AMD A6-9220 vs Intel Core i3-7167U

AMD A6-9220

The AMD A6-9220 is an entry-level chip from the Stoney-Ridge APU series for notebooks (7th APU generation), which was announced mid 2016. The 9210 is a mid-range Stoney Ridge processor (dual-core version of Bristol Ridge) and integrates two CPU cores (one Excavator module with 2 integer and on FP unit) clocked between 2.5 - 2.9 GHz. It also includes a Radeon R4 GPU, probably with 192 shaders at 655 MHz, as well as a single-channel DDR4-2133 memory controller, H.265 video engine and chipset with all I/O ports.

Architecture

Stoney Ridge is the successor of the Carrizo architecture and the design is almost identical. Thanks to optimized manufacturing processes and more aggressive Boost behavior, however, the clocks are a bit higher at the same power consumption. The memory controller now also supports DDR4-RAM, in this case up to 2133 MHz. Stoney Ridge is the designation for the smaller dual-core and single-core chip, while Bristol Ridge is the bigger quad-core chip with dual-channel memory controller. More technical details are available in the following articles:

• AMD's Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge Architecture
• AMD: Bristol Ridge APUs announced

Performance

Because of the significantly lower clock range, the A6-9220 should be noticeably slower than the A9-9410. In the Cinebench R15 Multi benchmark e.g. it was around 15% slower in our benchmarks (see below). The single core benchmarks were quite similar overall.

Graphics Card

The integrated Radeon R4 (Stoney Ridge) GPU is probably similar to the R5 with 192 active shader units (3 compute cores), but a reduced clock of just 655 instead of 800 MHz. More details about the GPU are available in the linked articles above. 

Power Consumption

AMD specifies the TDP of the A6-9220 with 15 Watts, but it can be configured between 10-15 Watts. This means the APU is a good choice for thin and light notebooks.

Intel Core i3-7167U

The Intel Core i3-7167U is a 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 2.8 GHz (no Turbo Boost). 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.

The i3-7167U does not have a Turbo, only 3MB L3 cache and the slowest clocked Iris Plus GPU compared to the faster Core i5 and i7 models.

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 Core i3-7167U is a bit faster than the Core i5-6200U (up to 2.8 GHz, 15 Watts, no eDRAM) due to the missing Turbo. The CPU performance is therefore 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 300-1000 MHz (slowest Iris 650, fastest is 1100 MHz in the i7-7567U, for example) 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.