Intel Alder-Lake & efficiency: Intel's newest CPUs might cut down the battery life

[Redaktion]

Intel Alder-Lake will soon arrive in many laptops models. The focus of the new platform is the performance of the new CPUs - but the efficiency is worrying. New spec sheets with battery life numbers from Lenovo indicate that laptops with the 2022 Intel platform might have worse battery life than their predecessors.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Alder-Lake-efficiency-Intel-s-newest-CPUs-might-cut-down-the-battery-life.615383.0.html

[ZuLuuuuuu]

I wonder if my post at ThinkPad reddit titled "Alder Lake ThinkPads seem to have less battery life in general compared to last year's models" which I sent on Friday has inspired this news entry 🙂

[Barebooh]

Meh. That's just Windows 10.11 "battery tax".
I mean, if you spin a Chromium Extension Framework in the background FOR EVERY APP, updating news & weather & all that sorta sh*t... Your battery life's gonna be sh*t! It's like, "learn to code"!

[Mario Ray Mahardhika]

There are handful of Alder Lake, and Rembrandt laptops for that matter, reviewed already. And not only frok Lenovo.

It clearly shows the inefficiency as Rembrandt can typically last double the Alder Lake, despite losing just a bit behind in maximum performance. Not to mention RDNA2 iGPU leaves Intel XE in the dust.

Some people might no longer need a laptop with low performance dGPU such as Nvidia MX series, as the performance will be just as similar.

[Sashaga]

Alder lake cpu can clock up to 100w which allows over 5.3Ghz cpu performance at a high inefficient speed interface. This makes AMD a better choice for the power computing generation allowing 20TFLOps for every watt

[JayN]

Intel has some power efficent cores on most of the laptop models.  The obvious thing to do is add an operation mode that disables the high performance cores, for use when battery life is the prime concern.

Not clear what the major concern is.  Is this pointed at people spending 11 hours in a coffee shop?

[Anonym]

Intel has some power efficent cores on most of the laptop models.

That's a common misconception. Unlike the big.LITTLE implementation in ARM, Intel chose to optimize for die surface rather than power consumption. That is, the Intel "efficiency cores" have the highest surface to computational power ratio, four cores in the same surface as a single "performance core" to be exact. Intel never claimed those cores took that much less power, because they really aren't that much better in that regard. It's "moar cores" taken to the next level, where "efficiency" is actually "moar cores in the same space". Bravo Intel.

[Anonym]

bugfix:
it's the *lowest* surface to computational power ratio

[Manhattan Marc]

This Intel 11th Gen to Intel 12th Gen comparison may not be fair as I believe at this point you are comparing the currently released 28 Watt P-series mobile processors to the prior generation 15 Watt U-Series Processors. You will really have to wait for a the new 12th Gen 15 Watt U-Series to come out for a fair comparison.

PS -  It seems to be incontestable that AMD and certainly Apple are far more power efficient per unit of computing.

[DavidC1]

That's cause the E cores aren't there for increased battery life but increased performance and performance/watt which certainly achieves.

During light workloads and idle the chips are asleep anyways so it doesn't matter whether you use an E core or a P core.

Intel's problem is that they have an off-die PCH, while ARM and even AMD has an on-die one. That's why Remembrandt is starting to beat Intel in battery life, a bastion they held until recently.

Raptorlake's DLVR won't help battery life either. Again, it doesn't help idle. It's there to increase performance/watt, so it has better performance at the same TDP, which means under load.

Only Meteorlake with Foveros they have any chance of gaining the battery life leadership back.

[kek]

Well, I, for once went with Tiger Lake because I couldn't wait to play AMD's Shipping lottery (and Lenovo/HP are terrible options in laptop terms) and I knew Alder Lake was a first gen product, so I didn't want to be a tester for it.

My Latitude 9520 is ok so far. Not the coolest one in the world, but it's manageable, but it doesn't burns me either. Battery life is okayish, but that's more thanks to Windows 10 than anything. I will probably upgrade to the 88Wh battery soon either way, so that will do it.

[Fredrik]

Intel has some power efficent cores on most of the laptop models.

That's a common misconception. Unlike the big.LITTLE implementation in ARM, Intel chose to optimize for die surface rather than power consumption.

Its strange, Intel could have bound windows update and even netflix/firefox to the efficiency cores with the built in video acceleration when watching youtube. This would certainly have helped batter benchmarks.

[Kot]

Not clear what the major concern is.  Is this pointed at people spending 11 hours in a coffee shop?

11 hours max is under lowest load. This could be translating into 8 hours under average load and into 2:30 under max load. So yes, it could be targeted at those working 8 hour shifts in the field or those needed a part of heavy work done in the coffee shop.

[dsakdasdas]

That makes sense cause 12th gen parts are 28w whereas 11th gen ones were 15w

[NotebookMaster]

Lenovo had only used U series CPU's in their ultralights in the past and for some reason the tests are being done with the much more power hungry P series of Alder Lake CPUs. Battery life against a U series CPU (which is better suited to an ultralight) will be similar if not better.