AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650H vs Intel Pentium Gold 6405U

AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650H

The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650H is a processor for big (gaming) laptops based of the Rembrandt generation. The R5 6650H integrates six of the eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.3 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.5 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (12 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The Ryzen 5 PRO 6650H is the professional version of the consumer R5 6600H with additional management features and the Microsoft Pluton Security processor.

The new Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800 or LPDDR5-6400, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system powered by the Ryzen 5 PRO 6650H as of August 2023, it's safe to expect the chip to be about as fast as the 6600HS.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how comfortable the cooling solution of your system is.

In the 6000 series, AMD finally switched to the current RDNA 2 graphics architecture for the iGPU. The 6650H only offers the slower Radeon 660M with 6 of the 12 CUs enabled and 1.9 GHz max. clock rate.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 45 Watts (default). The power efficiency should be very good, thanks to the improved 6 nm process and additional power saving features in the 6000 series.

Intel Pentium Gold 6405U

The Intel Pentium Gold 6405U is a power efficient entry-level dual-core SoC for notebooks based on the Comet Lake (CML-U) generation and was announced in October 2019. Compared to the similar Whiskey Lake Pentium 5405U processors, the difference is the higher clock speed (+100 MHz) and support for faster memory. The processor cores are clocked at 2.4 GHz (no Turbo). Thanks to HyperThreading 4 threads can be used. More information on Comet Lake and all the models and articles on it can be found here.

Due to the 100 MHz higher clock speed, the Pentium Gold 6405U should be slightly faster than the old Pentium 5405U and therefore in the entry level of mobile processors. The missing Turbo and only two cores are definitely a downside and therefore the CPU is best used for simple tasks like browsing and office programs. Compared to the faster Core i3, i5 and i7 Comet Lake models, the Pentium does not support SSE (2).

The integrated graphics card is still the same as in the previous generations. It is called only Intel UHD Graphics but is still the same Intel UHD Graphics 610 like in the Pentium 5405U. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a VP9 and H.265 de- and encoder and an integrated dual channel LPDDR3-2133/DDR4-2400 memory controller (compared to DDR4-2666 in the faster Core i3).

The chip is still produced in the 14nm++ process as Whiskey Lake. The TDP (PL1) is specified at 15 Watts but can be lowered to 12.5 Watt although the CPU then only runs at 800 MHz.