AMD Ryzen 7 2700U vs Intel Core i5-6600K

AMD Ryzen 7 2700U

The AMD Ryzen 7 2700U is a mobile SoC that was announced in October 2017. It combines four Zen cores (8 threads) clocked at 2.2 - 3.8 GHz with a Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics card with 10 CUs (640 Shaders) clocked at up to 1300 MHz. The TDP can be configured by the laptop manufacturer between 12 to 25 Watt (15 Watt nominal) and therefore the APU is also suited for thin and light laptops. The integrated dual-channel memory controller supports up to DDR4-2400 memory. More information on Raven Ridge can be found in our launch article.

The performance of the Zen CPU cores should be better than a high end Kaby-Lake-Refresh Quad-Core CPU (e.g. the Core i7-8650U) according to AMD. Therefore, the Ryzen 7 2700U is suited for all applications.

Intel Core i5-6600K

The Intel Core i5-6600K is a high-end quad-core desktop processor based on the Skylake architecture, which was announced in August 2015. The CPU, which is manufactured in a 14 nm process, runs at 3.5 up to 3.9 GHz (2 cores: 3.8 GHz, 3 cores: 3.7 GHz, 4 cores: 3.6 GHz) and – contrary to the i7-series – does not support Hyperthreading. Being a so called "K"-model, the Core i5-6600K has a free multiplier and can be easily overclocked. 

Performance

Because of the slightly slower clocks, the smaller L3-cache (6 instead of 8 MB) as well as the missing Hyperthreading support, the Core i5-6600K is about 10-30 percent slower than the top model i7-6700K. The CPU will still handle demanding applications and games without any problems.

Graphics

Graphics are handled by the integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 with 24 EUs (Execution Units), which is clocked at 350 - 1150 MHz. Compared to the HD Graphics 4600 (Haswell, 20 EUs), the performance is increased by around 25 percent. The overall GPU performance is still low-end, so modern games can, if at all, only be played smoothly with low settings. 

Power Consumption

The TDP was slightly raised from 88 to 91 Watts compared to the predecessor.