AMD Ryzen 9 4900H vs Intel Xeon W-10855M

AMD Ryzen 9 4900H

The AMD Ryzen 9 4900H is a mobile SoC for big laptops based on the Renoir architecture. At the time of announcement in March 2020 it is the fastest model of the 4000H series. The R9 4900H integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.3 (guaranteed base clock) to  4.4 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 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

According to our information, the Ryzen 9 4900H is only slightly faster than the Ryzen 7 4800H. The CPU is clocked 400 MHz (base +14%) to 200 MHz (boost +5%) higher, but the gains greatly depend on the cooling and TDP settings. Compared to Intel chips, the i9-9980HK top model should be comparable. That means the Ryzen 9 4900H should be able to handle all demanding tasks and gaming.

In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 8 integrated graphics card with 8 CUs. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 12 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 45 Watt (default). That means the chip is intended for big and relatively heavy laptops.

Intel Xeon W-10855M

The Intel Xeon W-10855M is a high-end processor for laptops with six cores based on the Comet Lake architecture (CML-H, 4th generation of Skylake). The processor clocks at between 2.8 and 4.8 GHz (probably 4.4 GHz with 6 cores) and can execute up to twelve threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. The processor is still manufactured in the old 14nm (14nm++) process. 

The Comet Lake architecture is similar to Coffee Lake and offers the same features and is produced in the same 14nm process. Other than the improved clock rates, the memory controller now also supports faster DDR4-2933 RAM. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

The Intel Xeon W-10855M supports the management features vPro, TXT and SIPP and is the professional version of the Core i7-10850H with slightly higher clock speeds (+100 MHz base speed). 

Performance

The performance of the Xeon W-10855M should be similar to the old top model Core i7-8950H (6 cores, 2.9 - 4.8 GHz). Thanks to the 6 cores and high Turbo speeds, even demanding applications should run fine on the CPU. However, long term performance is always depending on the laptop cooling system and system configuration.

Graphics

The integrated Intel UHD Graphics P630 iGPU is supposed to offer a similar performance as the UHD630 in the Core i7-9750H. As a  low-end solution it will only run current games smoothly at reduced details - if at all.

Power Consumption

Intel specifies the TDP with 45 watts and therefore the i7 is only suited for big laptops with good cooling solutions. Using cTDP-down, the CPU can also be configured to 35 Watt resulting in a reduced performance.