AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors fall behind Intel’s 13th Gen Raptor Lake-S desktop processors in gaming workloads. Interestingly, the same isn’t true in the mobility or notebook space. In most scenarios, the Ryzen 7045HX “Dragon Range” APUs are notably better than the 13th Gen Raptor Lake-HX offerings. A leak from “Golden Pig Upgrade” reinforces the same belief:
In 1080p gaming, the Ryzen 7 7745HX is up to ~10% faster than its Intel rival, the Core i7-13700HX. The octa-core 7745HX maintains its lead over the 16-core i7-13700HX (8P + 8E) at 1440p.
Efficiency is where the Ryzen 7 7745HX shines. At 1080p, it draws an average of just 50W, nearly half as much as the Core i9-13700HX. The latter draws up to 108W of power in gaming workloads, making it more power-hungry than the competition. The Core i7-13650HX does a substantially better job, delivering slightly less performance while drawing much less power.
The Ryzen 7 7745HX leads the Intel Core i7-13700HX in Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro. Interestingly, the Core i7-13650HX is as fast as its elder sibling, even outmaneuvering it in some cases.
The Core i7-13700HX comes on top in Adobe Lightroom, albeit by a small margin. We’re looking at a delta of just 5% on average. The area where it truly shines is heavily threaded compute. Blender, POV, Cinebench, and V-Ray see both the Core i7 Raptor Lake SKUs beat the Ryzen 7 7745HX, courtesy of the additional efficiency cores.
These benchmarks make one thing clear. Intel’s hybrid core architecture is flawed. Even with more (E) cores, you’re delivering less performance than the competition while drawing substantially more power. This beats the whole purpose of the E-cores. We’ll probably get better performance with the E-cores disabled with more or less the same power consumption. Intel must improve its efficiency with its upcoming 14th Gen Meteor Lake processors, or this hybrid-core marketing will have been for naught.
