AMD Ryzen 5 4500U vs Intel Core i7-3612QM

AMD Ryzen 5 4500U

The AMD Ryzen 5 4500U is an upper mid-range, hexa-core processor of the Renoir product family. The APU was unveiled in H1 2020; it is designed for use in thinner, lighter laptops. Its six Zen 2 CPU cores run at 2.3 GHz (base clock speed) to 4.0 GHz (highest Boost frequency possible). Ryzen 5 4500U features the Vega 6 iGPU.

The sole advantage of Ryzen 5 4600U over Ryzen 5 4500U is the thread-doubling SMT technology support. The former has SMT while the latter does not.

Architecture

Zen 2 is a resounding success, delivering massive improvements over outgoing Zen Plus-based processors. Ryzen 5 4500U is manufactured on the cutting-edge 7 nm TSMC process; it is compatible with dual-channel DDR4-3200 or quad-channel LPDDR4-4266 memory. This processor has 8 MB of Level 3 cache.

While the APU uses Zen 2 cores just like the desktop-grade Ryzen 3000-series processors do, Ryzen 7 3800XT included, it does does not have PCI-Express 4.0 support. It does feature several PCI-Express 3.0 lanes for connecting discrete graphics cards, SSDs and other devices. Four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes allow for read/write rates of up to 3.9 GB/s provided a suitably fast NVMe SSD is used.

Ryzen 5 4500U gets soldered permanently on to the motherboard (FP6 socket interface) and is anything but user-replaceable.

Performance

The average Ryzen 5 4500U in our database nearly matches the Core i5-11300H, the Core i5-11320H and also the AMD Ryzen 3 5300U as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned - thus delivering an undeniably impressive performance jump over the outgoing Ryzen 5 3500U.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term power limit of 38 W, the Xiaomi RedmiBook 16 R5 is among the fastest systems powered by the R5 4500U that we know of. It can be about 20% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system built around the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Graphics

Just like its name suggests, the Radeon RX Vega 6 graphics adapter has 6 Compute Units (6 x 64 = 384 unified shaders). In the case of Ryzen 5 4500U, this graphics adapter runs at up to 1,500 MHz. The iGPU definitely supports UHD 2160p monitors at 60 Hz; it will have no trouble HW-decoding HEVC, AVC, VP9, MPEG-2 and other widespread video codecs. AV1 is not supported though; such a video will have to be software-decoded for much lower energy efficiency.

Vega 6 will let you play many titles of 2020 and 2021 as long as you stick to low settings and low resolutions. F1 2021 (720p, Low) runs at 32 fps; Outriders (720p, Low) runs at 27 fps, to give you an example or two. As the iGPU has no VRAM of its own, it is paramount that fast system RAM is used.

Power consumption

This Ryzen chip is very energy efficient, as of mid 2022, thanks to the cutting-edge 7 nm TSMC manufacturing process and the mature Zen 2 architecture.

The Ryzen 5 4500U has a default TDP (also known as the long-term Power Limit) of 15 W that can be changed to anything between 10 W and 25 W by laptop makers if required, a right they use more often than not. Clock speeds and performance will change accordingly as a result. By going for the lowest value, it will be possible to use the APU as the heart of a passively cooled tablet, laptop, mini-PC.

Intel Core i7-3612QM

The Intel Core i7-3612QM is a fast quad-core processor for laptops based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. It is the fastest mobile processor rated at 35 Watt (at the time of announcement in mid 2012). Due to Hyperthreading, the four cores can handle up to eight threads in parallel leading to better utilization of the CPU. Each core offers a base speed of 2.1 GHz but can dynamically increase clock rates with Turbo Boost up to 2.8 GHz (for 4 active cores), 3.0 GHz (for 2 active cores) and 3.1 GHz (for 1 active core). Compared to the other quad core CPU, the 3612QM is specified at a TDP of only 35 Watt (similar to the dual-core CPUs). The BGA version (that is directly soldered to the mainboard) supports VT-d virtualization, whereas the rPGA version does not. Both dont support vPro, but otherwise all Ivy Bridge features like AES or VT-x are useable.

Ivy Bridge is an enhanced die shrink of the Sandy Bridge architecture with improvements on both GPU and CPU performance. The CPUs are produced in 22nm (versus 32nm Sandy Bridge CPUs) and are the first to introduce 3D transistors for increased energy efficiency when compared to similarly clocked Sandy Bridge processors. Other new features are integrated PCI Express 3.0 and  DDR3(L)-1600 support.

The performance of the Core i7-3612QM is slightly above a similarly clocked Sandy Bridge processor due to the architectural improvements. As a result, overall performance is similar to the Sandy Bridge Core i7-2820QM. Altough the 3612QM has a higher model number than the 3610QM, it offers slower clock rates and therefore performs worse. However, the 3610QM is specified at a much higher TDP of 45 Watt.

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 offers 16 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 650 MHz up to 1100 MHz with Turbo Boost, making it one of the faster variants.

With a TDP of only 35 Watt, the Core i7-3612QM is the first quad-core CPU from Intel that is specified at the level of the dual-core mobile CPUs. Therefore, even smaller laptops can use the Core i7.