Intel Core i7-7820HQ vs Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

Intel Core i7-7820HQ

The Intel Core i7-7820HQ is a fast quad-core processor for notebooks based on the Kaby Lake architecture and was announced in January 2017. It is the second fastest model of the consumer series at the time of the announcement. Only the i7-7920HQ and Xeon E3-1535M v6 are faster. Besides four cores including Hyper-Threading support running at 2.9 - 3.9 GHz (4 cores up to 3.5 GHz, 2 cores up to 3.7 GHz), the processor is also equipped with the HD Graphics 630 GPU as well as a dual-channel memory controller (DDR3L-1600/DDR4-2400). It is manufactured in a 14nm process with FinFET transistors.

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

Due to the higher clock speeds, the performance of the i7-7820HQ is slightly faster than the old Skylake top model Core i7-6920HQ (2.9 - 3.8 GHz). The performance is sufficient even for very demanding tasks and on par with powerful desktop quad-core processors.

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 even further. Intel still specifies the TDP with 45 Watts, but it can also be reduced to 35 Watts by the notebook manufacturers (cTDP down). This will obviously affect the performance, because the Turbo Boost cannot be maintained for longer periods.

Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

The Apple M3 Pro (12 Core) is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was launched in late 2023. It integrates a new 12-core CPU with 6 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 6 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a slimmed-down 11-core variant with a 14-core GPU.

Compared to the M2 Pro the M3 Pro has been slimmed down somewhat and swaps two performance cores for efficiency cores. This is due to the changed core configuration, as 6 cores are now used per cluster (the M2 Pro and M3 still have 4 cores per cluster). Furthermore, the memory bus has been reduced from 256 bits to 192 bits (150 GB/s vs. 200 GB/s). However, thanks to the new architecture and higher clock rates, the new M3 Pro is still slightly faster.

The M3 Pro also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the top model, all 18 cores of the chip are used and support up to 3 displays simultaneously (internal and 2 external).

GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 18 or 36 GB variants and offers 150 GB/s maximum bandwidth (192 bit bus).

The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (compared to 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now also supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded.

Unfortunately, the integrated WLAN only continues to support WiFi 6E (no WiFi 7), unlike the small M3 SoC thunderbolt 4 is also supported (max 40 Gbit/s).

The chip is manufactured in the current 3nm process (N3B) at TSMC and contains 37 billion transistors (-7.5% vs. Apple M2 Pro).