Who makes the best laptop CPU in 2023? I've compared the best
from AMD and Intel in 25 games and applications to find out!
AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX is giving us 16 Zen 4 cores this year, double compared to last gen, while
Intel’s Core i9-13980HX has 8 performance cores and 16 lower powered efficiency cores, giving us
24 cores total. E cores don’t have hyperthreading, so all up both CPUs have 32 threads. You get way
more L3 cache with AMD, but Intel has a slightly higher maximum boost clock speed.
Intel’s Core i9 offers a higher stock DDR5 memory speed, but both of my laptops have been tested
with the same 32 gig kit of DDR5-4800, because that’s the highest they both support. I’ve used
the ASUS Scar 17 and 18, both with a full powered RTX 4090 laptop GPU so we can fairly compare
games. There is a small size difference between these laptops and they’ve got different coolers,
but I’ve tested with a stand and at different power limits to minimize thermal limits.
Both of these laptops allow us to adjust the power limit of the
CPU through the included Armory Crate software.
More power equals more performance, but regardless of the power level set,
AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX was always scoring better in terms of Cinebench R23 multicore score when
both chips have the same power level set. Of course this assumes that an 80 watt TDP in
Intel land is equivalent to an 80 watt TDP in AMD land, fact is they probably measure them
differently. The Ryzen laptop maxes out at 130 watts, but the Intel one can go higher to 150,
though even with the extra power it still wasn't matching AMD's score.
All applications have either been tested with a 65 watt or 130 watt limit, so we can
see how different power levels affect different workloads. In this example, AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX
was scoring 31% higher in Cinebench multicore with both running at 65 watts, but then it
had a smaller 15% lead when both were able to use more power. It’s worth noting that although AMD’s
extra cores gave it a good lead in multicore, Intel was 12% faster in single core score.
The AMD processor was running warmer to get its win though.
Both laptops have liquid metal on the CPU and GPU with the fans maxed out,
but the third fan in the Intel based Scar 18 is probably helping it here. The 7945HX was
thermal throttling a little in this workload with the 130 watt limit, so it’s possible
that with better cooling the Cinebench gap might be a bit bigger than 15% at 130 watts.
The Intel laptop was actually using 6% more power in this test
when measured at the wall, despite running cooler.
This puts AMD ahead from an efficiency perspective. The Ryzen 9 7945HX was reaching
a higher multicore score in this test while also using less power, and the AMD chip was
reaching higher clock speeds too, though technically it has fewer cores to power.
Other rendering workloads like Blender, V-Ray and the Corona renderer were all
performing better on the 7945HX as well, so these sorts of workloads clearly prefer
AMD’s 16 big cores versus Intel’s 24 cores, with 8 big and 16 small cores.
It’s not all wins for AMD though, Intel does better in Adobe Photoshop, as that app likes
single core performance, and as we saw earlier in Cinebench the 13980HX scores better there.
Intel gets an even bigger win in Adobe Premiere,
scoring 35% higher than AMD at 130 watts, and 42% higher at 65 watts,
which I suspect is in part to this app leveraging quick sync on the Intel integrated graphics.
DaVinci Resolve on the other hand didn’t really care which laptop it was run on,
the differences are within the margin of error range.
Video encoding with handbrake varied. Lower timers are better here, and AMD was faster
with both constrained to 65 watts, but then Intel was faster at higher power levels.
AES encryption and decryption was another area where Intel had a massive lead over AMD,
but AMD was better when it came to compression and decompression. The 7945HX was only 7%
faster in compression at the higher power limit, but 35% faster in decompression.
AMD was 10% quicker at compiling the Linux kernel, but I tested this in Linux rather
than Windows. Unfortunately tools like RyzenAdj haven’t been updated to support the new chips yet,
so I couldn’t test 65 watts. Same deal in the LLVM compilation test,
which was also done under Linux. AMD was still faster here, but only by 3% this time.
Intel was a fair bit quicker in MATLAB, while AMD had a small 6% lead in the Microsoft Office suite.
I’ve also tested the new Geekbench 6, which is meant to be more realistic compared
to older versions. Just like Cinebench, Intel gets the win in single core score,
but this time Intel scores 7% higher in multicore with both at 130 watts.
On average out of these specific tests, AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX was 9% faster than Intel’s Core
i9-13980HX with both power limited to 65 watts. Intel had a clear lead in Adobe Premiere,
cryptography, MATLAB, and any test that relies on single core performance. AMD
on the other hand destroys in heavily multi threaded workloads like rendering,
as well as compression and decompression.
The gap gets smaller with AMD 3% faster on average with both power limited to 130
watts. Again, this 3% value only applies to these specific workloads I’ve tested,
which are more or less a random selection of single and multi threaded tasks. Don’t forget
that the Intel chip in the Scar 18 can actually run up to 150 watts, so with even more power it
would probably get the win in some of the results that are close. The goal here was
to compare both at the same TDP, and the Ryzen chip just can’t go above 130 in this laptop.
So out of all the workloads I’ve tested, generally AMD comes out in front. But it really
does depend on the specific task. Both chips give both of these laptops amazing performance,
but what about gaming? I’ve also compared 25 games at 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions to
find out! This time I’ve power limited both CPUs to 75 watts, but that’s about
the max you ever see them hitting when the GPUs are also running at 170 watts anyway.
Let’s start out with Cyberpunk 2077. I’ve got the 1080p results down the bottom,
1440p in the middle and 4K up the top. Intel was 6% faster at the lower 1080p resolution,
but then AMD had a little lead at higher resolutions.
Some games like Far Cry 6 really seem to love Intel. Intel’s Core i9 was 23% faster than
AMD’s Ryzen 9 at 1080p and 20% faster at 1440p. There’s basically no practical difference at 4K,
as expected, because processor selection should matter far less when we’re GPU bound.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was another game where Intel had big gains, again pulling out some nice
wins at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, but then only a minor difference at 4K.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was weird. Both laptops were basically the same at 1080p,
but then the 7945HX had a lead at 1440p and 4K, right where I’d expect the CPU
difference to not really matter, but these results were double checked and consistent.
It’s a similar deal in Dead Space. No difference at 1080p, but then AMD has more of a lead at
1440p, and a slight lead at 4K, though I’d say that’s within margin of error.
Spider-Man was clearly doing better on Intel at 1080p and 1440p, but then at
4K when I’d expect both laptops to be much the same, AMD was 6% ahead.
Ray Tracing is known to be CPU heavy, and with the RT preset enabled Intel only had
a slightly higher average frame rate at 1080p, but had more dips in performance,
as per the lower 1% low result. Otherwise AMD had a slight lead.
AMD was slightly ahead in average FPS in Warhammer 3,
with more of an improvement noted in its 1% lows at lower resolutions.
Hogwarts Legacy on the other hand was 15% faster with Intel at 1080p,
but then it really didn’t matter at 1440p and 4K.
There are plenty of other games like Dying Light 2 where AMD was
ahead at all three resolutions, and these seem to make up the majority.
Instead of wasting your time talking through the rest of the 15 games that I’ve tested,
I’ll just quickly skip through the rest of the results on screen now,
so feel free to pause the video if you want a closer look at any of the other games tested.
I think it’s important to test a wide selection of games so that we can get an accurate picture
of the average performance differences to make the fairest possible conclusion. In other words,
more data equals more better. Let’s look at those average differences next.
On average over all 25 games tested, at 1080p AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX was 0.4% slower
than Intel’s Core i9-13980HX, so basically no difference if we look at everything as a whole.
These games were these percentages faster on AMD, while these ones were these percentages
slower on AMD. More games were ahead on AMD, but some of the ones that did better with
Intel like Far Cry 6, Flight Simulator, or Hogwarts Legacy had bigger margins.
Stepping up to the higher 1440p resolution and the AMD laptop was now 3% faster than
Intel on average. Intel only had a clear lead in three of the games tested now,
but again they’re mostly bigger margins than any differences seen in favor of AMD.
Then at the higher 4K resolution, AMD was 5% faster than Intel, with none of the 25 games
reaching higher average FPS on Intel. This is only a small difference, and ultimately
fairly negligible. Honestly I was expecting it to be smaller,
as the CPU change normally doesn’t matter at 4K when we’ve got the same GPUs.
Here’s how frame rates look if we instead take the average of all 25 games at all resolutions.
I think this better allows us to visually see the overall difference in a quick and easy summary.
There’s literally a 1 FPS difference at 1080p in favor of AMD, and then strangely a little more
improvement for AMD at 1440p and 4K. I say it’s strange because usually CPU difference matters
less at higher resolutions, which made me wonder if something else was going on.
Although both the Intel and AMD laptops have 8 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity
between the CPU and Nvidia GPU, for some reason the AMD laptop appears to have
a bit more bandwidth in this test. This makes me wonder if this small difference
is responsible for the Ryzen laptop doing better at 4K, because the CPU
difference shouldn’t really matter there. I suppose it could also just be silicon lottery
between the two 4090s. It's not related to the iGPU, as games were tested with Optimus off.
It’s no surprise that the Intel integrated graphics beat AMD’s Radeon 610M. Normally AMD’s
integrated graphics do quite well, but with their new HX processors we’re only getting 2 graphics
cores instead of the 12 present in a Ryzen 9 7940HS chip for instance. I’m guessing this just
takes less die space, so they can instead actually fit in 16 cores, but also they’re probably
assuming something like the 7945HX is going to be paired with a more powerful discrete GPU.
Neither of these laptops are getting amazing battery life, but the Intel one was lasting
for 66% longer when playing a YouTube video on the integrated graphics. In the past,
AMD has usually done much better than Intel here, but that just wasn’t the case with
these top-end processors. Again, it’s not looking so great for the Radeon 610M iGPU.
So what sort of a price difference are we talking about between AMD and Intel? Prices and
availability will change over time, so check the links below for the video for updates, and if any
gaming laptops with these CPUs go on sale we’ll be sure to add them to our gaminglaptop.deals
website. We update that daily so you can get the best deal on your next gaming laptop!
At the time of recording, the ASUS Scar 17 with Ryzen 9 7945HX that
I’ve tested goes for $3500 USD, but if you’re fine with a lower
powered GPU you can also pick it up in a Strix G17 for almost half the price.
For some reason, the cheapest I can find a Scar 18
with Intel Core i9-13980HX and RTX 4090 right now is over $1000 more expensive,
but of course there are also cheaper options if you don’t mind a lower powered GPU.
And don’t forget that the price difference between these two would also account for other things. The
Scar 18 is a newer design afterall, while the Scar 17 chassis is at least a couple of years old now.
All things considered, unless you’ve really got a specific workload that’s going to benefit from
one CPU or the other, I don’t think it really matters to much which you pick. The performance
from both is excellent. If you need extreme multicore performance for something like CPU
rendering while also being cheaper, then AMD might be the way to go. On the other hand,
video editors with software like Adobe Premiere will get benefit from Intel.
As for gamers, it seems like AMD is ahead in more cases than not,
but in some specific games Intel did have some pretty big leads. But again,
once we average 25 games out, there’s not really that much of a difference. Ultimately,
I think you would be extremely happy playing games on either of these laptops for years to come.
If you’re still after more performance at this point then you really need to start
looking at a desktop, and you can check this video out next to find out how much faster a
desktop CPU and GPU are compared to one of the best laptops. I’ll see you in that one next!