Quote from: Donald Alonzo on November 18, 2020, 08:21:34
I don't really see any issue here, this is just a circumstantial representation of the way the market is headed with regards to these very popular low powered chipsets.
They're designed to be versatile and rightfully so, Intel and AMD are both making chips in this 15-25 watt range that are intended for a multitude of different form factors. Here's the thing though, the majority of the devices that will be toting these chips are ultraportables. Thermal limitations are more pronounced at this segment than anywhere else and reference models are intended to flex the capabilities of the processor itself, so it somewhat expected that these devices will outperform retail units.
There are a number of reasons for this. First is obviously cost since not every laptop wielding whichever chip is being compared to its reference model is being manufactured with no bars on the cost of the unit. I'm not sure that Intel (or AMD on their reference models) goes absolutely nuts on their in house models but they aren't producing many of these, just enough to cover R&D testing and for early review units to showcase the chip's potential. The key is just that, these are meant to showcase "potential" before the chips hit stores with real world usecases and various manufacturing restrictions in mind.
The other big point is the device form factor. Cost can take away things like high end fans with aerodynamically tuned intake and exhausts or vapor chambers and heat pipes made of exotic materials but final products adhere to a whole new set of guidelines. Bill of materials may be the first limitation to hit a specific MSRP but manufacturers have specific ideals in mind with how they design their devices and spend that money. Some may be intending for a super thin and light device/tablet which will inherently be more difficult to cool and also be more restrictive on battery capacity which will cause peak power and endurance limitations. Others may want to package the highest end processor they can into a device that undercuts the competition's offerings in price which may limit their spending on cooling solutions for the chip. A few may have no such limits on packaging or cost but these types of devices are rare in this day and age because consumers of ultraportables won't be so keen on spending a fortune on a device that is thicker and offers the best cooling for these chips because they could get a much better performing device equipped with a 35-45w chip that won't be all that much thicker and may even include a dGPU.
This is the cause of the phenomena you're describing above. 15w CPUs are capable of amazing things in these reference designs and being close to this in a retail unit is a significant feat indeed but Intel made their 1165g7 reference model to directly compete with the Ryzen 4700/4800u devices. Considering how formidable these devices are (both in terms of CPU and iGPU capabilities), Intel really had to push the performance envelope or risk consumers writing the future in devices off due to the lower cost of most of these Ryzen devices.
A 4700u equipped ideapad 5 isn't the slimmest ultraportable out there by any means but at prices fluctuating between $600-$800, it offers a phenomenal value and actually uses its slightly thicker build to an advantage due to being able to cool itself extremely well despite likely not having the most expensive and robust cooling solution. This results in a device that undercuts the Intel based competition on price while offering superior compute performance in many regards. The build may not be quite as slim and light as high end 11th gen Intel devices but only a few manage to compete with the price point they offer. Asus, on the other hand offers a 14" zenbook with the same chip that is more limited in boost TDP but in a slimmer package at a similar price range. So no matter how you slice it, Intel had their work cut out for them with these 11th gen processors and since the 4000 series Ryzen chips were released well in advance, they had to create a reference unit that showcased some sort of advantage over the AMD based competition or people would hold off until Black Friday pricing dropped the 4700u laptops even further down in price.
That all said, there is obviously a ton more to these devices than just the processors but leading up to a chip's release, people don't really know the ins and outs of these devices at all (maybe some insight from previous generation models but things are always subject to revisions). All they can go off of is leaks on performance and the reference laptops might have kept at least a few buyers from getting an AMD based laptop until they saw how the initial Tiger lake devices fared in a direct comparison of what they, as consumers, would actually be able to decide between.
Is it a letdown? Maybe a tad bit only really to those who don't know this sort of thing is going to occur with this kind of chip in particular. For 45w CPUs, this won't be as evident. Sure, some 45w devices may strive for absolute thinness/lightness and underperform but most will come close to any reference models produced. This isn't really the case for low powered chips though as I just described.
The problem is that it's a major and deliberate misrepresentation of the product meant to mislead consumers into waiting for what was a big letdown instead of purchasing a superior product, as well as helping prevent OEMs from using said superior product more. They hyped it up knowing full well it's real-world performance wouldn't be anything near that, and all the various "professional" reviewers and writers only helped by singing the praises of a chip with very little even known about its performance, only that Intel's own in-house testing showed good results.
I realize every company wants to show their products in their best light, and they all do this sort of thing, but Intel is one of the worst about it. And they've spent years relying on their market dominance, not to mention anti-competitive practices, to maintain their user base and dominance, a vicious cycle, instead of actually making the effort to make real, appreciable improvements in their products. Year after year of meager improvements, typically around 7-10%, and multiple versions with no improvement in the iGPU, then when they finally did improve it, they released two versions, one with it (Ice Lake) and one without (Comet Lake), and Ice Lake wasn't given the business aspects, meaning many laptops continued to have the old, crappy GPU.
Only when AMD threatened their dominance did they step up their game (or at least seem to), just like what happened almost 20 years ago with the Athlon 64. But instead of actually improving their chips to be able to compete with AMD, which they probably can't even do at this point due to their years of complacency, they instead hyped up their new chip to make everyone
think it would offer solid competition. It's not so much that they oversold it, though of course that's a problem, it's that they did that instead of actually making a good chip. If they had made something that looked twice as good as Ryzen and ended up only being 25% better, that would be a big disappointment, but it would still be competitive. Instead, they made it look barely better, which was already pretty pathetic and a bad sign, and now we're seeing that it's barely the same, if not still worse.
And that's compared to AMD's essentially last-gen chips. As you said, "Intel made their 1165g7 reference model to directly compete with the Ryzen 4700/4800u devices." They should have been making something to compete with Cezanne, not Renoir. In just a couple months, AMD is going to release their latest chips, and even if the performance increase is only a fraction of what they say (which, to me, it seems AMD tends to be more accurate in their predictions than Intel), then it will demolish Tiger Lake.
Of course retail systems aren't going to perform as well as chip manufacturers' test systems, but AMD manages to still have very good performance in retail systems, and that's despite the OEMs' attempts to sabotage their AMD models. So while I'm sure there's a fair bit of difference between how Renoir performs in AMD's testing and in retail computers, as there will be with Cezanne, even after that difference Intel still can't compete, especially when you consider the price difference.
Intel accomplished a few things by misleading everyone: they caused OEMs to continue to hold out on producing more AMD variants, they caused consumers to hold out for Tiger Lake instead of buying an AMD system, they caused many consumers (and salespeople who "inform" consumers looking for advice) who see just enough tech news to know that a new, great CPU is coming but then not see how disappointing it actually is to go that route instead of with AMD, and they (probably, based on comparing the announcement date and following hype with the stock prices) temporarily cauterized the wound caused by Ryzen in July. But now they're stock just took another large dip, possibly because of the truth coming out, possibly because of news regarding Cezanne, probably because they lost a huge chuck of business from Apple and have sold off part of their business. Intel is hurting bad right now, and their stock is about to hit a 3-year low, with no reason to believe it's going to stop there. They're desperate, and resorting to shady marketing tactics since they can't actually compete.
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