AMD Ryzen 5 4600U vs Intel Core i3-1115G4

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).

Intel Core i3-1115G4

The Intel Core i3-1115G4 is a dual-core SoC for laptops and Ultrabooks based on the Tiger Lake-U generation (UP3) that was launched in September 2020. It integrates two Willow Cove processor cores (4 threads thanks to HyperThreading). Each core can clock from 3 GHz (base speed) to 4.1 GHz (single- and dual-core boost). The faster Core i5 and i7 models offer more cores and are therefore significantly faster.

Another novelty is the integrated Xe graphics card based on the completely new Gen 12 architecture. In the i3-1115G4 Intel is naming the GPU UHD Graphics and offers only 48 of the 96 EUs clocked at 400 - 1250 MHz. GPU and CPU can together use the 6 MB of L3 cache.

Furthermore, Tiger Lake SoCs add PCIe 4 support (four lanes), AI hardware acceleration, and the partial integration of Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 and WiFi 6 in the chip.

The chip is produced on the second-gen 10 nm Intel SuperFin process that should be comparable to the 7 nm TSMC process (e.g. Ryzen 4000 series).

Performance

Multi-thread peformance is most comparable to what the Intel Core i5-8250U and the AMD Ryzen 5 3450U deliver. This makes the i3 a more than decent option for day-to-day tasks; that said, any workload of the more taxing kind (such as exporting a high-bitrate, hour long UHD video) will be enough to bring the i3 to its knees.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 25 W, the ThinkPad L15 G2-20X4S0KU00 is one of the fastest laptops powered by the 1115G4 we know of. It can be more than 20% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This Core i3 series chip has a default TDP of 12 W to 28 W, the expectation being that laptop makers will go for a higher value in exchange for higher performance. Either way, that's a tad too high to allow for passively cooled laptops, tablets, mini-PCs.

The Core i3-1115G4 is built with Intel's third-gen 10 nm process marketed as SuperFin for decent, as of mid 2022, energy efficiency.