Intel Core i7-7700HQ vs AMD Ryzen 5 4600U

Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Intel Core i7-7700HQ is a fast quad-core processor for notebooks based on the Kaby Lake H architecture (7th generation Core), which was announced in January 2017 at CES. It is the successor to the Core i7-6700HQ from the Skylake generation and is manufactured in an improved 14 nm+ process, so the clocks are 200 MHz higher at the same TDP. The architecture was not changed, only the video engine got an update (see our Kaby Lake article).

The integrated graphics card is called Intel HD Graphics 630, but the architecture does not differ from the 530 GPU from the Skylake generation and only the clocks are slightly higher. 

Performance

Thanks to the 200 MHz higher clocks (5.5-7.6% depending on the Boost), the CPU performance is increased and roughly on par with the Core i7-6970HQ (2.8-3.7 GHz but with 128 MB eDRAM). The TDP can also be reduced to 35 Watts (cTDP down), but this will reduce the performance.

Power Consumption

Due to its 45-Watt TDP, the CPU will be used in bigger notebooks with at least 15 inches most of the time.

AMD Ryzen 5 4600U

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600U is a processor for thin and light laptops based on the Renoir architecture. The 4600U integrates six cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.1 (guaranteed base clock) to 4 GHz (Turbo) with SMT / Hyperthreading support (12 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.

With two less cores, the Ryzen 5 4600U is clearly slower than the Ryzen 7 4700U and 4800U in multi threaded workloads. However, it should still beat the fastest 15 Watt Ice Lake Intel Core i7-1065G7 (4 cores, 3.9 GHz). Thanks to the 4 GHz Boost clock, the single core performance should be similar. Therefore, the Ryzen 5 4600U is a very fast 15 Watt CPU and clearly faster than the old Ryzen 7 3700U.

In addition to the six CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 6 integrated graphics card with 6 CUs and up to 1500 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 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 15 Watt (default) and can be configured from 10 to 25 Watt by the laptop vendor. That means the chip is intended for thin and light laptops (but with fans).