AMD Ryzen 7 4800H vs Intel Core i7-7600U vs Intel Core i7-7700HQ

AMD Ryzen 7 4800H

The AMD Ryzen 7 4800H is a Renoir APU designed for larger, more powerful laptops with room for better termals. The Ryzen features eight Zen 2 cores running at 2.9 GHz (base clock speed) to 4.2 GHz (Boost). The CPU also has 8 MB of L3 cache and a Vega series integrated GPU. Thread-doubling SMT tech is enabled in this processor, allowing for up to 16 concurrent processing threads.

Architecture

Ryzen 7 4800H is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process and in part thanks to this fact AMD promises an up to 2x higher performance-per-watt figure compared to Ryzen 3000 series mobile APUs. This isn't the only noteworthy change however as Zen 2 architecture is leagues ahead of the outgoing Zen+ when it comes to single-core performance. Renoir family processors feature up to 8 CPU cores compared to 4 cores of the previous generation mobile AMD CPUs.

A 4800H will work with dual-channel DDR4-3200 or quad-channel LPDDR4-4266 RAM. The important difference between desktop Ryzen 4000 and mobile Ryzen 4000 processors is that the latter do not have PCI-Express 4.0 support, meaning those blazing-fast NVMe SSDs will be limited to a throughput of 3.9 GB/s.

The Ryzen 7 gets soldered straight to the motherboard (FP6 socket) and is thus not user-replaceable. Please go to our Renoir processor family hub for more information on these CPUs.

Performance

The average 4800H in our database is in the same league as the Core i7-11850H, the Core i7-1360P and also the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This highlights just how great of a job Renoir designers did, back in the day.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term power limit of 45 W, the MSI Alpha 17 A4DEK is among the fastest laptops built around the 4800H that 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.

Graphics

Ryzen 7 4800H features the Radeon RX Vega 7, a 7 CU integrated graphics adapter running at up to 1,600 MHz. The iGPU's underlying architecture is fairly old as of 2021, yet its 448 shaders will let you play many games of 2020 and 2021 as long as you stick to reasonable resolutions and presets. F1 2021 runs well at medium quality, 1080p resolution, to give you an example. A Vega 7 can be as fast as a GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q, or as slow as an 80 EU Iris Xe; this depends on the benchmark as well as on cooling system performance and TDP settings of a laptop as mentioned above. As the iGPU has no VRAM of its own, it is paramount that fast system RAM is used.

The Vega definitely supports UHD 2160p monitors at 60 Hz. This iGPU is capable of hardware decoding AVC, HEVC and VP9-encoded videos. There is no AV1 support to be found here though. Such a video will have to be SW-decoded leading to much lower energy efficiency.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 7 series chip has a default TDP (also known as the long-term power limit) of 45 W. Laptop makers are allowed to change that to anything between 35 W and 54 W, with clock speeds and performance changing accordingly as a result. The Ryzen 7 4800HS is a 35 W edition of the Ryzen 7 4800H that trades away a bit of performance for lower power consumption. In both cases, an active cooling solution is a must.

Both the 4800H and the 4800HS are built with TSMC's 7 nm process for decent, as of late 2022, energy efficiency.

Intel Core i7-7600U

The Intel Core i7-7600U is a fast dual-core processor for notebooks based on the Kaby Lake architecture and was announced in January 2017. It integrates 2 CPU cores with Hyper-Threading support clocked at 2.8 - 3.9 GHz (2 core Turbo also 3.9 GHz). Besides two cores, the processor is also equipped with the HD Graphics 620 GPU as well as a dual-channel memory controller (DDR3L-1600/DDR4-2400). It is manufactured in a 14nm process with FinFET transistors.

Architecture

Intel basically uses the same micro architecture compared to Skylake, so the per-MHz performance does not differ. The manufacturer only reworked the Speed Shift technology for faster dynamic adjustments of voltages and clocks, and the improved 14nm process allows much higher frequencies combined with better efficiency than before.

Performance

With 2.5 to 3.9 GHz, the Core i7-7600U clocks significantly higher than the old Core i7-6500U (2.5 - 3.1). That means, the i7-7600U is (at the time of announcement in beginning of 2017) the fastest dual core processor for laptops. The performance is sufficient for demanding tasks (except some games that may need four real cores).

Graphics

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 620 has 24 Execution Units (similar to previous HD Graphics 520) running at 300 - 1150 MHz. The performance depends a lot on the memory configuration; it should be comparable to a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 920M in combination with fast DDR4-2133 dual-channel memory.

Contrary to Skylake, Kaby Lake now supports hardware decoding for H.265/HEVC Main 10 with a 10-bit color depth as well as Google's VP9 codec. The dual-core Kaby Lake processors, which were announced in January, should also support HDCP 2.2.

Power Consumption

The chip is manufactured in an improved 14nm process with FinFET transistors, which improves the efficiency even further. Intel still specifies the TDP with 15 Watts, but it can also be reduced to 7.5 Watts by the notebook manufacturers (cTDP down). This will obviously affect the performance, because the Turbo Boost cannot be maintained for longer periods.

Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Intel Core i7-7700HQ is a fast quad-core processor for notebooks based on the Kaby Lake H architecture (7th generation Core), which was announced in January 2017 at CES. It is the successor to the Core i7-6700HQ from the Skylake generation and is manufactured in an improved 14 nm+ process, so the clocks are 200 MHz higher at the same TDP. The architecture was not changed, only the video engine got an update (see our Kaby Lake article).

The integrated graphics card is called Intel HD Graphics 630, but the architecture does not differ from the 530 GPU from the Skylake generation and only the clocks are slightly higher. 

Performance

Thanks to the 200 MHz higher clocks (5.5-7.6% depending on the Boost), the CPU performance is increased and roughly on par with the Core i7-6970HQ (2.8-3.7 GHz but with 128 MB eDRAM). The TDP can also be reduced to 35 Watts (cTDP down), but this will reduce the performance.

Power Consumption

Due to its 45-Watt TDP, the CPU will be used in bigger notebooks with at least 15 inches most of the time.