Intel Core i7-8850H vs AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS vs AMD Ryzen 9 8945H
Intel Core i7-8850H
► remove from comparison
The Intel Core i7-8850H is a high-end processor for laptops with six cores based on the Coffee Lake architecture and will be announced early 2018. The processor clocks at between 2.6 and 4.3 GHz (4.1 with 4 cores, 4 GHz with 6 cores) and can execute up to twelve threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. According to Intel, the CPU is manufactured in an improved 14nm (14nm++) process.
The Coffee Lake architecture is similar to Kaby Lake and differs only in the amount of cores (now six cores for the high end versions) and the improved 14nm process (14nm++ according to Intel).
Performance
Due to the two additional cores, performance has increased by almost 50% compared to a similar clocked Kaby Lake processor like the Core i7-7920HQ (3.1 - 4.1 GHz). Single-core performance has not improved since its Kaby Lake predecessor. As a high-end model, the i7-8850H is suitable for the most demanding applications and games.
Graphics
The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 iGPU is supposed to offer a slightly higher performance as its clock rate has been increased by 50 MHz (rumored). The architecture is identical to that of the Intel HD Graphics 630. We do expect a performance improvement, but as a low-end solution it will probably only display 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.
AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS
► remove from comparison
The Ryzen 5 8645HS is an upper mid-range processor (APU) of the Hawk Point family. This isn't an entirely new chip; instead, the 8645HS is a rebadged Ryzen 5 7640HS with higher clock speeds on the Ryzen AI NPU. The 8645HS was brought to life in Q4 2023 and it has 6 SMT-enabled Zen 4 cores (12 threads) running at 4.3 GHz to 5.0 GHz. The Radeon 760M iGPU is responsible for carrying out 3D calculations and similar duties.
Architecture & Features
Hawk Point family chips are powered by the Zen 4 architecture, much like Phoenix and Dragon Range family chips are. That's not to say there is no difference between the three. With Hawk Point, AMD is betting big on generative AI; these chips are promised to deliver an up to 40% increase in generative AI performance over 7040 series APUs making apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Photoshop even more powerful.
Unlike Zen 3, Zen 4 features AVX512 support and, thanks to a plethora of other improvements including larger caches/registers/buffers across the board, is slated to bring a double-digit IPC improvement over the former.
Elsewhere, the 8645HS has 16 MB of L3 cache and a super-fast DDR5-5600 / LPDDR5x-7500 RAM controller. USB 4 (and thus Thunderbolt) is supported natively and so is PCIe 4. In fact, 20 PCIe 4 lanes are on offer; data transfer speeds of up to 7.8 GB/s will be possible provided a sufficiently fast NVMe SSD is used.
Systems powered by this Ryzen 5 series chip are expected to run 64-bit Windows 11, 64-bit Windows 10, or Linux. Please note that the APU is not overclockable and neither will you be able to replace it with a faster one as it gets soldered to the motherboard permanently (FP7, FP7r2, FP8 socket interfaces).
Performance
Since the 8645HX is an 7640HS in disguise, it is safe to expect the APU to be about as fast as the Ryzen 9 5900HX, Ryzen 7 6800H, Ryzen 7 7736U and also the Core i5-12500H, as far as multi-thread performance is concerned.
Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of your system is.
Graphics
The Radeon 760M has 8 CUs (512 shaders) running at up to 2,600 MHz. While this is not the best graphics adapter for gaming as it's only just fast enough for low quality settings and resolutions such as 1600 x 900, it will let you connect up to four SUHD 4320p monitors and it also HW-encodes and HW-decodes the most widely used video codecs such as AV1, HEVC and AVC without breaking a sweat.
Power consumption
The 8645HS has a long-term power limit (default TDP) of 35 W to 54 W, giving laptop makers a choice between improving battery life and giving the system they are working on more oomph. Either way, an active cooling solution is a must for any system powered by the chip.
This Ryzen 5 series APU is built with TSMC's 4 nm process for high, as of late 2023, energy efficiency.
AMD Ryzen 9 8945H
► remove from comparisonThe Ryzen 9 8945H is a rebadged Ryzen 9 7940HS with higher clock speeds on the Ryzen AI NPU. To be more specific, this is a powerful Hawk Point family laptop chip that has eight Zen 4 cores running at 4.0 GHz to 5.2 GHz. All of its cores are SMT-enabled for a total of 16 processing threads.
Compared to the 8945HS, the H seems to be a local variant for China and offers the same specifications.
The Radeon 780M serves as the integrated graphics adapter.
Architecture & Features
Hawk Point family chips are powered by the Zen 4 architecture, much like Phoenix and Dragon Range family chips are. That's not to say there is no difference between the three. With Hawk Point, AMD is betting big on generative AI; these chips are promised to deliver an up to 40% increase in generative AI performance over 7040 series APUs making apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Photoshop even more powerful.
Unlike Zen 3, Zen 4 features AVX512 support and, thanks to a plethora of other improvements including larger caches/registers/buffers across the board, is slated to bring a double-digit IPC improvement over the former.
Elsewhere, the 8945H has 16 MB of L3 cache and support for super-fast RAM (up to LPDDR5x-7500 or DDR5-5600; no ECC support). The processor is compatible with USB 4 and thus with Thunderbolt; PCIe support is limited to the 4.0 spec for a throughput of 1.97 GB/s per lane. 20 lanes are available.
OS support is limited to 64-bit editions of Windows 11 and Windows 10 and of course to Linux. Note that the chip isn't overclockable and neither is it user-replaceable as it gets soldered down for good (FP7, FP7r2, FP8 socket interfaces).
Performance
The 8945H is an R9 7940HS in disguise, so it's realistic to expect the chip to be just slightly faster than the Core i9-12900HK and also the Ryzen 7 7840HS, as far as multi-thread performance is concerned.
Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of your system is.
Graphics
The Radeon 780M has 12 CUs (768 shaders) running at up to 2,800 MHz. This is a very fast iGPU, as of late 2023. It will let you use up to 4 monitors with resolutions as high as SUHD 4320p, and it is also capable of HW-encoding and HW-decoding the most widely used video codecs including AVC, HEVC and AV1. More importantly, it is fast enough for proper 1080p gaming as long as one is fine with low to medium detail settings.
Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are, how competent the cooling solution of the system is, how fast the RAM of the system is (there is no dedicated VRAM here).
Power consumption
This Ryzen 9 series chip has a long-term power limit (default TDP) of 35 W to 54 W, giving laptop makers a choice between longer battery life and higher performance. Either way, an active cooling solution is a must for a system powered by this chip.
The 8945H is built with TSMC's 4 nm process for high, as of late 2023, energy efficiency.
| Model | Intel Core i7-8850H | AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS | AMD Ryzen 9 8945H | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Codename | Coffee Lake-H | Hawk Point-HS (Zen 4) | Hawk Point-HS (Zen 4) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series | Intel Coffee Lake | AMD Hawk Point (Zen 4/4c) | AMD Hawk Point (Zen 4/4c) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series: Hawk Point (Zen 4/4c) Hawk Point-HS (Zen 4) |
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| Clock | 2600 - 4300 MHz | 4300 - 5000 MHz | 4000 - 5200 MHz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| L1 Cache | 384 KB | 384 KB | 512 KB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| L2 Cache | 1.5 MB | 6 MB | 8 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| L3 Cache | 9 MB | 16 MB | 16 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cores / Threads | 6 / 12 | 6 / 12 6 x 5.0 GHz AMD Zen 4 | 8 / 16 8 x 5.2 GHz AMD Zen 4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TDP | 45 Watt | 45 Watt | 45 Watt | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technology | 14 nm | 4 nm | 4 nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| max. Temp. | 100 °C | 100 °C | 100 °C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Socket | FCBGA1440 | FP7/FP7r2/FP8 | FP7/FP7r2/FP8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Features | Dual-Channel DDR4 Memory Controller, HyperThreading, AVX, AVX2, Quick Sync, Virtualization, AES-NI | DDR5-5600/LPDDR5x-7500 RAM, PCIe 4, Ryzen AI, AES, AVX, AVX2, AVX512, FMA3, MMX (+), SHA, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSE4A, SSSE3 | DDR5-5600/LPDDR5x-7500 RAM, PCIe 4, Ryzen AI, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4A, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, AVX-512, BMI2, ABM, FMA, ADX, SMEP, SMAP, SMT, CPB, AES-NI, RDRAND, RDSEED, SHA, SME | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| iGPU | Intel UHD Graphics 630 (350 - 1150 MHz) | AMD Radeon 760M ( - 2600 MHz) | AMD Radeon 780M ( - 2800 MHz) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Architecture | x86 | x86 | x86 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| $395 U.S. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Announced | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Manufacturer | ark.intel.com | www.amd.com | www.amd.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Die Size | 178 mm2 | 178 mm2 |
Benchmarks
Average Benchmarks Intel Core i7-8850H → 100% n=29
Average Benchmarks AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS → 164% n=29
Average Benchmarks AMD Ryzen 9 8945H → 196% n=29
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
