Initial XPS 13 9310 Tiger Lake performance comparisons underline why Dell should release an AMD Ryzen 4000-powered XPS 13

[Spunjji]

I can understand Dell avoiding those CPUs since the thermal issues on the even thinner XPS 13 chassis would be even worse, especially since the generally cooler Intel CPUs already have thermal issues in the XPS 13. So it's not only about power; thermals are a major consideration too!

Do you mean power in terms of speed, or power in terms of power consumed? Because they're different things, and at the same level of power consumption (and thus heat output) Renoir was faster than Ice Lake and similar to Tiger Lake at the same TDP. In other words, you'd have the exact same heat issues with the same design of laptop if it had an Intel CPU in it. Objective tests on this site bear that out.

[Dean H.]

AMD Ryzen 4500/4700 CPU series are great, but on a thin chassis like my Lenovo T14s, they run extremely hot (markedly hotter than the equivalent Intel CPUs) which impacts performance from thermal throttling. That's why I'm returning the T14s. I can understand Dell avoiding those CPUs since the thermal issues on the even thinner XPS 13 chassis would be even worse, especially since the generally cooler Intel CPUs already have thermal issues in the XPS 13. So it's not only about power; thermals are a major consideration too!

Not only do the AMD 4000 U series chips run around the same temps as their Intel counterparts, battery life is longer and performance is generally better.

I've preferred Intel chips for decades over AMD.  Zen2 U,H, and X processors changed my preference based on specs and benchmarks. Data doesn't lie :)

[deksman2]

AMD Ryzen 4500/4700 CPU series are great, but on a thin chassis like my Lenovo T14s, they run extremely hot (markedly hotter than the equivalent Intel CPUs) which impacts performance from thermal throttling. That's why I'm returning the T14s. I can understand Dell avoiding those CPUs since the thermal issues on the even thinner XPS 13 chassis would be even worse, especially since the generally cooler Intel CPUs already have thermal issues in the XPS 13. So it's not only about power; thermals are a major consideration too!

The CPU running hot is extremely dependent on the cooling inside a laptop.
Most OEM's cut corners when it comes to cooling, and Dell is no exception.
In fact, DELL has been among the worst offenders when it came to cooling implementation (especially in regards to AMD hw).

What I hate about OEM's they assume that 1 cooling (Say for Intel) will do just as well for AMD... which is stupidly presumptuous because while both may have same TDP, how the hw achieves said performance is done differently.

Acer for example made Predator Helios 500 with Intel/NV and Ryzen 2700/Vega 56.

The Intel/NV version had thermal issues... but the Ryzen/Vega version did not (in fact, the all AMD Acer Predator 500 runs extremely cool and quiet even under maxed out load).
Why?
Because Acer redesigned the cooling specifically for AMD hw.

Most OEM's don't do this.

So, before you write off AMD Renoir and saying that Intel 'generally runs cooler'... you need to understand that Intel has had its cpu's running very hot and loud in laptops over the past several years... longer even.
I've seen countless posts from people on notebookreview and other forums (including youtube) posting ways to cool down Intel CPU's.

Renoir generally is more power efficiency, with superior battery life and better performance than Intel.
If a laptop runs hot and loud, blame it on the manufacturer cooling implementation first and foremost (however, Intel's CPU's had this issue before and it required of people to remove their Intel CPU's from the laptop, and remove the solder in some cases before repasting).