Question Multicore Performance or Single Core Performance?

edo101

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Hello, I am trying to decide between 2 laptops. One is the HP Spectre X360 which has an i7-1255U and the Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED which has the AMD 6800HS. I have both and both of them have their strenghts and weaknesses design wise. I am stuck on which one to pick so i compared the two cpus and found this:
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1255u-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800h

As you can see the 1255U does have slightly better single core performance while the 6800H has better multicore performance.

My day 2 day would be to stream shows, browsing, write some docs, coding and edit photos and deploy photos when I am traveling which I often do. I do champion battery life and both of these laptops actually get about the same amount of battery run time. Like almost identical. If I could I would prbly undervolt the 6800H if possible since I couldn't find a 6800U laptop.

For that use case, which one should I opt for? Single core or multi core?
 

rulerss

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I'm not an expert, but some years ago, Amd processors were unstable and power consumption hungry. That's why I stick to Intel. Those i5 processors were really great back in the day and fuel efficient.
 
typically fast single-core will help you with high gaming fps. multi-core will be more beneficial during high-productivity workloads (multiple applications). take that for what it's worth, I am not familiar with laptops at all so I have no opinion on which CPU to get, from what I understand the new AMD chips are a vast improvement over the old stuff. I don't really know much
 
My day 2 day would be to stream shows, browsing, write some docs, coding and edit photos and deploy photos when I am traveling which I often do. I do champion battery life and both of these laptops actually get about the same amount of battery run time. Like almost identical. If I could I would prbly undervolt the 6800H if possible since I couldn't find a 6800U laptop.
For this use case I would argue higher single core performance is better. Why? Most of these tasks are going to be I/O bound, meaning they're waiting on something to happen before doing it. The faster they can do it, the more responsive the system feels and the sooner they can go to a low power state. As for the specific use cases listed here:
  • Streaming: Mostly GPU work.
  • Browsing: Network bound. I'm going to guess you also use an ad blocker, which will kill most of what would eat the CPU time anyway
  • Writing: I/O bound. Humans are ungodly slow to a computer
  • Coding: Unless you're compiling something that's millions of lines of code that has proper compiler settings, you don't need a fast processor. I do a lot of coding work on a Dell XPS with a quad-core i5 just fine
  • Editing photos: While multicore performance can help here, I'd argue it only matters if you're doing batch processing or use some image wide effect that's processor heavy constantly.
Multicore performance only really shines when you're doing tasks that are embarrassingly parallel. Which for the average user the most they would do a lot would be something like video editing or doing CGI renders.
 
I'm not an expert

Well, you said it.

Intel chips have been more power hungry for years now, both desktop and laptop. So with all due respect, you can stick to Intel but perhaps not the best idea to cite power consumption as the reason why the OP should do the same.

Power consumption could be a deal breaker for them and it is certainly not correct to say Intel is more power efficient.

It is correct to say they have the advantage in terms of single thread performance in the context of this thread.

Also, the part about being unstable? I've been doing IT for decades and I've never seen this. AMD were slower sure, architecturally inferior sure. But if they were unstable for you, you can't have been setting them up correctly.

Big difference between 'crap' and 'unstable'.
 

rulerss

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Sorry, but back in the day, Amd was way more power consuming than Intel. And also slower. And the Fan would make a loud noise.

Maybe over the years they got better and equal to Intel. But it seems that even today, the single core power still sticks to Intel.

I overreacted when I said unstable.
 
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jnjnilson6

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Sorry, but back in the day, Amd was way more power consuming than Intel. And also slower. And the Fan would make a loud noise.

Maybe over the years they got better and equal to Intel. But it seems that even today, the single core power still sticks to Intel.

I overreacted when I said unstable.
I know what you mean. I've had this thing with four AMD Sempron 3300+ CPUs (2.0 GHz / 1 core) and an AMD M300 (2.0 GHz / 2 cores). Where much slower Intel processors would handle given tasks with stability and smoothness the performance on the AMDs would be choppy and half-unsustainable. So I am looking toward Intel myself, the way you do. :)

The aforementioned topic is something to which I can invariably relate.
 

jnjnilson6

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Sorry, but back in the day, Amd was way more power consuming than Intel. And also slower. And the Fan would make a loud noise.

Maybe over the years they got better and equal to Intel. But it seems that even today, the single core power still sticks to Intel.

I overreacted when I said unstable.
And an AMD E-450 (1.65 GHz / 2 cores). Basically this and the CPUs mentioned in the previous post were all the AMDs I've owned and they generally lacked in strength and smoothness in comparison to much slower Intel models. Like the Pentium 4 520 (in the case of the E-450), the Celeron 420 (in the case of the M300) and the Pentium M @ 1.6 GHz (in the case of the 3300+).

Just an example, Crysis 1 and music on Windows Media Player ended up in the music stuttering majorly with the AMD M300 (2 GHz / 2 cores), however the same game with music ended up in the music running smoothly and flawlessly on the supposedly much slower Intel Celeron 420 (1.6 GHz / 1 core; overclockable to 3.0 GHz).

The AMD E-450 scored a substantially lower score on Cinebench than the P4 520 although being 7 years newer and was a lot more sluggish.

And the AMD Sempron 3300+ (I had four laptops with this CPU and the result was the same on each one) stuttered under load (in the way of minute freezes) and sometimes without too much load wherein the Pentium M @ 1.6 GHz performed smoothly and nicely and with incomparably higher strength and reliability.

For reference-

AMD Sempron 3300+ (2 GHz / 1 core)
Intel Pentium M 1.6 GHz (1.6 GHz / 1 core)

AMD E-450 (1.65 GHz / 2 cores)
P4 520 (2.8 GHz / 1 core + Hyperthreading)

AMD M300 (2 GHz / 2 cores)
Celeron 420 (1.6 GHz / 1 core; was able to OC up to 3 GHz)
 
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Power consumption could be a deal breaker for them and it is certainly not correct to say Intel is more power efficient.

It is correct to say they have the advantage in terms of single thread performance in the context of this thread.
Power consumption by itself is an instantaneous measurement and only really good to make sure the power delivery circuitry can deliver. Where battery life is important, or really any sort of electricity usage over time, you need to look at total energy consumption.

A part that consumes 5W but can complete a task in 1 second is better than a part that consumes 2W but needs 3 seconds.
 

jnjnilson6

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Now, someone may say, in relation to my previous comments, that it's the matter of the other components as well.

Crysis was tested on the AMD M300 with a Mobility Radeon HD 4530 512 MB on Low (which is much more than sufficient for Low settings) and Windows Media Player did lag and skip on the music wherein the system with the Celeron 420 proved smooth and stable. (Crysis was run simultaneously with Media Player. You'd think that the Dual Core AMD CPU from 2009 would wipe away the low-end 2007 single core Intel when we've got two tasks running; end results are the single core Celeron 420 ran both Crysis and Media Player smoothly while the Athlon M300 couldn't).

The Pentium M 1.6 GHz had a Radeon 9200 Mobility and the AMD Sempron 3300+ had a Radeon 200M (so again, synonymous GPUs but nonsynonymous performance regarding stability).

Same thing stands with the AMD E-450 and the Pentium 4 520; the graphics on both were good enough that they wouldn't cause performance deviation for what the machines were used and tested upon.

RAM and other components were too in no way arbitrarily inclined toward any one system against the other, so the information I've stated is regarded truly and fairly.
 
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rulerss

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When I had an Ati graphic card(think it was radeon 5770), I couldn't even play the new Alien vs Predator game. And after that, the graphic card just burnt out.

Also, it consumed at least 2 times more power than a regular nvidia card, which I found out after the whole incident. I noticed the electric bill higher, but I thought it's the washing machine or the electric heater.

It was good that it was under warranty, so I received a free new nvidia graphic card. Think it was the 660 gtx. Since then, I never had any trouble at all(smoothness, no more phony electric bills).

Now remember, Ati graphic cards are made from Amd, and Nvidia from Intel.
 
Power consumption by itself is an instantaneous measurement and only really good to make sure the power delivery circuitry can deliver. Where battery life is important, or really any sort of electricity usage over time, you need to look at total energy consumption.

A part that consumes 5W but can complete a task in 1 second is better than a part that consumes 2W but needs 3 seconds.

True indeed. But there's also the heat aspect to go along with the power consumption, which is the bit I don't really like.

I've just commented on another thread about how much I loved the 3700x I had, it used less power compared to equivalent Intel chips but was only slightly behind them in terms of performance. As a result, it was a bit easier to cool than other 8-core chips and represented a good power to performance ratio.

The point here though was more by all means, recommend an Intel for single thread performance or any of its other virtues, but not for power consumption and indeed, total energy consumption because that's not a virtue the chip really has. If that's something the OP isn't bothered about, sure, have at it. But more and more people are bothered about this, especially nowadays. They'd maybe prefer to use for example 2.5kwh of electricity gaming at 115fps as opposed to 3kwh of electricity gaming at 144fps.

The bit above about stability was total hogwash though, I dealt with many an AMD desktop and laptop processor c/w supporting motherboard from around the 486 to early Pentium days. generally, if it was unstable, it was incorrectly set up, even with Win 9x.
 
Now, someone may say, in relation to my previous comments, that it's the matter of the other components as well.

Crysis was tested on the AMD M300 with a Mobility Radeon HD 4530 512 MB on Low (which is much more than sufficient for Low settings) and Windows Media Player did lag and skip on the music wherein the system with the Celeron 420 proved smooth and stable. (Crysis was run simultaneously with Media Player. You'd think that the Dual Core AMD CPU from 2009 would wipe away the low-end 2007 single core Intel when we've got two tasks running; end results are the single core Celeron 420 ran both Crysis and Media Player smoothly while the Athlon M300 couldn't).

The Pentium M 1.6 GHz had a Radeon 9200 Mobility and the AMD Sempron 3300+ had a Radeon 200M (so again, synonymous GPUs but nonsynonymous performance regarding stability).

Same thing stands with the AMD E-450 and the Pentium 4 520; the graphics on both were good enough that they wouldn't cause performance deviation for what the machines were used and tested upon.

RAM and other components were too in no way arbitrarily inclined toward any one system against the other, so the information I've stated is regarded truly and fairly.

All true. All those examples are from the years when Intel was way ahead though, Semprons and every other AMD chips were absolute dogs. Let's not forget, for perhaps around 85% of the last 20 years, AMD have made mainly turds in comparison to Intel. Bit different now, which is good for all of us. The only chipset I remember being really badly unstable was the Ali Magik one, that was a bag of nails.
 

jnjnilson6

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When I had an Ati graphic card(think it was radeon 5770), I couldn't even play the new Alien vs Predator game. And after that, the graphic card just burnt out.

Also, it consumed at least 2 times more power than a regular nvidia card, which I found out after the whole incident. I noticed the electric bill higher, but I thought it's the washing machine or the electric heater.

It was good that it was under warranty, so I received a free new nvidia graphic card. Think it was the 660 gtx. Since then, I never had any trouble at all(smoothness, no more phony electric bills).

Now remember, Ati graphic cards are made from Amd, and Nvidia from Intel.
I have had a Mobility HD 4530, a Radeon HD 6770, 2x Radeon HD 7870 GHz, a HD 7790 and a Radeon 8730M all of which worked smoothly and perfectly without a single hiccup. I've had Nvidia cards, but I had had a really bad experience with a 555M 1 GB GDDR5 in 2011 (i7-2630QM, 8 GB RAM). The frames in Crysis kept skipping and the frame rate would be high for about 5 minutes and dip down 4 times and remain that way in the next 20. I've tried everything in the book a hundred times but the card would not perform smoothly, the way even the Mobility HD 4530 performed. Sure it was a lot slower, but there were no frame skips on it and it worked well in terms of the performance it could provide. I have had two friends - both had GTX 560s. The first one, well, his card broke down 3 times and went to repairs the same number of times. Afterward it became irretrievable and he switched to a HD 7990. The other one had 2x 560. First the first 560 started having issues and went to repairs a couple of times before it died. Then he was left with the second one and Amazingly it did die too. I've had friends with Mobility 5850 and the desktop 5850 and 6850 and 7770 and R9 270X and R9 390 and RX 580 and RX 590 and all of them haven't had a hiccup.

So, I mean, experience is different with different people I suppose. My first card was a GeForce2 MX 400 64 MB and it was a wonderful GPU indeed.
The Mobility 9200 was also very good despite I have not used it a lot. I've had an ATI 200M too, but it was not a dedicated card and used system memory.
 
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True indeed. But there's also the heat aspect to go along with the power consumption, which is the bit I don't really like.

I've just commented on another thread about how much I loved the 3700x I had, it used less power compared to equivalent Intel chips but was only slightly behind them in terms of performance. As a result, it was a bit easier to cool than other 8-core chips and represented a good power to performance ratio.

The point here though was more by all means, recommend an Intel for single thread performance or any of its other virtues, but not for power consumption and indeed, total energy consumption because that's not a virtue the chip really has. If that's something the OP isn't bothered about, sure, have at it. But more and more people are bothered about this, especially nowadays. They'd maybe prefer to use for example 2.5kwh of electricity gaming at 115fps as opposed to 3kwh of electricity gaming at 144fps.
What you know about Intel and AMD in the desktop space doesn't really apply in the laptop space. AMD has had some efficiency wins for sure in the laptop space, but Intel laptops still routinely get good battery life if the manufacturer was willing to put the effort into it. For example, I have a Dell XPS 13 with a Tiger Lake CPU; it can last a pretty long time. While I haven't properly benchmarked it, I'm willing to believe the 9 plus hours the OS reports. For something more modern, Notebookcheck got an LG Gram with an i5-1240P to last 11 hours in their Wi-Fi test (https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-Gr...ew-Focused-on-portability.677001.0.html#toc-7)
 
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jnjnilson6

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When I had an Ati graphic card(think it was radeon 5770), I couldn't even play the new Alien vs Predator game. And after that, the graphic card just burnt out.

Also, it consumed at least 2 times more power than a regular nvidia card, which I found out after the whole incident. I noticed the electric bill higher, but I thought it's the washing machine or the electric heater.

It was good that it was under warranty, so I received a free new nvidia graphic card. Think it was the 660 gtx. Since then, I never had any trouble at all(smoothness, no more phony electric bills).

Now remember, Ati graphic cards are made from Amd, and Nvidia from Intel.
Personally I was really happy with my Sapphire HD 6770. It was a mighty stable overclocker too (could achieve up to a hairline below 1000 MHz core / 1400 MHz memory from 775 MHz core / 1000 MHz memory) and never gave off even the slightest problems; the games ran smooth as ice. Was originally paired with a Celeron G530 and afterward with an i7-3770K. It was really a wonderful GPU and a wonderful upgrade from the 555M about which I've written above. What vendor was your 5770? Sapphire's the best for AMD cards.
 
Hello, I am trying to decide between 2 laptops. One is the HP Spectre X360 which has an i7-1255U and the Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED which has the AMD 6800HS. I have both and both of them have their strenghts and weaknesses design wise. I am stuck on which one to pick so i compared the two cpus and found this:
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1255u-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800h

As you can see the 1255U does have slightly better single core performance while the 6800H has better multicore performance.

My day 2 day would be to stream shows, browsing, write some docs, coding and edit photos and deploy photos when I am traveling which I often do. I do champion battery life and both of these laptops actually get about the same amount of battery run time. Like almost identical. If I could I would prbly undervolt the 6800H if possible since I couldn't find a 6800U laptop.

For that use case, which one should I opt for? Single core or multi core?
The 6800HS is more ideal for sustained heavy loads and has a much more powerful iGPU in the Radeon 680M. The single thread performance is lower, but it's still very good. All things being equal I would pick the AMD CPU.

However your buying a laptop not just a CPU and the i7-1255U is not a weak CPU by any means. I would really pick the laptop you prefer.

The Asus doesn't appear to have USB 4 and Thunderbolt support, if that's something you need then the HP is the obvious choice.

I prefer the look of the HP but would pick the Asus because it has both strong CPU and GPU performance. To be honest though, I really don't think it matters which one you pick. My impression of your workload is that they would both easily do it. You don't need either of these CPU's to stream Netflix or tap up documents. The only thing that strikes me as remotely intensive is the photo edits but again I would have confidence in both CPU's.
 

rulerss

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Personally I was really happy with my Sapphire HD 6770. It was a mighty stable overclocker too (could achieve up to a hairline below 1000 MHz core / 1400 MHz memory from 775 MHz core / 1000 MHz memory) and never gave off even the slightest problems; the games ran smooth as ice. Was originally paired with a Celeron G530 and afterward with an i7-3770K. It was really a wonderful GPU and a wonderful upgrade from the 555M about which I've written above. What vendor was your 5770? Sapphire's the best for AMD cards.

There has been a mistake. I remember clearly now. It was an Nvidia graphic card which burnt out, but it was under warranty. So then I received an Ati 4650 graphic card.
The card was good, but I couldn't play Alien vs Predator, which was one of my favorite games.

Then I upgraded to an Ati 5770. I overclocked it and installed unofficial Msi Afterburner for more frame rates in games. After two weeks, it burnt out. That's when I switched back to Nvidia.

Nvidia Geforce mx 400 were great cards, I sold my bike, just to buy one. Probably the 500 series were bad, like the ones your friends had.

Ati cards are good, but they consume much more power and shouldn't be overclocked.

When the Geforce 960 series came out, it was smooth, silent and much less power consuming.
 
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rulerss

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Hello, I am trying to decide between 2 laptops. One is the HP Spectre X360 which has an i7-1255U and the Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED which has the AMD 6800HS. I have both and both of them have their strenghts and weaknesses design wise. I am stuck on which one to pick so i compared the two cpus and found this:
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-i7-1255u-vs-amd-ryzen-7-6800h

As you can see the 1255U does have slightly better single core performance while the 6800H has better multicore performance.

My day 2 day would be to stream shows, browsing, write some docs, coding and edit photos and deploy photos when I am traveling which I often do. I do champion battery life and both of these laptops actually get about the same amount of battery run time. Like almost identical. If I could I would prbly undervolt the 6800H if possible since I couldn't find a 6800U laptop.

For that use case, which one should I opt for? Single core or multi core?

If you play games, which are older, you should buy an Intel CPU Laptop, because of better single core performance. If you play newer games, you should buy Amd CPU Laptop, because of multi core performance.
 

edo101

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The 6800HS is more ideal for sustained heavy loads and has a much more powerful iGPU in the Radeon 680M. The single thread performance is lower, but it's still very good. All things being equal I would pick the AMD CPU.

However your buying a laptop not just a CPU and the i7-1255U is not a weak CPU by any means. I would really pick the laptop you prefer.

The Asus doesn't appear to have USB 4 and Thunderbolt support, if that's something you need then the HP is the obvious choice.

I prefer the look of the HP but would pick the Asus because it has both strong CPU and GPU performance. To be honest though, I really don't think it matters which one you pick. My impression of your workload is that they would both easily do it. You don't need either of these CPU's to stream Netflix or tap up documents. The only thing that strikes me as remotely intensive is the photo edits but again I would have confidence in both CPU's.

It's funny because even on Asus website, I think they mention USB 3. But in reality, the latop uses 2 USB 4 DP ports. THe device manager lists the USB4 protocol. I too like the look and size of the HP. THe wifi seems slightly better or at least smoother, and it has an IR camera so I can just look at my computer and unlock it. And the HP has a nice size ration. Like its' perfect for my handling...

But the Asus has dedicated Home and End buttons, a numberpad you can activate via touchpad, a dedicated HDMI port so I don't have to waste a USB4 port on display, and it has some nifty My Asus features that could help prevent burn in and extra dimming features for longer battery. And finally that iGPU is pretty good for ever i want to scratch a gaming itch.

So it's been hard deciding which one to pick. If the Asus had the 6800U i wouldn't have to struggle. I don't care for Thunderbolt since USB4 is pretty much good enough for whatever I nee. Just can't seem to pick one. So I was trying to see which one would give better battery and be better overall for my tasks @Nighthawk117
 

edo101

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I prefer the HP laptop myself. My son has one and they’re super nice.
DEintely are. If on;y it had AMD internals. It's looking like I'll opt for the Asus choosing overall function over form. Well as long as the battery test with streaming over the new intel wifi card I put into the Asus laptop is identical battery usage wise to it's stock card
 
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