AMD Athlon 300U vs Intel Xeon W-11855M

AMD Athlon 300U

The AMD Athlon 300U is a mobile entry level dual core SoC that was announced in January 2019. It combines two Zen cores (with SMT / Hyperthreading so running 4 threads) clocked at 2.4 - 3.3 GHz with a Radeon RX Vega 3 graphics card with 3 CUs (192 Shaders) clocked at up to 1000 MHz. Specified at 15 Watt TDP, the SoC is intended for thin mid-range laptops. It is quite similar to the AMD Ryzen 3 3200U (2.6 - 3.5 GHz).

Compared to the Picasso APUs of the Ryzen 3000 series, the Athlon 300U is still based on the first generation of the 2000 series. Only the PRO variant is based on the new Zen+ microarchitecture that should lead to a 3% IPS (performance per clock) improvement.

The integrated dual-channel memory controller supports up to DDR4-2400 memory. As the features of the Picasso APUs are the same compared to the Raven Ridge predecessors, we point to our Raven Ridge launch article.

In contrast to the faster quad-core Picasso APUs, the Athlon 300U only supports 3 instead of 4 displays in total.

Performance wise, the Athlon 300 should be slightly slower than the Ryzen 3 2200U (2.5 - 3.4 GHz Dual Core with SMT).

Intel Xeon W-11855M

The Intel Xeon W-11855M is a high end hexa core SoC for laptops and mobile workstations. It is based on the Tiger Lake H45 generation and was announced in mid 2021. It integrates six Willow Cove processor cores (12 threads thanks to HyperThreading). The base clock speed depends on the TDP setting and at 45 Watt is at 3.2 GHz. The single and dual core boost speed can reach up to 4.9 GHz (using ITBM 3.0), all cores can reach up to 4.4 GHz. The CPU offers 18 MB level 3 cache and supports DDR4-3200 memory.

The Xeon W-11855M is the fastest 6-core CPU of the Tiger Lake line-up at launch and should easily best the older 6 core CPUs thanks to the high clock speeds and the new architecture. Therefore, the Xeon is well suited for even very demanding tasks and is only bested by the 8-core CPUs like the W-11955M.

The SoC also included the improved Xe graphics card called UHD graphics with all 32 EUs.

Furthermore, Tiger Lake SoCs add PCIe 4 support (20 lanes in the H45 series), AI hardware acceleration, and the partial integration of Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 and Wi-Fi 6E in the chip.

The chip is produced on the improved 10nm process (called 10nm SuperFin) at Intel, which should be comparable to the 7nm process at TSMC (e.g. Ryzen 4000 series). The default TDP is rated at 45 W at 3.2 GHz base speed, at 35 Watt the base clock speed decreases to 2.6 GHz (cTDP down).

All articles on Tiger Lake can be found on our Tiger Lake architecture hub.