Test Fest: Can an All-AMD Gaming Laptop Beat an Equivalent Intel/Nvidia One?

As AMD, Intel, and Nvidia continue raising the bar in laptop performance, it begs the question: What’s the fastest combination of CPU and GPU you can get in today’s power notebooks?

That’s a tricky one, because laptops, unlike desktop PCs, are hard to find configured in ways that are truly fair to compare one-to-one. Different chassis designs, varying thermal solutions, and a host of other factors conspire to make meaningful head-to-head comparisons between the major chip makers difficult, or at least laden with caveats. (See our guide to understanding laptop processor basics.)

But we got a rare chance to skirt most of these hurdles. Lenovo just sent us two of its flagship Legion 7 Gen 7 gaming laptops—and the fight was on. One has Intel’s Core i9 HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics, and the other, an AMD Ryzen 9 HX chip and a Radeon RX 6850M XT GPU. These are two of the very fastest gaming laptops, in two identical chassis, and we’ll be pitting them against each other in an all-out battle: with Teams Blue and Green (Intel and Nvidia) paired up on one side, and Team Red (AMD Ryzen/Radeon) holding out solo on the other. Let the games begin.

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Meet the Lenovo Legion 7 Gen 7 Gaming Laptops

The Legion 7 series comprises Lenovo’s top-of-the-line gaming laptops. The Gen 7 models we tested come in two flavors, the Legion 7i with an Intel processor and Nvidia graphics, and the Legion 7 (no “i”), which is the one with the AMD Ryzen processor and Radeon RX graphics. Those preceding links take you to our reviews of the two Gen 7 models; more about them below.

The Legion 7 and Legion 7i Gen 7 use the same chassis; the only way to tell them apart out of the box is by the obvious branding of the stickers on the palm rest. 

The all-AMD contender: The Lenovo Legion 7 Gen 7
(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The Intel and Nvidia entry: The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 7
(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

These laptops don’t hide their bulk, at 0.92 by 14.17 by 10.23 inches (HWD) and 5.5 pounds. The chassis is entirely aluminum and feels supremely solid.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Most exhaust air goes out two large rear vents, with smaller vents on either side. Most physical connectivity is on the rear, which keeps cables out of sight.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

As with the Gen 6 models, the 16-inch, 16:10-aspect-ratio screen on the Gen 7 models provides an outstanding picture. These laptops easily have enough power to game at their native screen resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels.

That’s the overview for now; for deep details on the two machines, you can check out our full reviews of the Legion 7 Gen 7 models at the links provided earlier. Now we’ll dig into the bleeding-edge components inside these machines.

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High-End Laptop CPUs Face Off: AMD Ryzen HX vs. Intel Core HX

Both AMD and Intel use the “HX” classification for their most powerful mobile processors, that is, the chips that provide the most desktop-like performance possible in a laptop. Our feature on the Intel Core i9 HX revealed the Core i9-12900HX, the chip that’s in our Legion 7i Gen 7, performs amazingly close to the desktop Core i9-12900K, occasionally coming within 10%. It also handily outperforms Intel’s traditional H-class desktop-replacement chip, the Core i9-12900HK. Hit up the feature for more technical details, but here’s a teaser table comparing the three…

The takeaway is that the Core i9-12900HX offers the same core and thread count, and even boost clocks, as the desktop Core i9-12900K. It also surpasses the Core i9-12900H in almost every area. Its lower power ratings versus the K-series means it won’t maintain clock speeds quite as high in long-running tasks, but everywhere else is fair game.

AMD’s closest competition for the Core HX class is the Ryzen HX. The Ryzen 9 6900HX we’ll be evaluating in the Legion 7 Gen 7 isn’t the company’s absolute top-end laptop chip; that honor goes to the Ryzen 9 6980HX(Opens in a new window). But it’s darn close, and it looks squarely across the aisle at the Core i9-12900HX. A member of the relatively new Ryzen 6000 series, it’s based on the “Zen 3+” microarchitecture and supports DDR5 memory, as does the Core HX. (Indeed, both Legion 7 Gen 7 laptops use DDR5.) Here’s a basic comparison between the two chips.

Core and thread count hugely favor the Core i9-12900HX, but before you give up hope for Team Red, take comfort that Intel and AMD processing cores aren’t apples-to-apples comparable. AMD uses all the same type of processor cores, while Intel, as of its 12th Generation (“Alder Lake”) Core chips, uses a hybrid architecture in some of its chips featuring two types of cores, Performance cores and Efficient cores. (Our Core i9-12900K review breaks down the new architecture.) I won’t be spoiling anything by saying that despite featuring twice the cores, the Core i9-12900HX won’t be close to twice as fast as the Ryzen 9 6900HX. (Another possible non-spoiler: You’ll be surprised at how closely they can perform.)

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Top Mobile GPUs Do Battle: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti vs. AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT

Nvidia has long dominated the chip discussion in high-end gaming laptops, but AMD has made a comeback with its Radeon RX 6000 series. The Legion 7 Gen 7 features the flagship Radeon RX 6850M XT, prime competition for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in our Legion 7i Gen 7.

These two heavyweight GPUs’ technical tidbits match up as follows. Note the maximum boost clocks are specific to the Legion 7 laptops; they vary from laptop to laptop. (See our primer on how the same graphics card can perform differently depending on the implementation.)

AMD and Nvidia use wildly different architectures, so the Radeon RX 6850M XT’s disadvantage in processing cores isn’t anything to lose sleep over. The only other difference that stands out is memory; the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has a wider bus and more bandwidth, which should give it an advantage when gaming at higher resolutions. As for the memory amount, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has a whopping 16GB, but the Radeon RX 6850M XT’s 12GB frame buffer ought to be plenty; even the desktop Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti tops out at that.

I found through GPU-Z logging that the RTX 3080 Ti’s boost clock is underrated; it hit 2,002MHz during the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark trial. On the contrary, my logs showed the Radeon RX 6850M XT didn’t hit its boost clock, maxing out at 2,290MHz. But given that boost clocks vary so wildly in laptops and even by the game or benchmark, I’m not deducting points for the variability.

As for graphics card power ratings, the Nvidia Control Panel listed a maximum graphics power of 175 watts for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which is very high. AMD’s Radeon app doesn’t list the power rating, so I used a GPU-Z log and saw a maximum GPU chip power draw of 144 watts. All told, these laptops are very powerful and comparable.

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The Benchmarks: Send Forth the Legions!

The Lenovo Legion 7 Gen 7 gaming laptops we’re testing have the following specifications…

These two are about as evenly matched as they can be, differing only in the processor and graphics card. Expect these configurations to be in the high-$2,000s range, given Lenovo’s own highly variable pricing from day to day.

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Legion 7 vs. Legion 7i: CPU-Centric Tests

First are the tests that focus exclusively (or almost exclusively) on the CPU muscle, not bringing the graphics card or storage subsystems into play.

The Legion 7i and its Core i9-12900HX lead across the board, and that was somewhat expected. Geekbench was the sorest point for the Legion 7, but its deficiencies in the other tests weren’t nearly as much. In fact, the Legion 7i was only 2.8% faster in Cinebench.

I also ran several tests not normally a part of our benchmarking lineup. The first test is 3DMark CPU Profile, which shows how CPU performance scales from one thread to as many threads as it can process. (Higher numbers are better.) In it, the Legion 7i showed stronger single-threaded performance, but the Legion 7 practically tied in the eight-thread test. Beyond that, the Legion 7i’s extra cores gave it a runaway lead.

Next is BAPCo’s CrossMark(Opens in a new window), a cross-platform benchmark that scores platforms across simulated real-world scenarios. Higher numbers are better. The trend we’ve been seeing continues, where the Legion 7 isn’t quite able to keep pace with the Legion 7i.

Moving on, Principled Technologies’ WebXPRT 4(Opens in a new window) is a browser-based benchmark that uses HTML5, JavaScript, and WebAssembly scenarios to simulate daily tasks. Lower numbers in the subtests are better (they’re reported in milliseconds), but for the Overall Score, higher numbers are better. This test also shows the Legion 7i not giving much ground.

Our final test is AIDA64, notably its Cache & Memory benchmark. The Core i9-12900HX has superior memory read, write, and copy numbers, but all tests show the Ryzen 9 6900HX having lower latency. The Ryzen’s L2 and L3 cache numbers are also superior, which no doubt helps it recoup some performance. (Our Ryzen 7 5800X3D review reveals the importance of processor cache.)

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Legion 7 vs. Legion 7i: Gaming and Graphics Tests

Now let’s see the Legion 7 and Legion 7i slug it out in both synthetic and real-life gaming benchmarks. We test the real-life games at 1080p (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) for universal comparison to other gaming laptops.

The Legion 7 looks much stronger; it’s within a few percentage points of the Legion 7i in the synthetic 3DMark Time Spy and achieved almost the same numbers in GFXBench Aztec Ruins. This suggests the Radeon RX 6850M XT and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti offer comparable straight power as implemented in these laptops.

That theory mostly plays out in the real-world gaming tests, where the Legion 7i was about 9% faster in F1 2021, but it really turned up the heat in our Assassin’s Creed game trial with a nearly 30% lead over the Legion 7i. We also usually test Rainbow Six: Siege, but for unknown reasons, the game refused to launch on either laptop.

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Legion 7 vs. Legion 7i: Heat and Noise

I tested the cooling systems of these Legion laptops in a 3DMark Time Spy stress test (running 20 loops). Here’s the Legion 7 at the end of the test under our Flir One Pro thermal camera…

(Credit: PCMag)

The peak temperature of 108 degrees F above the keyboard is impressively cool for an aluminum gaming laptop.

Now it’s the Intel/Nvidia machine’s turn. The Legion 7i’s temperatures were almost identical….

(Credit: PCMag)

Noise is subjective. I don’t have an official way of measuring, but I casually observed that the Legion 7 ran quieter during non-gaming use. The Legion 7i’s fans tended to spool up more often, and that’s not entirely surprising considering its CPU is more powerful. That said, fan noise under load seemed the same for both Legions. The fans are audible but lack whine or motor noise; it’s just a lot of air rushing through the vents.

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Legion 7 vs. Legion 7i: Battery Test

One last test: how long do these laptops last unplugged. PCMag tests laptops’ battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with screen brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are turned off during the test.

That’s not even a contest. I ensured Nvidia Optimus graphics-switching technology was enabled on the Legion 7i so it could switch to its onboard Intel graphics to save power, but perhaps it didn’t engage, or the laptop just consumes a lot more power than the Legion 7. Either way, we look for five to six hours of life from modern gaming laptops, and only the AMD-based Legion 7 cleared that bar.

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The Verdict: Solid on Both Sides…But That Battery Life

If you were hoping to see one Legion 7 model crush the other, you’d have come away disappointed. Though our testing showed that the Legion 7i’s Core i9-12900HX processor is a significantly stronger performer than the Legion 7’s Ryzen 9 6900HX, the results become much closer in gaming. The Radeon RX 6850M XT’s strong performance allowed the Legion 7 to keep pace with the Legion 7i and its GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, especially in real-world games. The Legion 7 also scored big in battery life, where it lasted three times as long as the Legion 7i.

So, which is the better laptop? Absolute maximum performance fiends, concerned about raw CPU performance, should stick to the Legion 7i. But for gaming, either laptop would work very well. If we had to pick a winner, though, our hat tips toward the AMD-based Legion 7 Gen 7 (on which we hung our Editors’ Choice award) for being more well-rounded, thanks to its excellent battery life.