Intel Core i5-8265U vs AMD Ryzen 7 3750H

Intel Core i5-8265U

The Intel Core i5-8265U is a power efficient quad-core SoC for notebooks and Ultrabooks based on the Whiskey Lake generation and will probably be announced in August 2018. Compared to the similar named Kaby Lake-R processors (e.g. Core i5-8250U), the Whiskey Lake CPUs are now produced in a further improved 14nm process (14nm++) and offer higher clock speeds. The architecture and features are the same. The i5-8265U offers e.g. high Turbo clock speeds of 3,9 GHz (versus 3,4 GHz of the i5-8250U) for a single core (3.8 for two cores, 3.7 GHz for all four cores). The integrated GPU is still named Intel UHD Graphics 620 and the dual-channel memory controller still supports the same RAM speeds as Kaby-Lake-R (DDR4-2400 / LPDDR3-2133). Thermal Velocity Boost is not supported (only in the Core i7-8565U).

The Whiskey Lake SoCs are used with a new PCH produced in 14nm that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) and CNVi WiFi/BT parts.

Architecture

Intel basically uses the same micro architecture compared to Skylake and Kaby Lake, so the per-MHz performance does not differ. That means Whiskey Lake is a Kaby Lake chip manufactured in the improved 14nm++ process.

Performance

The performance of the i5-8265U depends on the cooling solution of the laptop and the defined TDP limits for short and long term performance. We already saw big differences for Kaby Lake-R (e.g., i7-8550U benchmarks), especially for long term (sustained) performance. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how the additionalTurbo  clock speed can be made use of. For the Core i7, Intel estimates between 3-11% higher performance to the Kaby-Lake-R generation and that should be similar in the Core i5 (as long as the cooling is sufficient).

Graphics

The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 (Intel Gen 9.5) is untouched from the 8th Gen Kaby Lake chips. With fast dual-channel memory it can reach the performance of a dedicated GeForce 920M.

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

Power Consumption

The chip is manufactured in a further improved 14nm process with FinFET transistors (14nm++), the same as the 8th Gen Coffee Lake processors. Intel still specifies the TDP with 15 Watts, which is typical for ULV chips. Depending on the usage scenario, the TDP can vary between 7.5 (cTDP Down) and 25 Watts.

Warning: Above information is partly still based on rumors and leaks and may therefore change till release.

AMD Ryzen 7 3750H

The AMD Ryzen 7 3750H is a mobile SoC that was announced in January 2019. It combines four Zen+ cores (8 threads) clocked at 2.3 - 4 GHz with a Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics card with 10 CUs (640 Shaders) clocked at up to 1400 MHz. Compared to the similar Ryzen 7 3700U, the 3750H offers a 20 Watt higher TDP and therefore a better performance under long periods of load. The integrated dual-channel memory controller supports up to DDR4-2400 memory. As the features of the Picasso APUs are the same compared to the Raven Ridge predecessors, we point to our Raven Ridge launch article.

Picasso SoCs use the Zen+ microarchitecture with slight improvements that should lead to a 3% IPS (performance per clock) improvements.

Performance

The average 3750H in our database is in the same league as the Core i7-10610U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This is a fairly good result, as of early 2022.

The ROG Zephyrus G15 GA502DU is among the fastest laptops built around the 3750H that we know of. It can be about 20% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 7 has a default TDP of 35 W (also known as the long-term power limit). Laptop manufacturers are free to change that value to anything between 12 W and 35 W with clock speeds and performance changing accordingly. These values are comparatively high, making an active cooling solution pretty much a necessity.

Last but not the least, this AMD APU is built with a rather old, as of late 2022, 12 nm process for lower-than-average energy efficiency.