AMD Ryzen 3 4300U vs Intel Core i5-L16G7 vs AMD Ryzen 5 4600U

AMD Ryzen 3 4300U

The AMD Ryzen 3 4300U is a processor for thin and light laptops based on the Renoir family. The 4300U integrates four cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture (quad core CPU). They are clocked at 2.7 (guaranteed base clock) to 3.7 GHz (Turbo) without SMT / Hyperthreading support (4 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process and partly thanks to it AMD advertises a 2x improved performance per Watt for the Renoir chips. Compared to the faster Ryzen 5 4000 CPUs (e.g., Ryzen 5 4600U), the Ryzen 3 only offers 4 cores and lower Turbo clock speeds.

In addition to the four CPU cores, the APU also has the Radeon RX Vega 5 integrated graphics card with 5 CUs and up to 1400 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 4 MB of Level 3 cache can be found on the chip. See our hub page on the Renoir Processors for more information.

Performance

The average 4300U in our database matches the Core i5-1035G4 and the Core i5-11300H, both quad-core chips, in multi-thread performance. Technically a lower mid-range CPU, this Ryzen is light years ahead of Intel Pentiums and AMD Athlons that so many sub-US$500 laptops ship with.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of our system is.

Power consumption

The Ryzen 3 series chip has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 15 W, a value that laptop manufacturers are free to change to anything between 10 W and 25 W with performance and clock speeds changing accordingly as a result. By going for the lowest value, it is possible to build passively cooled tablets, laptops, mini-PCs around this APU.

The 7 nm TSMC process the Ryzen 3 4300U is manufactured on makes for average, as of mid 2023, energy efficiency.

Intel Core i5-L16G7

The Core i5-L16G7 is an SoC with 5 processor cores based on the Lakefield architecture. It uses one fast Sunny Cove core (known from Ice-Lake CPUs but without AVX512) with up to 3 GHz and 4 small Tremont cores (Atom / Celeron) with up to 2.8 GHz. Using all 5 cores, the CPU can reach up to 1.8 GHz, base clock speed is 1.4 GHz. The CPU does not support HyperThreading / SMT. The rest of the SoC is similar to the Ice Lake chips, like the Gen 11 graphics card with 64 EUs (similar to the Iris Plus G7 but only clocked at 500 MHz and using the UHD Graphics name).

Performance

The average L16G7 in our database is in the same league as the Pentium N6000 and also the Core i3-1110G4, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This kind of performance is only sufficient for basic day-to-day activities as of late 2023.

Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is and how high the CPU power limits are.

With a specified TDP of 7 Watt (PL1, 9.5 Watt PL2), the CPU is well suited for thin and light laptops and Windows based tablets. / 2-in-1. Intel claims that the standby power was greatly reduced (91% better compared to the i7-8500Y with 2.5 mW). The SoC is manufactured in 10nm and uses the Intel Foveros 3D Packaging technology. Foveros is used to stack the in 22FFL manufactured I/O die, the compute die in 10nm and up to 8 GB LPDDR4X-4267.

AMD Ryzen 5 4600U

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600U is a processor for thin and light laptops based on the Renoir architecture. The 4600U integrates six cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.1 (guaranteed base clock) to 4 GHz (Turbo) with SMT / Hyperthreading support (12 threads). The chip is manufactured in the modern 7 nm process at TSMC and partly thanks to it AMD advertises a 2x improved performance per Watt for the Renoir chips.

With two less cores, the Ryzen 5 4600U is clearly slower than the Ryzen 7 4700U and 4800U in multi threaded workloads. However, it should still beat the fastest 15 Watt Ice Lake Intel Core i7-1065G7 (4 cores, 3.9 GHz). Thanks to the 4 GHz Boost clock, the single core performance should be similar. Therefore, the Ryzen 5 4600U is a very fast 15 Watt CPU and clearly faster than the old Ryzen 7 3700U.

In addition to the six CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 6 integrated graphics card with 6 CUs and up to 1500 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 MB level 3 cache can be found on the chip. See our hub page on the Renoir Processors for more information.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 15 Watt (default) and can be configured from 10 to 25 Watt by the laptop vendor. That means the chip is intended for thin and light laptops (but with fans).