Intel Celeron 6205 vs AMD Ryzen 3 5400U

Intel Celeron 6205

The Intel Celeron 6205 (or 6205U) is a power efficient dual-core SoC for laptops and Ultrabooks based on the Tiger Lake-U generation that should be announced in the third quarter of 2020. It integrates most likely only two Willow Cove processor cores (2 threads as no HyperThreading/SMT). The clock speed is not yet known but should be similar to the Comet Lake-U based Celeron 5205U (1.9 GHz, no Turbo).

Another novelty is the integrated Xe graphics card based on the completely new Gen 12 architecture. It should offer a significantly higher performance compared to the older UHD Graphics G1 (Ice Lake).

Other improvements from Ice Lake should be also integrated in Tiger Lake like the AI hardware acceleration and the partial integration of Thunderbolt and Wifi 6 in the chip.

The chip is produced in the improved 10nm+ process at Intel that should be comparable to the 7nm process at TSMC (e.g. Ryzen 4000 series).

Beware, the information above is still based on rumors, leaks and first informations (e.g., this, Tiger Lake Leak, NUC 11,) and can change till the CPU is released. All articles on Tiger Lake can be found on our Tiger Lake architecture hub.

AMD Ryzen 3 5400U

The AMD Ryzen 3 5400U is a processor for thin and light laptops based on the Cezanne generation. The R3 5400U integrates four of the eight cores based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture and is the slowest U-series processor of the Cezanne generation at launch. The cores are clocked at 2.6 (guaranteed base clock) to 4 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (8 threads). The chip is manufactured in the modern 7 nm process at TSMC.

The new Zen 3 microarchitecture offers a significantly higher IPC (instructions per clock) compared to Zen 2. For desktop processors AMD claims 19 percent on average and in applications reviews showed around 12% gains at the same clock speed.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system built around the 5400U as of August 2023, we are fairly confident the chip is a little faster than the Ryzen 3 5300U and its four Zen 2 cores running at clock speeds similar to what the 5400U has. Naturally, your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is and how high the CPU power limits are.

In addition to the four CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 6 integrated graphics card with 6 CUs and up to 1600 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 MB level 3 cache (same as the old 4800U) can be found on the chip.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 3 has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 15 W. Laptop manufacturers are free to change that value to anything between 10 W and 25 W if so desired, with clock speeds and performance changing correspondingly. Those values aren't low enough to allow for passively cooled designs.

This is a 7 nm chip; it thus has higher-than-average, as of late 2022, energy efficiency.