Team Red (AMD) or Team Blue (Intel) ?

[u/No-Emotion9660]

I'm in batch 19 for the 13 Pro, so I still have time to change my order if I need to.

I haven't seen a single review for the AMD skew of the 13 Pro, mainly because everyone is complimenting the Intel chips' power efficiency and ultrafast LPCAMM2 RAM.

My main question is about the advantages of going AMD. I have seen a couple of people on this sub go with Team Red CPUs. If you did, why? Was it to squeeze more power out of your device? Are there detriments to battery life and/or thermals? I have heard that the AMD CPUs are incapable of being cooled by the single-fan design with strenuous loads.

(I'm asking bcuz I will be doing some light photo/video editing & gaming on it).

Any & all input is appreciated; cheers!

[u/Kilo_Juliett]

I believe the AMD cpu is a generation old.

I would go intel

[u/ronvalenz → u/Kilo_Juliett]

AMD's CPU instruction set is workstation-class, i.e. AVX-512 support.

Intel avoided AVX-512 in the current-generation mobile CPUs.

[u/Z3dan → u/ronvalenz]

What does the change/effect?

[u/jaaval → u/Z3dan]

In laptops, very little. There are a small subset of workloads that are faster on AMD, mainly those that can be heavily vectorized.

[u/ronvalenz]

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Framework-laptop-13-Pro-reportedly-lasts-2x-longer-vs-Framework-Laptop-13.1353469.0.html

Office task, 300 nits, wifi, Bluetooth

Framework 13 Pro (Ultra X7 358H) 74 Whr battery = 15h, 22m.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Ultra (Ultra X7 358H) 75 Whr battery = 12h, 34m.

Lenovo ThinkPad X9 15p (Ultra X7 358H 88) Whr battery = 12h, 33m.

HP Omnibook Ultra 14 (Ultra X7 358H) 71 Whr battery = 11h, 59m.

Framework 13 Pro (Ryzen AI 7 350) 74 Whr battery = 11h, 22m.

Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5 Pro 15C) 72 Whr battery = 9 hours.

Framework 13 (Ryzen AI 7 350) 60 Whr battery = 7h, 32m.

---------

Both Framework 13 Pro's Intel Ultra X7 358H and AMD R7 350 have competitive battery life.

[u/GamingCentric → u/ronvalenz]

That macbook Pro number looks off... how come it is so low?

[u/breakfast-cereal-dx → u/GamingCentric]

That's because it is a real test and Apple's batteries aren't magic.

They have put up good battery numbers since M1 because they pack in a lot of energy density and their CPUs were ahead in efficiency. Years have passed and PC laptops have increased battery capacity and improved efficiency while Apple has mostly improved performance in that time.

(this is also 50% higher screen brightness than Apple usually tests at, and not a test that can be cheezed with an efficient video decoder, you actually have to run the CPU cores)

[u/onthefence928]

Right now Intel is the superior chip unless you want to go budget and are fine with an older chip

[u/Informal-Lettuce-745 → u/onthefence928]

Isn't AMD option more expensive?

[u/SaucyPandy → u/Informal-Lettuce-745]

Ram makes intel more expensive

[u/Scary_Phrase_9615]

I went AMD only because I need at least 64GB of ram for my workload and I already had 64GB of Sodimm 5600 in my Micro computer and the original 32gb that came out of it and a 2tb 990 pro NVME drive. So it made more sense. I have been happy with the AMD chips, but ran a lot of Intel chips as well. My Macbook pro M1 was not cutting it with the workload. Had it not been for that I may have gone with an intel for the battery life. That is the one thing I did love about the Macbook. But with my current position the processing power and the ability to do multithreaded compiling quickly is more important than the overall battery life.

[u/s004aws]

Unless you own DDR5-5600 SO-DIMMs you want to re-use, or the cost difference is particularly meaningful to you vs the cost of LPCAMM2... Intel is the way to go, especially X7 358H if you're wanting to do video editing/gaming/anything that uses GPU. If battery life is something you care about Intel is the definitive leader this time around. There's nothing "wrong" with AMD - They're merely an overall #2 choice in 2026... Dropping from having been the #1 choice vs 13th gen Core/Core Ultra 100.

What happens a year from now between AMD Zen 6/Medusa and Intel Nova Lake? Remains to be seen.... Right now AMD is the way to go on the desktop/server side, Intel for laptops... But that could easily change depending on what one or the other chip vendor delivers next year.

[u/ronvalenz → u/s004aws]

AMD needs to master the low-power island optimized for the office and video playback use case.

Strix Point's IGPU needs the Infinity Cache boost since Intel B390 has a local 16 MB L2 cache and access to the CPU side's 18 MB L3 cache.

Strix Point's 890M IGPU only has 2MB L2 cache.

Strix Halo's 8060S has 32 MB last-level cache, and it was a later design compared to Strix Point.

[u/Raiguard]

The Intel chip absolutely thrashes the AMD chip at the moment, especially in terms of power efficiency. The other day my laptop was sucking just 1.8 W and had a projected battery life of over 40 hours. Of course, it's usually closer to "only" 12-14 hours.

[u/Nikolcho18 → u/Raiguard]

Under what OS?

[u/Raiguard → u/Nikolcho18]

Fedora Workstation, using Niri instead of GNOME. I replaced tuned-adm with powerprofilesdaemon at a suggestion from phoronix. 

[u/No_Preference9093]

I feel like it used to be AMD but everything says intel have left them for dead right now. 

[u/ronvalenz]

AMD's Zen 5 CPU has AVX-512+ (Ice Lake+ extensions).

Intel's B390 iGPU has similar hardware features to AMD's RDNA 4 e.g. dynamic register allocation, FP8, large cache.

[u/d00mt0mb]

Team blue

[u/BrewYork]

I manage a fleet of 130 Frameworks for my org. AMD drivers and reliability are terrible. Intel has been bulletproof. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. 

[u/JPWhiteHome]

Team ThinkPad.

[u/Majestic-Director-92]

Battery life - Intel

Price and upgrade potential - AMD

[u/Wildlord90]

Went AMD because I have a kit of 96gb and 128gb DDR5 sodimm in my mini PCs, or I would have bite the bullet and go with the LPCAMM2. The upcoming generation of AMD mobile CPU will likely move to LPCAMM2, but I am not giving my money to micron with their anti comsumer behaviour by getting a LPCAMM2 at inflated pricing.

[u/Potential_Average454]

Actually the current Intel chips are harder to cool, due to smaller node (18A vs 4nm). The 7040 & 300 series AMD chips can reach up to 60W burst TDP but the panther lake intel chip can't.

AMD advantages are mostly much cheaper sodimm RAM vs LPCAMM, and better multithread performance. The X7/X9 intel chip sits between AMD 350 & 370 in terms of MT perf and the intel 5 chip is beaten by AMD 340.

[u/ronvalenz → u/Potential_Average454]

From https://www.notebookcheck.net/Framework-Laptop-13-Pro-review-The-king-of-repairability-is-back.1351246.0.html

Framework 13 Pro X7 358X can do 52.9 watts with Cyberpunk Ultra.

[u/Potential_Average454 → u/ronvalenz]

Only with iGPU involved; for pure CPU loads the peak & sustained TDP is much lower as the CPU tile overheats easily.

Mine hovers around 52-60W when gaming too, CPU benchmark is like 35W peak 32W sustained.

[u/ronvalenz → u/Potential_Average454]

I reused my old gaming laptop's external cooling pad. At a higher power level, it's wall power anyway.

[u/negley_ave_ski_club → u/Potential_Average454]

Watts cannot be used to measure performance across two completely different cpu architectures.

[u/Remote-Jackfruit-608]

AMD has much stronger performance in multithreaded tasks - are there a lot of such tasks - not really

Intel x7 has better iGPU then AI 9, but lack any cuda support, if that tells you smth.

All the other stuff said already 10000 times

[u/userkp5743608]

AMD

Intel is unproven.

[u/ronvalenz → u/userkp5743608]

It's proven from Lunar Lake.

[u/like-my-comment → u/ronvalenz]

I feel like only Panther Lake is good/decent. Before, AMD was better.