Lenovo ThinkBook 13s Laptop: Ryzen 7 4800U, 13.3" FHD+ IPS, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Expired

Wow, this is a lot of power in <3 lbs. and <$1,000.

It's just better overall. Intel 11th gen highest end cpu i7-1185G7 has some single core performance advantage, around 10 to 12% whenbusing same power but in multi-threaded and demanding workloads, it can be over 70% faster.

Intel still has the advantage in single-core instructions per clock. But Intel has been stuck on 14nm forever (Intel 14nm is about 37.5 million transistors per mm^2). AMD is using TSMC's 7nm process (about 115 million transistors per mm^2 in its latest version). That gives the AMD processor a huge advantage in power consumption and density (how many cores you can pack together without overheating).

Intel's latest gen is manufactured at 10nm (Intel 10nm is about 100 million transistors per mm^2). That's a lot more competitive with TSMC 7nm, but Intel is having problems producing it in quantity, especially for their higher-end (higher power and heat) processors. Their latest high-end processors are still being manufactured at 14nm. Which is just nuts when Apple and probably Nvidia are being manufactured on TSMC 5nm (about 175 million transistors per mm^2 - nearly 5x the density of Intel 14nm).

AMD could've manufactured at 5nm if they were willing to pay more, but it looks like they're content to stay on 7nm for now. I suspect that decision had more to do with keeping Intel around as a competitor so that AMD doesn't have to face anti-trust investigations. That's how far behind Intel is.

But at multicore performance, the AMD 4700U (8 core/8 thread) and 4800U (8 core/16 thread) processors just wipe the floor with Intel's 10nm CPUs (best are 4 core/8 thread). I would only seriously consider the Intel 10nm processors (ice lake and tiger lake) for lower-end laptops competing with the AMD 4500U (6 core/6 thread), maybe the 4600U (6 core/12 thread). For higher performance, it's AMD on TSMC 7nm vs Intel on Intel 14nm, which is no contest. Intel only makes sense there if you don't care about power consumption at all. That might make sense on a desktop, but it automatically eliminates them from consideration if you're buying a performance laptop.

And keep in mind that AMD's new Zen 3 processors are now showing up for mobile... At this point with Intel 7nm (rumored to be around 200 million transistors/mm^2) still 2 years away at best, I think their only chance is to swallow their pride and have TSMC (or maybe Samsung) manufacture some of their processors for them.