Hi, I’m considering finally upgrading my laptop and I’d like to ask for advice on choosing cpu.
I’m considering: Ryzen 7 5850U or Intel i7-1260P
Laptop with AMD cpu is ~20-25% cheaper
Cores/threads
16 vs 16 threads
AMD 8 vs Intel 4+8 cores
TDP
Intel cpu has higher TDP and insane turbo TDP
AMD TDP in lower TDP but website doesn’t list turbo TDP.
(I know that TDP numbers are not comparable 1:1 but they are supposed to mean something)
GPU Vega 8 vs intel Xe
Rest of the laptop specs are the same or irrelevant in this comparison.
I’ve personally setup laptops with Intel’s 11th Gen. CPUs and think that the Xe graphics are not bad. I would say that, the 11th Gen mobile platform is a good all-rounder, except gaming. AMD chips I haven’t used in mobile versions lately.
I’d echo what Mark1 said, your use case will in many cases outweight “raw performance”.
Getting a Intel P-series (or AMDs H-series) CPUs in a laptop is a bad idea, most laptops struggle to not throttle U series in general and you’ll very likely not be able to use peak TDP mode anyway.
What I would however consider (in my experience),
Intel drivers in general are a lot more polished, they’re not bug free but less buggy than AMD especially when using suspend etc. Thunderbolt is very nice if you want to use a docking station, it works way better (more reliably) than USB ones. I’ve also found USB to be less quirky on Intel than on AMD in general. AMD Graphics will be faster but it probably wont matter in the end. Graphics performance isn’t great either way and you probably have more limiting hardware such as the screen preventing you from using it as a “gaming” station and you’re probably rarely going to hit playable vs non playable anyway irregardless of choice. Like, if you get 15 or 25 fps in 1080p wont matter as it’s still going to be unplayable anyway. You might also want to keep in mind that video decoding (viewing) and encoding is by far better on Intel’s 11-series and above.
I’m mostly planning to user this laptop for linux dev stuff. Programming, docker, VMs and compilation (I use gentoo, some horsepower would be handy)
I don’t care that much about gamming but I would consider picking one or the other cpu if it’s gpu was significantly better.
Video encoding/decoding isn’t that important to me. Web browsers on linux suck and have issues taking advantage of it.
I’m not as concerned with thunderbolt peripherals. I don’t own any and so far I’ve used usb docking station which was good enough.
(I own single 1080p external display)
Drivers are a valid point. I have been using linux on intel laptops for a long time.
In general they have been solid.
Are you guys familiar with state of linux on recent amd mobile platforms?
I am a resident AMD Shill. If you are going to be on GNU/Linux, then you really cannot go wrong with either. Vega graphics are old but still over power what Intel has to offer. If you plan on doing things with HIPS/HET, then AMD would be the better system.
Generally starting with the 5000 series, AMD is pretty much on par with Intel as far as power usage, and you will find that the AMD implementations do not throttle nearly as much as the Intel setups. Honestly, you would do best with going with the cheaper option. If you could spend a little money and get a 6000 series APU, you will see a performance uplift with the AMD RDNA2 based graphics and the 6000 series out performs the Intel equivalent on a performance per Watt scale. The Intel stuff can be faster, but tends to throttle and tends to run much warmer than the AMD equivalent.
I am running a Lenovo X13 Gen 3 AMD setup with the 6800U with 680m graphics.
I’m actually considering lenovo T14 gen 2 amd laptop. (trackpoint addiction)
AMD 6000 laptops look really nice but availability is abysmal.
I’m tired of waiting for lenovo bother sending laptops to europe.
It’s so bad I can find only one X13 gen 2 with Ryzen 7 (it’s way more expensive than T14)
What about usb devices? Have you ever had issues on your laptop? I’ve heard that usb issues plaguing older older zen platforms.
The 6000 series has USB 4 and it works great. I cannot say about the older Ryzen mobile as my only other computer is a Poor-dozer build from 2013.
If you want the X13 but cannot find it, the T14s is the same machine but with a larger screen (at least for the Gen3 AMD variants). If you plan on docking a lot or have interest in using the GPU offload for ROCm/HIPS/HET (what ever AMD is calling it now), then USB4 will allow you to use an external GPU.
The 1260P has higher single core performance and the 5800U is generally better at full core load. But both should be great for mobile development. ( I’m happy with a 4700U)
The 1260P has PCIe4 so if you need PCIe 4.0 SSD speeds the choice is easy.
Here is a test between 6800U, 1260P and older CPUs like the 5800U.