AMD A10-9600P vs Intel Core i5-7360U vs Intel Core i7-7700HQ

AMD A10-9600P

The AMD A10-9600P is a mid-range APU of the Bristol Ridge series (7th generation of APUs) with 4 CPU-cores (two Excavator modules) clocked at 2.4 - 3.3 GHz. It was announced in mid 2016 and is based on the same silicon as Carrizo but with more and refined features. It is a ULV-chip with a TDP of 15 Watt and integrates a Radeon R5 graphics card (384 shader cores / 6 compute cores) and a dual-channel DDR4-1866 memory controller. As Carrizo its a full featured SoC that offers all I/O ports on the chip.

The A10-9600P is slightly faster than the old 15-Watt top model of Carrizo, the FX-8800P. Therefore, the CPU performance is similar to a Broadwell 15 Watt Core i3 like The i3-5010U. See our Bristol Ridge article for more information on the architecture and improvements compared to Carrizo.

Intel Core i5-7360U

The Intel Core i5-7360U is a fast dual-core SoC for notebooks and Ultrabooks based on the Kaby Lake architecture and was announced in January 2017. The CPU has two processor cores clocked at 2.3-3.6 GHz (two cores also up to 3.6 GHz). The processor can execute up to four threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper Threading. It is also equipped with an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 GPU with 64 MB eDRAM, a dual-channel memory controller (DDR4) as well as VP9 and H.265 video decoding as well as encoding. The chip is still manufactured in a 14nm process with FinFET transistors.

Compared to the Core i7-7560U, the i5-7360 does have lower CPU and GPU clocks.

Architecture

Intel basically uses the same micro architecture compared to Skylake, so the per-MHz performance does not differ. The manufacturer only reworked the Speed Shift technology for faster dynamic adjustments of voltages and clocks, and the improved 14nm process allows much higher frequencies combined with better efficiency than before.

Performance

At 2.3-3.6 GHz, the Core i5-7360U has a slightly lower base frequency but higher Turbo clocks compared to the Core i5-7300U and is therefore faster. The CPU part can also use the 64 MB eDRAM, which should increase the performance in some scenarios.

Graphics

The integrated Intel Iris Plus 640 Graphics is the GT3e model of the Kaby Lake GPU (Intel Gen. 9.5). It has 48 Execution Units running at 300-1000 MHz (i7 models up to 1050 MHz) and the performance is comparable to a GeForce 920MX thanks to fast eDRAM cache. However, there aren't any significant improvements compared to the old Iris Pro 540, so modern games can often not be played smoothly or only at the lowest or medium settings, respectively.

Contrary to Skylake, Kaby lake now also supports H.265/HEVC Main 10 with a 10-bit color depth as well as Google's VP9 codec. The dual-core Kaby Lake processors announced in January should also support HDCP 2.2.

Power Consumption

The chip is manufactured in an improved 14nm process with FinFET transistors, which improves the efficiency even further. Intel still specifies the TDP with 15 Watts, which is typical for ULV chips. Depending on the usage scenario, the TDP can vary between 7.5 (cTDP Down) and 25 Watts.

Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Intel Core i7-7700HQ is a fast quad-core processor for notebooks based on the Kaby Lake H architecture (7th generation Core), which was announced in January 2017 at CES. It is the successor to the Core i7-6700HQ from the Skylake generation and is manufactured in an improved 14 nm+ process, so the clocks are 200 MHz higher at the same TDP. The architecture was not changed, only the video engine got an update (see our Kaby Lake article).

The integrated graphics card is called Intel HD Graphics 630, but the architecture does not differ from the 530 GPU from the Skylake generation and only the clocks are slightly higher. 

Performance

Thanks to the 200 MHz higher clocks (5.5-7.6% depending on the Boost), the CPU performance is increased and roughly on par with the Core i7-6970HQ (2.8-3.7 GHz but with 128 MB eDRAM). The TDP can also be reduced to 35 Watts (cTDP down), but this will reduce the performance.

Power Consumption

Due to its 45-Watt TDP, the CPU will be used in bigger notebooks with at least 15 inches most of the time.