AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS vs Intel Core i7-1370P vs AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840HS

AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS

The Ryzen 7 7840HS is a powerful Phoenix family chip that saw the light of day in H1 2023. The processor features 8 cores (16 threads thanks to SMT support) running at 3.8 GHz. The highest Boost clock speed achievable is 5.1 GHz.

Not only does this APU has full might of the Zen 4 architecture at its disposal, it also comes with the new Ryzen AI technology that's set to make generative AI more ubiquitous than ever before. Last but not the least, the Radeon 780M serves as the integrated GPU.

Architecture & Features

Phoenix family chips are powered by the Zen 4 architecture, much like Dragon Range family chips are. The latter however lacks hardware AI workload acceleration capabilities that Phoenix has. Ryzen AI is coming after Intel's DL Boost and GNA technologies; time will tell if this move by AMD is a good idea.

Perhaps more importantly, Zen 4 introduces AVX512 support (which Zen 3 chips did not have) and, thanks to a plethora of other improvements including larger caches/registers/buffers across the board, is set to bring a double-digit IPC improvement.

Elsewhere, the 7840HS has 16 MB of L3 cache and a seriously fast RAM controller (up to LPDDR5x-7500 and up to DDR5-5600, ECC-enabled memory included). PCI-Express speeds are capped at 1.97 GB/s per lane which corresponds to the 4.0 spec.

This Ryzen 7 series chip is designed to run 64-bit Windows 11, 64-bit Windows 10 or Linux; please note that it isn't overclockable and neither is it user-replaceable. It gets soldered down for good instead (FP7, FP7r2, FP8 socket interfaces).

Performance

The average 7840HS in our database is in the same league as the Core i7-12700H, Core i7-12850HX, Core i9-12900H, Core i9-13900H and also the Ryzen 9 7940HS, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This is a very fast chip, as of Q3 2023.

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

Graphics

The Radeon 780M (12 CUs / 768 shaders, up to 2,700 MHz) is capable of powering 4 monitors simultaneously with resolutions as high as SUHD 4320p. It will also have little issue hardware-encoding and hardware-decoding the most widely used video codecs (AV1, HEVC, AVC). As far as gaming is concerned, the thing will let you play most games at 1080p as long as you are fine with moderate quality settings. Long story short, this is the best iGPU money can buy, as of H2 2023.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are, how competent the cooling solution of your system is, how fast the RAM of your system is (there is no dedicated VRAM here).

Power consumption

This Ryzen 7 series chip has a long-term power limit (default TDP) of 35 W to 54 W, giving system makers a choice between improving battery life and making the system they're designing insanely fast. Either way, an active cooling solution is a must for a laptop or a mini-PC built around this APU.

The 7840HS is built with TSMC's 4 nm process for high, as of late 2023, energy efficiency.

Intel Core i7-1370P

The Intel Core i7-1370P is the flagship Alder Lake-P CPU, which is to say, an expensive 28 W part meant for use in ultra-light (yet actively cooled) laptops. This CPU will probably be announced in early 2023 and it has 6 performance cores (P-cores, Golden Cove architecture) mated to 8 efficient cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture) according to a leak on Geekbench. The P-cores are Hyper-Threading-enabled for whopping 20 threads when combined with the E-cores. The clock speeds can reach up to 5.2 GHz for the performance cluster (1.9 GHz base speed) and 1.4 GHz to 3.9 GHz for the efficiency cluster. The CPU is quite similar to the older Core i7-1280P but probably offers higher clock speeds.

Full vPro feature set is supported by this Core i7 ("Enterprise" tier, allowing for remote device management).

Architecture

The i7 is a continuation of Intel's efforts to use the ARM-developed big.LITTLE technology for its own benefit. A single "little" Alder Lake core is supposed to be just as fast as a Skylake core (as found in the venerable Core i7-6700HQ among other options) which is six years old at this point. All of a Core i7-1280P's CPU cores enjoy access to 24 MB of L3 cache. The integrated memory controller supports up to 64 GB of LPDDR5-5200, DDR5-4800, LPDDR4x-4267 or DDR4-3200 RAM. Just like the other 12th Gen Intel Core processors, Core i7-1280P comes with Thread Director which is a new functionality designed to help Windows 11 decide which cores to use for what workload for best performance and efficiency possible. Hardware acceleration of AI algorithms is supported via GNA 3.0 and DL Boost (via AVX2). PCI-Express 5.0 support has not found its way into Alder Lake P processors, so users will have to be content with PCI-Express 4.0 for the time being. The CPU still only supports PCIe 4.0 x8 for a GPU and two PCIe 4.0 x4 for SSDs.

Please note this is not a user-replaceable CPU. It gets soldered permanently on to the motherboard (BGA1744 socket interface).

Performance

Multi-thread performance is most comparable to AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS, Ryzen 9 PRO 6950HS, Intel Core i9-11980HK. Which is impressive but comes with a catch; long-term performance sustainability will be rather poor unless the Power Limits are very high and the cooling solution is a truly capable one.

Graphics

The built-in graphics adapter in the form of the 96 EU Iris Xe running at up to 1.5 GHz has seen no change from what was built into the 11th Gen Tiger Lake-UP3 processors, like a i7-1165G7, which is hardly a downside as this iGPU is loaded with modern features such as AV1 video decoding capability and SUHD 4320p monitor support. 

Power Consumption

The i7's base power consumption (also known as the default TDP value or PL1) is 28 W, with 64 W being its maximum Intel-recommended Turbo power consumption (also known as the PL2). The "Minimum Assured" power consumption is fairly high at 20 watts. All in all, an active cooling solution is nearly a must.

Core i7-1370P is built with Intel's third-gen 10 nm process marketed as Intel 7.

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840HS

The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840HS is a fast high-end laptop processor of the Phoenix series. It offers 8 cores (octa core) based on the Zen 4 architecture that supports hyperthreading (16 threads). The cores clock from 3.8 (base) up to 5.1 GHz (single core boost). The processor includes 8 MB L2 cache and 16 MB L3 cache.

Compared to the consumer Ryzen 7 7840HS, the PRO models offer additional security, manageability, and reliability features designed for professional users and workstation environments.

The performance of the R7 PRO 7840HS is only slightly below the fastest model, the R9 PRO 7940HS, as the clock speed difference is only minimal (e.g. -100 MHz / 2% slower single core boost). Therefore, the CPU should also perform slightly higher than the old top model Ryzen 9 6980HX (8 Zen 3 cores with up to 4.9 GHz) at 54W TDP and Ryzen 9 6980HS at 35W TDP. Compared to the higher end Dragon Range series, the 7840HS should be similar to the Ryzen 7 7745HX (also 8 Zen 4 cores, max 5.1 GHz, 55W TDP, 32 MB L3).

The chip integrates a modern and fast RDNA 3 graphics adapter (iGPU) called Radeon 780M with 12 CUs and up to 2.7 GHz clock speed. Furthermore, the Phoenix series include a video engine with AV1 de- and encoding, a new Xilinx FPGA based XDNA AI accelerator (Ryzen AI) that should be faster than the AI engine in the Apple M2 SOC and a dual-channel DDR5-5600 / LPDDR5x-7500 memory controller (with ECC support). The connectivity features includes 2 possible USB 4 (40 Gbps) ports and 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes for a GPU and SSDs.

The Phoenix series uses a single monolithic design (unlike the chiplet design of the 7045HX series) and is manufactured on the modern 4nm process at TSMC. The TDP can be configured between 35 and 45 Watt.