Dec 17, 2019 20:00:00

As a result of benchmarking on the rare laptop “Surface Laptop 3” with separate models with Intel and AMD chips, which one is better?

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Surface Event held by Microsoft in October 2019, “Surface Laptop 3”, the third generation of Surface Laptop, was announced. This Surface Laptop 3 is available in two models, a 13.5-inch model and a 15-inch model, but it is a rare case that it contains processors from competitors Intel and AMD. This is a great opportunity to compare Intel and AMD processors, and technical media AnandTech has made a thorough comparison.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 Showdown: AMD's Ryzen Picasso vs. Intel's Ice Lake
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15213/the-microsoft-surface-laptop-3-showdown-amd-picasso-vs-intel-ice-lake

Microsoft laptop 'Surface Laptop 3' has been reviewed by GIGAZINE. You can see how it looks by checking the following article.

Slim Microsoft `` Surface Laptop 3 '' photo review with 15 inch display-gigazine

The specs of Surface Laptop 3 available in 2 models are as follows.

◆ 13.5 inch
Body size: 308mm × 223mm × 14.5mm
Display: 13.5 inch PixelSense display
Resolution: 2256 × 1504 (201ppi)
Memory: 8GB / 16GB
Processor: Quad Core 10th Generation Intel Core i5-1035G7 / Quad Core 10th Generation Intel Core i7-1065G7
OS: Windows 10 Home
Storage capacity: 28GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (SSD)
Battery life: Normal device usage up to 11.5 hours
Graphics: Intel Iris Plus graphics
Wireless features: Bluetooth wireless 5.0 technology, Wi-Fi 6: 802.11ax compatible

◆ 15 inch
Body size: 339.5mm × 244mm × 14.69mm
Display: 115-inch PixelSense display
Resolution: 2496 × 1664 (201ppi)
Memory: 8GB / 16GBRAM
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3580U with Radeon Vega 9 graphics Microsoft Surface edition / AMD Ryzen 7 3780U with Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics Microsoft Surface edition
OS: Windows 10 Home
Storage capacity: 128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (SSD)
Battery life: Normal device usage up to 11.5 hours
Graphics: AMD Radeon Vega 9 Graphics Microsoft Surface Edition / AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 Graphics Microsoft Surface Edition
Wireless features: Bluetooth wireless 5.0 technology, Wi-Fi 5: 802.11ac compatible

The APU on the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 is from the Picasso generation, manufactured on a 12+ process based on the Zen + architecture. The number of cores of the processor is 2 to 4, and the peak operating frequency band of the top model is 4.0GHz. It is an original edition born by co-development with Microsoft, the number of graphic scores is one more than normal models, `` 9 '' AMD Radeon Vega 9 graphics Microsoft Surface edition, AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 '11' graphics Microsoft Surface edition is installed.

The specs of AMD Ryzen 7 3780U with Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics Microsoft Surface edition are as follows.

AnandTech for APU of Picasso generation, 'Picasso is a solid product, Raven Ridge in before a generation of APU of .Picasso which was boosted greatly the efforts that focus on laden notebook PC with AMD-made processor

idle state ' We were struggling with the very high power consumption in the country, but AMD has succeeded in overcoming this problem to some extent with Picasso.'

However, although Picasso generation APU supports only DDR4-2400 in memory, Intel finally supported LPDDR4X in 2019, so on Surface Laptop 3 with Intel processor, the memory is compatible with LPDDR4X That.

In addition, on the official page of Surface Laptop 3 , Microsoft is about `` custom AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface edition '' installed on the 15-inch model, `` With one built-in graphic score than AMD Ryzen mobile processors on the market ' The AMD Ryzen 7 Microsoft Surface Edition processor is described as “the fastest in the 15” class, and the AMD Ryzen 5 Microsoft Surface Edition processor is described as “two times faster than the Laptop 2”.

In addition, the background of joint development of AMD and processors is explained as follows.

When looking for a suitable processor for the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3, it's easy to do creativity apps like Tabs and Adobe Premiere Rush, or responsive multitasking to play popular games like Rocket League and League of Legends. A single processor required the best graphics performance. To keep the device under 1542g (3.40 pounds) and maintain long battery life, the processor needed to be under 15W.

One processor stood out. AMD Ryzen mobile processor. This processor design choice is based on an established multi-year partnership with Microsoft and AMD, using Xbox One custom processors to raise world-class graphics performance and experience to tens of millions . The result is the first in the category (ultra-thin laptop) for creative application and graphics performance.

On the other hand, the specifications of Intel Core i7-1065G7 loaded on the 13.5 inch model are as follows. Ice Lake , the 10th generation Intel Core processor, is used. The CPU core uses the next-generation CPU architecture “ Sunny Cove ”, and Microsoft claims that “Ice Lake has an 18% improvement in IPC over Skylake ”. The manufacturing process is 10nm.

“The 10nm process is not as optimized as the 14nm process, and the highest frequency of the top Intel Core i7-1065G7 turbo boost is only 3.90GHz, which is the

best of the processors manufactured by Intel ’s 14nm process. 'It is 20% lower than the top model .' So, “Intel ’s latest CPUs are faster than older CPUs, but the numbers are not so clear. IPC is up 18%, but the maximum frequency is down 20%, so overall The improvement is not that big. '

The fact is that Intel's GPU-integrated chips have been far enough for laptops for quite some time, but far less capable than AMD graphics. However, the 10th generation Intel Core processor uses the Gen 11 graphic architecture to improve performance. Furthermore, more space for GPUs has been secured in the chip than before, and it seems that this will lead to significant improvements.

In addition, as mentioned above, the 10th generation Intel Core processor supports LPDDR4X, so it can not only secure more memory bandwidth (up to 60.6GB / s), but also improve power saving performance. In addition, AnandTech writes that it is 'a much better product than Intel products so far' because it supports a wide range of support for Thunderbolt 3 and 'recovery from standby state like a tablet' etc. The

The SPEC benchmark “SPEC2017-ST” was used to compare the performance of the two chipsets.

Single thread performance is as follows. Blue is Intel Core i7-1065G7 adopted for Surface Laptop 3, red is AMD Ryzen 7 3780U which is also adopted for Surface Laptop 3. Light blue indicates the score of Intel i9-9900K for desktop, and orange indicates AMD Ryzen 9 3950X for desktop. The score shows that the higher the number, the better, and the Intel Core i7-1065G7 overwhelmed the AMD Ryzen 7 3780U in every test. While the Intel Core i7-1065G7 has a score comparable to desktop chipsets, the AMD Ryzen 7 3780U has a much clearer gap in scores than desktop products.

Benchmark result of integer arithmetic.

Benchmark result of floating point arithmetic. A score of

519.lbm_r indicates that AMD Ryzen 7 3780U is more than twice as slow as Intel Core i7-1065G7. About this, AnandTech writes that `` AMD Ryzen 7 3780U's slow DDR4-2400 memory may be a bottleneck because benchmark tests have limited memory bandwidth and subsystems '' .

The following graph is a score that summarizes the benchmark average of integer arithmetic (top) and the benchmark average of floating point arithmetic (bottom).

The following graph shows the results of comparing multi-thread performance. Blue represents Intel Core i7-1065G7, red represents AMD Ryzen 7 3780U score.

The difference between the integer arithmetic benchmark results is clearly more than single thread performance, and AMD Ryzen 7 3780U may exceed the score depending on the content of the test. However, basically, Intel Core i7-1065G7 is dominant.

Intel Core i7-1065G7 is more dominant in benchmark results for floating point operations.

The following graph is a score that summarizes the benchmark average of integer arithmetic (top) and the benchmark average of floating point arithmetic (bottom).

The AMD Ryzen 7 3780U seems to consume less power than the Intel Core i7-1065G7, but the benchmark results clearly show that the Intel chipset is performing well. For this reason, there were voices from users such as “It is still difficult to compete with Intel with current AMD mobile chips” and “There is a large difference in memory bandwidth as well as IPC”.