AMD Ryzen 7 4980U vs Intel Core i5-1038NG7

AMD Ryzen 7 4980U

The AMD Ryzen 7 4980U is a Renoir family processor designed for certain Microsoft Surface systems. 4980U has eight Zen 2 cores clocked at 2.0 GHz (base clock speed) to 4.4 GHz (Boost) with thread-doubling SMT tech enabled for a total of 16 threads. The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process and partly thanks to that AMD promises a 2x improvement in performance-per-Watt over Ryzen 3000 series mobile CPUs.

Architecture

The Zen 2 microarchitecture has brought a sizeable per-thread performance boost compared to the outgoing Zen+ parts. Renoir product family is also the first to introduce 8-core ULV processors to laptop market, keeping power consumption within reasonable limits. This AMD processor family is very impressive from most perspectives. One of the disatvantages to keep in mind is the lack of PCI-Express 4 support, meaning these blazing-fast NVMe SSDs will be limited to 3.9 GB/s tops.

Ryzen 7 4980U is designed to work with quad-channel LPDDR4 memory at up to 4,267 MHz. 8 MB of Level 3 are present in this chip. The Ryzen 7 gets soldered straight to the motherboard (FP6 socket) and is thus not user-replaceable. Please go to our Renoir hub page for more information on the product family.

Performance

The 4980U is the fastest U-class Ryzen 4000 series chip. As such, its clock speeds are 200 MHz higher (both the base one and Boost one) than what the Ryzen 7 4800U has.

It is thus hardly surprising that the average 4980U in our database is in the same league as the Ryzen 7 5800U and also the Core i7-1260P, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Graphics

In addition to its eight CPU cores, the Ryzen 7 also features the Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics adapter with 8 CUs (= 512 shaders) at up to 1,950 MHz. This iGPU is compatible with FreeSync and DirectX 12 and is able to HW-decode AVC, HEVC, VP9-encoded videos (no AV1 support here). Vega 8 is capable of outputting UHD 2160p60 video signal to several monitors and, similar to Intel's Iris Xe (80 EUs), is good enough for a bit of light gaming on the go, provided one is content with sub-1080p resolutions and low/medium quailty presets.

Power consumption

The APU has a default TDP, also known as the long-term power limit, of 15 W; much like it is with other U-class Ryzen 4000 chips, AMD is fine with laptop makers (Microsoft, in this case) changing that value to anything between 10 W and 25 W.

The 7 nm TSMC process this Ryzen 7 is built with makes for above average, as of mid 2022, energy efficiency.

Intel Core i5-1038NG7

The Intel Core i5-1038NG7 or Core i5-1038G7 is a quad-core SoC for laptops and Ultrabooks based on the Ice-Lake-U generation that was announced in Mai 2020 in the refreshed MacBook Pro 13. It integrates four Sunnycove processor cores (8 threads thanks to HyperThreading) clocked at 2 (base) - 3.8 (single core Turbo) GHz. According to Intel the Sunnycove cores achieve 18% more IPCs (Instructions per Clock) and therefore the CPU performance should be similar to the higher clocked Whiskey-Lake and Coffee-Lake predecessors (e.g. Core i7-8559U, 2.7 - 4.5 GHz). The Core i5-1038G7 is the second fastest 28W model of the Ice Lake family after the Core i7-1068G7.

The biggest improvement for Ice-Lake is the integrated Gen 11 graphics card called Iris Plus Graphics. The Core i5-1035G7 integrates the biggest G7 variant with 64 CUs clocked at 300 - 1100? MHz. The Iris Plus G7 should be twice as fast as the predecessors and best the AMD Vega 10 GPU in current Ryzen APUs.

Other improvements for Ice Lake are the AI hardware acceleration and the partial integration of Thunderbolt and Wifi 6 in the chip. The integrated DDR4 memory controller supports modules with up to 3200 MHz (and LPDDDR4 3733).

The Core i5-1038G7 is produced in the new  10nm process at Intel that should offer a comparable performance to the 7nm process at TSMC. The TDP is specified at 28 Watts and therefore the CPU is best used in small multimedia laptops from 13-inch upwards (e.g. like a MacBook Pro 13).