Comment by ZuLuuuuuu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZuLuuuuuu | Hacker News Reader

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Exactly. Not just 1 model but you can compare identical ThinkPad models as well and AMD versions have significantly better battery life. Not only that, even last year's identical models with 11th Gen Intel CPUs have better battery life than their new 12th Gen models. So Intel's power efficiency actually decreased compared to last year, even though they introduced the hybrid architecture.

In some instances Alder Lake CPUs slightly edge out Apple's CPUs in performance, but with a terrible battery life (~4 hours of real world battery life vs >10 hours on Apple laptops) and noisy fans.

AMD on the other hand seems to have focused on getting a good balance this year. 6800U models have significant performance improvements over the last gen while improving the battery life as well.

I am thinking of buying a new laptop this year, but I am waiting for the AMD models. For anyone interested, these are the models I am waiting for:

https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkBook/ThinkBook_13s_G4_...

https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X13_Gen_3...

Both have much better battery life than their Intel counterparts:

ThinkBook 13s Gen 4 (AMD): 14 hours

ThinkBook 13s Gen 4 (Intel): 10.9 hours

ThinkPaf X13 Gen 3 (AMD): 15.68 hours

ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 (Intel): 11.8 hours

These numbers are usually lower in real life, but they are comparable with each other.

These numbers are usually lower in real life

There are data sheets and then there is real life. People were raving about AMD laptops before. I got a ThinkPad T14 AMD with a 4750U. The stated psref battery life is MobileMark 2014: 14 hr, MobileMark 2018: 11.5 hr. In practice that was more like 7 hours on Windows (with a mild workload) and 3 hours on Linux. The CPU performance was merely ok and I could get the fans blowing quite quickly.

Life with the laptop was quite miserable. There were many other paper cuts and despite being Linux-certified, I used Windows with WSL most of the time since basic things like suspend would at least work relatively reliably.

I sold the T14 after 7 months (thank deity that there was a chip shortage, so I could recoup quite a lot of the 1400 Euro I paid for the T14), got a MacBook Air M1 and didn't look back. It's a world of difference.

That does not match my own experience with a very similar t14s equipped with same CPU. I get much better battery life than 3 hours on Linux even with moderate workload (compiling, browsing, etc.). I often use it on the go and it’s been pretty great.

There is a big improvement from the 4000 series to the 6000 series.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14 AMD Gen 1 here. My experience is totally different, using Fedora 36, everything works! Battery life I have no exact numbers, but definitely way more than 3 hours.

I'm also on a fully-specced T14 Gen 1 AMD with the same CPU (4750u) and I get a full day's use out of it under Fedora 36. And CPU performance is way more than OK for my use-cases. I'm curious what you were doing with it.

Within a year the kernel should support proper Power management on these new AMD systems. I have a year old 5800H that went from 3 hours to 11 hours battery life in typical use, just due to kernel version updates. It's like a new system.

This. The newer kernels support amd_pstate and it's a big difference.

It is such a shame that certain major distros don't ship latest kernels. I understand also shipping LTS kernels for customers/users that want the stability, but the default for desktops and install media should be a really recent kernel.

I think it’s pretty common to install the HWE kernel on Ubuntu.

Something was screwed up, very likely on Windows, definitely on Linux. My 5800H gets 9 hours of battery life on Linux with KDE (full glass blur effect, IntelliJ, Firefox, etc...), without any undervolting or underclocking, at ~80% battery, 1440p60 15.6 inch screen. And about a third of the power consumption comes from the desktop class SSD I put into it.

AMD 6800u also has insane graphics compared to the Intel. You can actually play triple A games at acceptable framerates.

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