hey pc world fans adam here with gordon uh and at ces 2022 uh both intel and amd came
out with new laptop cpu families on the intel side you have the 12th gen alder lake series
on the amd side you have the ryzen 6000 series now obviously we don't have review units in hand
we don't have final testing but i still think there is some good information to gleam from the
information that has been provided because hey maybe you're like me maybe you have uh
you know a laptop that's a little long in the tooth that you want to upgrade to so
getting some of this information out now before you make some of those buying decisions
i think is going to be valuable obviously you'll have to wait for final reviews but
let's start at the top gordon walk me through the different uh cpu families sure for i mean we
have two really big developments amd pushing out new zen 3 plus ryzen 6000 improved six nanometer
technology process new rdna ii graphics cores a lot of enhancements for power still limited to
eight cores intel is of course bringing its 12th gen alder lake into laptops
these of course use a hybrid configuration where you're getting some performance cores
mixed with efficiency cores and so to surprise everybody the alder lake desktop parts were really
really good cpus we're seeing those in desktops now and or we're seeing those in laptops now
and the big changes this means we will see laptops with up to 14 cores so that is of course
six performance cores and eight efficiency cores going up against amd with eight new uh ryzen 6000
using the zen three plus cores tuned for efficiency
it's going to be a massive battle these don't make old laptops worthless but i will tell you
both of these cpus will be faster than what they replaced and of course you will be getting a lot
of these laptops in for own testing it's very laptop specific how even sometimes the same part
will perform different uh based off the the model so you know definitely wait for for full testing
uh but i i think it is still kind of interesting to to look at it from from what we know now so
let's start at the high end let's start with like the the the monster fat uh gaming laptop right uh
that that kind of stuff what can we expect up there well yeah and you know of course the good
world we're in we i would count uh monster fat laptop with everything from this like this sort
of like thin light laptop getting big cpus really big compared to a small laptop like that but
uh so we have intel with its core i9 12 900 hk at the very top end there's also a core i7 12800
that that also gives you 14 cores versus amd with say it's a ryzen 9 69 80 hx a cores
ryzen 7 6800 eight cores as well again like adam said we have to wait for actual reviews
to for people to actually get their hands on these laptops before we can pass final judgment but i
think on paper uh i think in raw performance in in multi-threaded benchmarks i'm gonna give the
edge to intel i would not have done this had we not seen the intel desktop parts already they
are really spectacular the efficiency cores are really really fast for which surprise everybody
and when you're talking about 14 cpus even though some of them are efficiency cores versus eight
cores even though they are more efficient now than what we saw before i'm generally gonna my
money my money again were like vegas where your bookies were telling you where to put the money
my money is on intel winning raw performance on multi-threaded performance okay but what about
gaming is that going to translate to gaming as well which isn't going to use all those cores
yeah and most games don't you don't need 14 cores to play games i think for gaming
i think intel
might have a slight advantage those performance cars are really good they are they are really
good cores uh it is possible that ryzen 9 actually may be closer as well but i think also
people really need to remember for most gaming purposes especially if you're running a 1440p
laptop high-res or 4k which a lot of people like to pair with you know very nice gaming laptops
you are typically running to such gpu limited tasks it really is not going to make a big
difference my money would probably be on intel though but i'm not sure because um the one
advantage the one advantage amd may have is its focus on power efficiency so
these zen three plus cores are basically the zen three cores excellent cores that
we saw before amd says we went and really really tuned these things to be super power efficient
that might mean they're able to push higher clocks than we saw out of previous horizons
it might mean and also because alder lake can use a lot of power sometimes it may end up being kind
of a wash so i'm going to lean toward intel there but again as you're a vegas bet maker
i would not guarantee you're going to win out of the way those odds are going to be way too
close whereas with multi-threaded performance generally going to give it to intel as well as
single-threaded performance i do think intel on single-threaded performance you know chrome
photoshop a lot of those uh you know office a lot of the you know powerpoint a lot of things intel's
performance cores when they're not weighted down by having to run all the other cores have a really
decent advantage over amd so i think intel will have the advantage in both those areas but of
course power efficiency is going to go for amd and that actually may be the one wild card amd
places here they may say like hey we can't give you a better multi-threaded performance score and
maybe we're a little slower in single threaded performance but when you unplug that laptop
we because of the better efficiency of our cpu cores we're going to be faster and that may be
the message amd will push for 2022 which is honestly important for some people they
they want battery performance uh on a on a high performance laptop you gotta have both
you can have both both right uh okay so what what about the the the the mid-range the the
thin and lights the you know kind of three four up to five pounds kind of kind of like this you know
something that might have the the thicker parts in it but kind of prioritizes a little bit more
on on space and weight yeah the dell xps 15s of the world yeah so when you get to xps 15
you're going to be looking at say uh you're going to be looking at say a core i7 1200h again
you're still sort of looking at that that thread advantage you're still going to be able to get
14 cores that's six performance course eight efficiency cores um and then you're also going to
be able to get and for amd same thing eight cores 16 threads uh say like a ryzen 7 uh 6800h if you
were to put one of those in an xps 15 as you do get to thinner an xps 15 is even thinner than that
that arrow 15 there it may again get a little a little closer than you expect because you know if
amd can really pull it out with efficiency i know you have the efficient course for intel but amd's
all eight core advantage with all efficiency core with all performance cores that are more
efficient might make it a lot closer generally though whereas i can tell you in a 17 inch laptop
i'm pretty i i'm going to vegas the odds are going to be very good that intel's going to win
that one all day multi-threaded single threaded two probably you get into a smaller laptop like
that might be a little closer because now you have sort of the thermals pushing down on intel
so you're going to want to wait to see what what frankly intel and ryzen intel and amd can show
uh what their chips do in those in those more thermally limited platforms okay all right well
and then uh what about the the real ultra portable thin and lights you know the 13 inch laptops like
you have here yeah so for amd you're going to have up to uh the ryzen 7 6800u that's going to give
you eight cores 16 threads you know again it says zen 3 plus goodness um a lot of power efficiency
stuff for amd the first time they're going to have a 28 watt option they did not have that before
that's going to be nice for them but the problem for them is intel has these new class processors
called the uh p class i guess uh which does not stand for performance no it doesn't stand
for performance that might confuse you a little bit it's not p cores it's not all p cores so for
example there's gonna be a core i7 1280p that's going to have 1280p yeah that's not even hd 1280p
that's going to have six performance cores eight efficiency cores so that adds up to by the way
14 cores and because performance cores also have hyper threading another six thirds there so that's
20 threads versus 16 threads of 14 cores even though some are efficient versus an 8 core ryzen
my money and again these are also in 28 watts and uh we are seeing uh surprisingly i did not expect
it we were going to see like the core i7 1280p class cpu in laptops like an xps 13 plus new
laptop a little bit bigger still really really thin but that's 28 watts 14 cores of computing
and something this tiny which is really you know it's i think it's it's going to be again just
like amd at the high end those 17 inch big large left it's gonna be tough i think for eight cores
even if there's a power efficiency game there i think it's going to be tougher on amd
versus the 12th gen p series but you're even you're even more thermally constrained than the
like the four pound laptop right so yeah so we have to see how much the thermal headroom kind
of holds down that alder lake part how much amd is really gonna make up because they're
more efficient process with the six nanometer and also the redesigned zen three plus stuff uh but
you know it's really hard to beat 14 cores with eight cores i think and you know i normally before
i'd seen alder lake on desktop you know i've seen you know six core ryzen you know versus ten core
um core i5 alder like and it's not pretty so i think it may be bad there for multi-threaded
performance single third performance closer generally it's probably not going to make that
much of a difference because they're both going to run pretty fast so but yeah my money for general
cpu performance raw performance probably going to lead toward intel wow okay well the last question
i have then if if you're in this space and you're looking to buy a laptop maybe there's a good deal
and you save a little money on the previous gen how much of a bump do you think on both sides is
is this newer gen going to be do you think it's worth it to maybe look at a 11th gen
intel part or a ryzen 5000 uh i think it's hard to say because we haven't seen the parts but um my
feeling is the previous ryzen 5000 the 11th gen tiger lake laptops they were fantastic laptops
um most people honestly if you have an 11th gen with a good gpu or a ryzen 5000 with a good gpu
you're not hurting you really don't if you don't maybe you just want to save a little bit of money
you're going you're going into it you know you got something real old you don't have to run
out and upgrade if you haven't but i think if you're looking like well i'm going to save some
money by going with something a little older yeah generally it's worth it it's probably going to be
worth it even though i will tell you you know i you when you're looking at sort of like on
the intel side of the aisle you're looking at 14 cores uh 12th gen versus 11th gen with eight cores
uh that's a lot more cores you know i think some of the numbers i've heard bad at around
like 40 percent more performance possibly in multi-threaded tasks so if you are buying your
laptop for say um doing 3d modeling uh possibly for doing encoding or using all the cpus or
frankly if you're an excel esports competitor and that's real that's a real thing i would recommend
you wait and see i i would pay probably for 12th now i want i want that that core density if i
really need those cores the truth is most people and what most consumers do and what most gamers do
it's not going to change the world these will be faster yes they will be more efficient they will
be more efficient and you might even see like say like say a ryzen 6 000 or a 12th gen is
25 faster in gaming than an 11th gen horizon 5000 that sounds really like 20
sounds a lot but if you're looking at 140 frames a second versus 115 or 118 frames a second
i don't know if that's i may want to take a 500 savings on that and then that may
be very reasonable uh one thing i do want to mention though is also the graphics on these
oh yeah yeah so let's go over the graphics that's the big the we have a couple big changes for amd
our dna 2 is their latest and greatest graphics core they are saying we are giving you double
the gaming performance of intel's previous 11th gen iris xc graphics
core that you found in say the core i7 118 5 g7 the 1165 g7 very popular fantastic gpu
amd's saying we are now twice as fast as that wow that's that's big so yeah they're they really are
they're making big claims um and it looks like wow that's that's probably gonna put them in front in
the front position because hey clearly they've had graphics intel though uh i'm not gonna count
out yet my bet is on amd for possibly giving you a thin and light laptop that will let you play
new games at reasonable frame rates and i don't mean 720p at 30 frames a second i mean 1080p maybe
medium to low depending on how new the game is but you might be able to get legitimately 1080p
gaming at frame rates you will actually want to play these games out out of the new ryzen
6000s that's that's a really a big plus for amd but i think a lot of that is because i
don't know where intel is positioning its new 12th gen parts um i do want to point out though
the the core i7 1280p with its 14 core graphics you're going to get 96 eu's which is essentially
the same eu count as what we got out of the previous g7 graphics those were great parts
same eu i don't know if they're improved eu eus or how much more performance you're going to get
out of it but um both platforms benefit from dd ddr5 and lp ddr5 so one of the things that
holds back graphics performance is having more memory bandwidth lp ddr5 and ddr5 give you way
more memory bandwidth than you're going to get before so compared to a g7 an rd and a2 with ddr5
is definitely i can see them hitting that 2x performance thing that's that's not a surprise
against a g7 with ddr5 though or lp ddr5 i don't know if it's going to be quite the same
delta the difference between them but i'm generally going to put my money i'm going
to put my money on on amd for for graphics for igp there but i'm not counting on intel
yet they haven't given it a name yet you know they haven't said it whether it's iris whatever
name but they're saying iris xe and that core i7 1280p and the other really kind of surprising
thing is that i that high-end that sort of like core i9 12900h core i7 1200h those are
basically the you know sort of the cpus you would traditionally find in these like 15
17-inch heavier laptops intel on tiger lake they said you know what we're not going to give you
the the full graphics performance because we know you're always going to buy
a laptop like this 17 is up you're going to buy it with discrete graphics so we're not going to we're
not going to invest you know the die space we're not going to waste space giving you something that
you really don't care too much about um the new uh h series that the i9 12 900 h and the 12 800 h
and a couple of these others they're getting the full 96 eu's so you're basically getting
whatever this next generation graphics core is or whatever these next cps you're basically getting
these in high-end gpus or high-end cpus that previously intel said you didn't need because
you're always going to have a geforce graphics card right or maybe an arc this year so i wonder
if that means they may think hey this is pretty decent graphics performance we're going to give
it we're going to use it on the on these parts and you're going to get it so well okay i don't know i
i don't know but my money is generally going to be unaimed either so we'll see all right amd
has is the only one that's come out and said we're twice as fast and they've said you're gonna really
be able to get thin and light gaming integrated graphics at a performance you've never seen before
oh okay well that's a lot of information thank you for taking me through it once again uh this
will be very laptop model specific so we're gonna get in a lot of laptops we're gonna do a lot of uh
you know some testing be sure to subscribe you know stay locked in for for that testing uh and
watch later thank you gordon i really appreciate you going through this thought experiment now
let's let's wait for the testing and see how it shakes out so thanks everybody we'll see you later