AMD A10 Pro-7350B vs Intel Core i5-7267U

AMD A10 Pro-7350B

The AMD A10 Pro-7350B is a power efficient ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) quad-core processor based on the Kaveri architecture. It was revealed in June 2014 for notebooks and is manufactured by GlobalFoundries using a 28 nm SHP process. In addition to having two CPU modules for a total of four integer cores clocked at 2.1 - 3.3 GHz, the AMD chip also integrates a Radeon R6 GPU clocked at up to 553 MHz with 384 GCN shaders and a dual-channel DDR3-1600 memory controller.

Technically, the 7350B is almost identical with the consumer model FX-7500. However, AMD guarantees an especially high stability and durability for the business-oriented Pro-Series.

Architecture 

Kaveri is the successor to the 2013 Richland architecture (e.g. A10-5750M). The revised CPU cores, codenamed Steamroller, represent the third generation of the module-based Bulldozer design. A number of major changes include modified decoders (now one per integer core), optimized branch prediction, and increased L1 I-cache from 64 KB to 96 KB per module. These revisions boost the performance per clock slightly over a similarly clocked Richland APU. For more details about the AMD Kaveri architecture, see our detailed analysis here:

Analysis of the AMD Kaveri Notebook Platform

Performance 

According to our benchmarks (shown below), the A10 Pro-7350B offers a CPU performance level similar to the Haswell-based Intel Core i3-4100U. Overall, the 7350B will be sufficient for all daily workloads (Office, Internet browsing, multimedia) as well as light multitasking.

Graphics

The Radeon R6 (Kaveri) GPU of the A10 Pro-7350B features a core clock of up to 553 MHz and 384 shader units. Since the GPU is based on AMD's GCN 1.1 architecture, both DirectX 11.2 "Tier 2" and Mantle are supported. Furthermore, the GPU can be used for general purpose computing in various applications, such as Adobe Photoshop via the OpenCL API. 

In terms of 3D performance, the GPU is almost as fast as a dedicated GeForce GT 720M and can handle many current games at low or medium settings at (W)XGA resolution.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the entire APU is rated at 19 Watts, which is somewhat above the Haswell ULV CPUs from Intel (15 W including chipset). Nevertheless, the A10 Pro-7350B is suited for 12 - 13-inch notebooks or larger.

Intel Core i5-7267U

The Intel Core i5-7267U is a fast dual-core SoC for notebooks based on the Kaby Lake architecture and was announced in January 2017. The CPU has two processor cores clocked at 3.1-3.5 GHz (two cores also up to 3.5 GHz). The processor can execute up to four threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper Threading. It is also equipped with an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 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.

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

The performance of the 28-Watt CPU should be on par with the Core i7-7500U (2.7-3.5 GHz, no eDRAM, 15 Watts), but it should be a bit slower on practice due to the missing level 4 eDRAM and the lower TDP. This means the i5 is still one of the faster dual-core processors and should be sufficient for most scenarios. Some games might still require a real quad-core processor and therefore nit run perfectly on the dual-core processor, despite Hyper Threading.

Graphics

The integrated Intel Iris Plus 650 Graphics is the GT3e model of the Kaby Lake GPU (Intel Gen. 9.5). It has 48 Execution Units running at 300-1050 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 550, 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 specifies the TDP with 28 Watts, which can be reduced to 23 Watts (cTDP Down) depending on the usage scenario. The TDP is pretty high compared to the common 15-Watt TDP for dual-core processors, but allows a better utilization of CPU and GPU Turbo.