Battery life better with Intel: ThinkPad X13 AMD shows a Renoir weakness

[Redaktion]

The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 1 with AMD Ryzen 4000 convinces us in the review nearly completely. There are barely any real problems. On of the very few categories where AMD was not better however: The battery life.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Battery-life-better-with-Intel-ThinkPad-X13-AMD-shows-a-Renoir-weakness.487542.0.html

[Padmakara]

In the article should have been mentioned that the AMD cpu has 8 cores and the Intel one has just 4 cores.
Also the Amd cpu has double the performance vs Intel  and the integrated gpu tripple the performance vs intel gpu.
Double the performance for 1h less battery life I think is pretty awesome and everyone would want it!

[toven]

Don't buy Intel X13. Better buy more powerful CPU+iGPU ,bigger screen, bigger battery, longer battery life, bigger keyboard key, lighter and CHEAPER AMD T14s.

[anaconda]

Again article paid by Intel. This just shows how desperate Intel is.

Compare a Ryzen 4 core battery life against Intel 4 core, then its fair.
So 4300U vs Intel 4 core.
Now you compare Intel 4core vs AMD 8 core.

Do not balme right away Renoir, it could be also the different components like fan, battery, screen what Lenovo puts there. By blaming straight that 8 core takes more battery than 4 and saying its Renoirs "flaw" is just plain stupidity.

You have soon same reputation as cpu.userbenchmark has. Think twice.
See you in reddit and all over the place. Your site reputation from now on will be hugely questionnable.

[nbt]

You can find LP display on intel.. upto 17hrs (HP model) on 4K display panel...

[eclyps]

Everyone is saying that it's not fair to compare battery life of 4 cores vs 8 and that we should compare 4 vs 4, but somehow it's fine to compare 4 vs 8 when we're taking about performance?

AMD's strategy for beating Intel at performance is to add more cores, not beat Intel at an individual core level. Tiger Lake should illustrate this even further. It's ok though, it has been an effective strategy so far and this is just one of the tradeoffs for all that multi-core performance. If you need that cpu power then an hour of battery life is probably an ok sacrifice.

[_MT_]

In the article should have been mentioned that the AMD cpu has 8 cores and the Intel one has just 4 cores.
Also the Amd cpu has double the performance vs Intel  and the integrated gpu tripple the performance vs intel gpu.
Double the performance for 1h less battery life I think is pretty awesome and everyone would want it!

Problem is that that's not how it works. When you actually start using the performance, battery life will go south. Laptops only last when they do mostly nothing. That's true for both platforms. Funny thing is that we're still talking about a 14 nm chip. In higher load scenarios, I imagine the AMD might pull ahead. It's more efficient at load and it's more powerful if your workload can load more than four cores so it should be done faster and switch to a low power state sooner. If your laptop is doing mostly nothing, an hour might be worth it. It's not like you're actually utilizing the eight core processor. You have to decide for yourself.

Interestingly, the load run time is almost double for the Intel version. Which would suggest a much lower long term power limit. You'd expect them to have similar load run times and the AMD version to simply do more work.

[_MT_]

Everyone is saying that it's not fair to compare battery life of 4 cores vs 8 and that we should compare 4 vs 4, but somehow it's fine to compare 4 vs 8 when we're taking about performance?

AMD's strategy for beating Intel at performance is to add more cores, not beat Intel at an individual core level. Tiger Lake should illustrate this even further. It's ok though, it has been an effective strategy so far and this is just one of the tradeoffs for all that multi-core performance. If you need that cpu power then an hour of battery life is probably an ok sacrifice.

It's not even clear cut. In low load scenarios (like watching a movie or web browsing), the name of the game is switching off everything you don't need. It doesn't matter that much what you have if you're not using it and it's off. Intel actually has a pretty sophisticated energy management and this is where it can earn points. Of course, not everything can easily be switched off. One problem being the fabric between cores. I'm not up to date on current techniques but I can imagine that arranging them into groups could help there. And under high loads, having more cores helps if the workload can utilize those cores. Generally speaking, efficiency goes down as frequency goes up (from a certain point). Having more cores with the same total power budget means that there is less power per core, meaning the core is running at a lower frequency and therefore it's probably more efficient. From what I have seen, Renoirs don't seem to benefit that much from extra power. So, having fewer cores and higher budget per core won't do you any favours.

[Padmakara]

In the article should have been mentioned that the AMD cpu has 8 cores and the Intel one has just 4 cores.
Also the Amd cpu has double the performance vs Intel  and the integrated gpu tripple the performance vs intel gpu.
Double the performance for 1h less battery life I think is pretty awesome and everyone would want it!

Problem is that that's not how it works. When you actually start using the performance, battery life will go south. Laptops only last when they do mostly nothing. That's true for both platforms. Funny thing is that we're still talking about a 14 nm chip. In higher load scenarios, I imagine the AMD might pull ahead. It's more efficient at load and it's more powerful if your workload can load more than four cores so it should be done faster and switch to a low power state sooner. If your laptop is doing mostly nothing, an hour might be worth it. It's not like you're actually utilizing the eight core processor. You have to decide for yourself.

Interestingly, the load run time is almost double for the Intel version. Which would suggest a much lower long term power limit. You'd expect them to have similar load run times and the AMD version to simply do more work.

Looks like you know what you are talking but you are only partial right.
In load also they have similar run times, if you check this
next.lab501.ro/notebook/english-lenovo-ideapad-s540-13are-vs-13iml-amd-ryzen-7-4800u-vs-intel-core-i7-10710u/14
Will show you the lenovo ideapad 13are 4800u vs 13iml 10710u where the battery in load is better for the AMD at 25w 15 w and also 12.5w in all these 3 tdp tests. And the performance is 1.5-2x in favor of AMD.
Also this title should have never been published, is like for example I put a title which is meaningless "Renault 1.6i has twice the range (km) of a Ferrari ". The raw horse power of the Ferrari makes you drive only let's say 700km and not 1200km like a Renault. But you never compare a 1.6 liters engine with 5l.

[deksman2]

Yeah... the 'comparison' is not exactly a good one.
For one thing, the Intel CPU has half the cores and can also be configured down to 10W  TDP.

This 'comparison' would have been better if we got exact TDP figures for each CPU, battery capacities, etc.

Also, considering that the AMD part is twice as fast in CPU operations, and really close or even identical in single core performance (obviously, CPU parts with half the cores like Intel will be able to clock higher giving them extra boost), not to mention the fact the iGP on AMD (enhanced Vega) is FAR superior to Intel's... a1 hour difference in battery-life is negligible compared to the overall performance you get with AMD system.

[Clandestine8]

Funny how everyone has found that AMD laptops tend to get 10% better battery life due to using quite a bit less power. I think that your should either look at the design differences or your test methodology as something is off here. AMD 4000 series uses considerably less power than the equivalent performing Intel CPU.

[Treepata]

An interesting point is made in this article, one I noticed as well from the X13 and T14s reviews. Obviously AMD has clearly won in terms of performance, and the energy needed to reach that performance, it should not be disregarded that Intel still manages to use less power for the same laptop model, e.g. under idle conditions.

In a typical user-case scenario, taking myself as an example, my laptop is not always doing something under full load. Often I find myself using it only to take notes in Onenote, write a paper or during a meeting or for a powerpoint presentation. For those activities, I am not stressing my laptop - but I do need it to run all day without backup power.

I will side with AMD nevertheless, as it can finish tasks quicker (and this saves energy as well), but I do hope that AMD can further optimise its processors (and associated mainboards etc.) to draw less power under idle, light or heavy loads.

[lejeczek]

My understanding is that Lenovo are full-on lazy twatts who have had Intel do the work of designing hardware for them (Lenovo is not unique among "big" manufacturers in that respect), so when it came to a test where Lenovo had to do something difficult on their own entirely, it turned out that they are barely average at the game of making hardware.
Lots love, xx.

[adityaTech]

Aww..you're totally swimming against the current here. The entire review community says Ryzen is getting upto 10% better battery life while you claim otherwise. Please provide more data to support your claim
Intel got to you, didn't they. It seems like after getting no traction at tier1 review sites, they're not courting tier2 review sites like yours and you totally sold your soul for paltry sum of money. For shame, sir. For shame!

[_MT_]

Looks like you know what you are talking but you are only partial right.
In load also they have similar run times, if you check this
next.lab501.ro/notebook/english-lenovo-ideapad-s540-13are-vs-13iml-amd-ryzen-7-4800u-vs-intel-core-i7-10710u/14
Will show you the lenovo ideapad 13are 4800u vs 13iml 10710u where the battery in load is better for the AMD at 25w 15 w and also 12.5w in all these 3 tdp tests. And the performance is 1.5-2x in favor of AMD.
Also this title should have never been published, is like for example I put a title which is meaningless "Renault 1.6i has twice the range (km) of a Ferrari ". The raw horse power of the Ferrari makes you drive only let's say 700km and not 1200km like a Renault. But you never compare a 1.6 liters engine with 5l.

Except I'm talking about X13 and local tests. And they state, IIRC, 92 minutes for AMD and 163 for Intel. That's a huge difference. As I wrote, I would expect them to run with similar long term power limits and therefore to have similar run times under load. That assumes the load is power limited. If it's not, I would expect the AMD to win as it's generally more efficient under load. This really begs an explanation. The only thing that comes to my mind is that the load might be GPU bound. In this department, it's apples and oranges. The AMD would end up paying for a much more powerful GPU. While the Intel would be slacking because the 620 is anemic.

It matters what the load is. Different loads are going to produce different run times. I though this doesn't need to be said. Also, different processors have different strengths and weaknesses. So, some loads might favour one processor and others another. And in the case of NBC, I have repeatedly complained that if you look at the power draws and corresponding run times, the numbers make no sense. Obvious complication being that one is measured while plugged in and the other while not. However, it begs an investigation into what the hell is going on.