Intel Core i5-7500 vs AMD Ryzen 7 5700U

Intel Core i5-7500

The Intel Core i5-7500 is a fast mid-range quad-core processor for desktops based on the Kaby Lake architecture and was announced in January 2017. It offers four cores (no HyperThreading and therefore also only 4 threads at once) that run at 3.4 - 3.8 GHz.

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

The performance of the i5-7500 is comparable to a mobile Core i7-7700HQ. Therefore, the performance is sufficient even for demanding applications and games.

Graphics

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 has 24 Execution Units (similar to previous HD Graphics 530) running at 350 - 1100 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 slightly. Intel still specifies the TDP with 65 Watts, which is a lot more than the 45 Watts of the mobile Kaby-Lake-H CPUs but less than e.g. the Core i5-7600K (91 Watt).

AMD Ryzen 7 5700U

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700U is an APU of the Lucienne product family designed for leaner laptops. The Ryzen features eight Zen 2 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz (base clock speed) to 4.3 GHz (Boost) as well as a Vega 8 iGPU. Thread-doubling SMT tech is enabled in this CPU for up to 16 concurrent processing threads.

Architecture

In spite of what its name may suggest, Ryzen 7 5700U is not a Zen 3 part, meaning this is a Ryzen 4000 series mobile processor in disguise. Nevertheless, the CPU is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process and its performance as well as energy efficiency figures are very strong compared to what Intel currently has to offer in this segment.

The Ryzen 7 features 8 MB of Level 3 cache. Its built-in memory controller is designed to work with dual-channel DDR4-3200 or quad-channel LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Unlike the desktop Ryzen 5000 processors, Ryzen 7 5700U does not support PCI-Express 4.0, meaning those speedy NVMe SSDs will be limited to read/write rates of 3.9 GB/s.

The Ryzen gets soldered directly to the motherboard (FP6 socket) and is thus not user-replaceable.

Performance

The average 5700U in our database is in the same league as the Ryzen 7 4800U, Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U, Core i7-1365U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 35 W, the Schenker VIA 15 Pro is among the fastest laptops built around the 5700U that we know of. It can be roughly 50% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Graphics

In addition to its eight CPU cores, Ryzen 7 5700U features a Radeon RX Vega series graphics adapter with 8 CUs (= 512 shaders) running at up to 1,900 MHz. This iGPU trails behind the 96 EU Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 in synthetic benchmarks, yet its real-world performance is good enough for many games released in 2020 and 2021 at reasonable resolutions (up to Full HD 1080p) and low to medium quality. As the Vega has no VRAM of its own, it is paramount that fast system RAM is used.

The graphics adapter definitely supports UHD 2160p monitors at 60 Hz, and will gladly HW-decode AVC, HEVC and VP9-encoded videos. There is no AV1 support here though.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 7 has a default TDP, also known as the long-term power limit, of 15 W; laptop makers are free to change that to anything between 10 W and 25 W, with clock speeds and performance changing accordingly as a result. Most companies will go for a higher value to extract more performance out of the APU. By choosing the lowest value, it will be possible to build a passively cooled system around the chip, too.

The 7 nm TSMC process the R7 5700U is built with makes for decent, as of late 2022, energy efficiency.