7 segment, there aren't as many of them and Phoenix's Zen 4 cores are pretty strong by themselves. Not quite as simple as it is on desktop.

8C/16T isn't going away anytime soon so I wouldn't expect it to be in some way overwhelmed compared to 8+8. What 7840HS should offer is a much more hassle-free experience where you don't need to worry about optimizing for power and thermals all the time.

Rembrandt and Phoenix -HS do run warm, but generally fluctuating in the 80s or low 90s as expected from AMD boost algorithm. Intel style is to go straight to Tjmax (95-100C) for the duration of Tau (60 sec or so). Personal preference, but the AMD way is just easier to deal with for laptops.

If you do want to go all-out on performance, you could see if you can fit Dragon Range into your budget. It will offer better performance and you don't have to worry about 8 cores not being enough for background tasks or productivity. The idle power is no problem since you'll be plugged in, so in essence efficiency will be all-round better than the 13700HX. Phoenix's 780M is basically completely wasted in your use case, by not spending any time away from the wall.

As a side note about power draw vs. battery longevity: any laptop (not just gaming) worth its salt will have its primary charging port, whether barrel or USB-C PD, wired directly to the motherboard so that in normal circumstances the 100-200W of power goes straight there. It's only with laptops that are forced to route USB-C PD through the battery (some gaming laptops that offer secondary USB PD) that risk immediate battery degradation. So the idea that Intel causes the battery to die twice as fast is pretty nonsensical - what matters far more is whether the OEM offers firmware-level battery optimizations that can prolong battery health based on usage (ie. always plugged-in).

 

[Phoenix Nano]

?? if you are ok with bigger device than you have the answer

Tbh i care more about price, performance and quality

The free cores do not make as much an impact at the i7 segment, there aren't as many of them

Can you elaborate? why having more E cores would make a impact compared to less E core config?

8C/16T isn't going away anytime soon

For sure, im just saying having E cores means you will always have 100% of those 8C/16T resources guaranteed
I dont even think this matter much considering the GPU config (rtx4060) will be the main bottleneck down the line, just pointing out as a potential advantage in the event a game like say GTA6 heavily pushes 8c/16t of modern cpus

Both are great imo, the way i see it is just free bonus features for same price, so might as well take it.

If you do want to go all-out on performance, you could see if you can fit Dragon Range into your budget

Price is the main thing here, already stretching budget, ideally I would buy a 7840HS for $800 without dGPU considering that option isn't available I decided to invest more with a dGPU model in the $1100/1200 range.

worry about optimizing for power and thermals all the time.

That sounds worrisome can you elaborate

firmware-level battery optimizations that can prolong battery health based on usage

Can you elaborate on this? I read something about bios config to limit battery charge to 80% beyond that im not aware of any other battery optimization

 

[Mussels]

Bruh you have no idea how much i wanted a Phoenix Laptop for its great hyped iGPU at a entry price point of $800. That was my initial intent, didn't really want to spend more than $800 but since AMD decided to lock Phoenix behind discrete GPU configurations (dumbest idea) that was a no go

Its dumbfounding to me why they don't offer Phoenix without discrete graphics, it would make a killing as a entry level gaming laptop. Currently its wasted potential and die space

Main reason I made the thread was ask if the 13700HX sustained gaming performance (with RTX4060) is on par with 7840HS
My worry was that thermal throttling would make it underperform compared to the 7840HS

Since im looking at the exact same Laptop model and pricing with different CPU configurations. If they are on par for gaming i would go intel otherwise AMD

We found this one for around $1300 Au

Lenovo 15.6" IdeaPad Gaming 3 Notebook Ryzen 5/16GB/512GB | Officeworks
$1297Au for Ryzen 5 7535HS with a 3050 6GB and a 1080P 120Hz Freesync IPS screen.

For the price, it's pretty impressive and he's damned happy at how well the IGP games. For more modern content he'd just run 60FPS limits and the Nvidia GPU

Obviously this doesn't help people from other countries, but cheaper models do exist out there if you can find em

 

[tabascosauz]

We found this one for around $1300 Au

Lenovo 15.6" IdeaPad Gaming 3 Notebook Ryzen 5/16GB/512GB | Officeworks
$1297Au for Ryzen 5 7535HS with a 3050 6GB and a 1080P 120Hz Freesync IPS screen.

For the price, it's pretty impressive and he's damned happy at how well the IGP games. For more modern content he'd just run 60FPS limits and the Nvidia GPU

Obviously this doesn't help people from other countries, but cheaper models do exist out there if you can find em

7535 is not Phoenix. It is a 6-core Rembrandt (respun 6600HS), presumably MUX-less, and honestly for that price it's not an impressive find in North America. Zen 4 is honestly worth paying for in a dGPU platform unless extremely cash-strapped. Of course, Australia is a different market and I appreciate that they seem to be shafted often with hardware pricing.

That sounds worrisome can you elaborate
Can you elaborate on this? I read something about bios config to limit battery charge to 80% beyond that im not aware of any other battery optimization

So you were initially planning on going iGPU-only? If a 7840/7940HS by itself is already enough for your use case then why the extra dGPU? The Swift strikes a good balance on price.

I've seen Dell have different BIOS options for battery usage mode on XPS, e.g. plugged-in, fast charge, extend battery life. I can't remember if I saw one in Thinkpad BIOS, and not familiar with Legion. If you have a 80% limit charge option that is a great thing for battery longevity in general.

For sure, im just saying having E cores means you will always have 100% of those 8C/16T resources guaranteed
I dont even think this matter much considering the GPU config (rtx4060) will be the main bottleneck down the line, just pointing out as a potential advantage in the event a game like say GTA6 heavily pushes 8c/16t of modern cpus

If future games leverage all 8 cores, if anything that would be more motivation for me to take the Phoenix tbh. That might be one of the only times when a thread-heavy 13700HX draws so much power that the laptop runs into overall system power budget problems. Not something you have to worry about with the 7840HS.

I don't see games, present or future, using 100% of each thread on 8C/16T, so this worry about core resources is a little unwarranted. If that ever happens, the entire PC industry would have to be in for a massive shakeup, and I doubt the extra threads on the 13700HX would save it in any way. Besides, like you said, the 4060 will be a problem long before that happens.