Intel Core i3-1220P vs AMD Ryzen 5 5500U

Intel Core i3-1220P

The Intel Core i3-1220P is a lower mid-range Alder Lake family SoC designed for use in ultra-light, ultra-thin laptops of the more affordable flavour. It was announced in early 2022 and it has 2 performance cores as opposed to the 6 cores of the top-of-the-line i7-1280P (P-cores, Golden Cove architecture) mated to 8 efficient cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). The i3's P-cores are Hyper-Threading-enabled for a total of 12 threads when combined with its E-cores. The clock speeds range from 1.5 GHz to 4.4 GHz for the performance cluster and 1.1 GHz to 3.3 GHz for the efficient cluster. The shortcomings of this processor as compared with the faster Core i5-1240P are many, including the significantly slower iGPU, lower CPU core count, lower clock speeds, complete lack of the vPro features.

Architecture

The i3 is a continuation of Intel's efforts to use the ARM-developed big.LITTLE technology for its own benefit. A single "little" Alder Lake core is supposed to be as fast as a Skylake core (as found in the venerable Core i7-6700HQ among other options) which is six years old at this point. All of Core i3-1220P's CPU cores enjoy access to 12 MB of L3 cache. The integrated memory controller supports various memory types up to LPDDR5-5200, DDR5-4800, LPDDR4x-4267 or DDR4-3200; Intel suggests using no more than 64 GB of RAM, for reference. Just like the other 12th Gen Intel Core processors, this Core i3 comes with the Thread Director which is a new functionality designed to help Windows 11 decide which cores to use for what workload for best performance and efficiency possible. Hardware acceleration of AI algorithms is supported via GNA 3.0 and DL Boost (via AVX2). PCI-Express 5.0 support has not found its way into Alder Lake P processors, so users will have to be content with PCI-Express 4.0 for the time being. Four PCI-Express 4 lanes allow for a read/write rate of up to 7.9 GB/s, provided a suitably fast NVMe SSD is used.

Please note that this is not a user-replaceable CPU. It gets soldered permanently on to the motherboard (FCBGA1744 socket interface).

Performance

While we have not tested a single system built around the 1220P as of October 2023, we have tested a laptop featuring the i5-1240U, a chip with nearly the same specs (2 P-cores mated to 8 E-cores, all running at the same clock speeds as what the 1220P has). Based on that, we expect the 1220P to be just slightly ahead of the Core i5-11400H, the Core i7-1265U and also the Ryzen 5 5600U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of your system is.

Graphics

The built-in graphics adapter in the form of the 64 EU UHD Graphics running at up to 1.1 GHz is a slightly downgraded 80 EU Iris Xe. The latter can be found in many Alder Lake-P and Tiger Lake-UP3 processors, like a Core i5-1250P or a Core i5-1145G7, respectively. Despite the lower EU cluster count, this is still a fairly capable iGPU, loaded with modern features such as the AV1 video decoding capability and SUHD 4320p monitor support. The UHD Graphics will happily drive up to 4 monitors simultaneously, provided the laptop has the outputs required. Its gaming performance is unlikely to please the crowds, though, as it will be good for resolutions no higher than 1600x900 and Low settings only in most titles trleased in 2021 and 2022. Your mileage may vary depending on how high the Power Limits are and how capable the cooling solution of a laptop is. Fast RAM is a prerequisite for decent performance as well (the UHD Graphics has to make do with no dedicated video memory).

Power consumption

The i3's base power consumption (also known as the default TDP or Power Limit 1) is 28 W; its "minimum assured" power consumption sits at 20 W. In the meantime, the maximum Turbo power consumption (also known as the PL2) is not supposed to exceed 64 W.

This 12th generation Intel chip is built with Intel's fourth-gen 10 nm process marketed as Intel 7 for decent, as of late 2022, energy efficiency. Expect the i3 to be significantly less power-hungry (and a lot easier to cool) than all other Alder Lake-P chips because of its lower core count.

AMD Ryzen 5 5500U

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500U is a hexa-core APU of the Lucienne product family designed for use in ultra-thin, upper mid-range laptops. The processor was unveiled in H1 2021; its six CPU cores are based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. The cores run at 2.1 GHz (base clock speed) to 4 GHz (highest Boost frequency possible) and feature the thread-doubling SMT technology for a total of 12 threads. The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process.

One could be forgiven for thinking Ryzen 5 5500U is a renamed Ryzen 5 4500U - which is not the case. Ryzen 5 5500U is most similar to Ryzen 5 4600U, the most noteworthy difference between the two being the faster iGPU model of the former.

In the meantime, Ryzen 5 5600U got a little more lucky; it is based on the newer Zen 3 architecture and it also has higher clock speeds than what a 5500U can boast of.

Architecture

While Ryzen 5 5500U and Ryzen 7 5700U are Zen 2-based processors, the neighbouring Ryzen 5 5600U and Ryzen 7 5800U use AMD's brand-new Zen 3 architecture. This makes the former two a generation older than their names suggest. Still, Zen 2 is nothing to sneeze at, with its high performance-per-Watt and performance-per-MHz figures.

Ryzen 5 5500U supports dual-channel DDR4-3200 and quad-channel LPDDR4-4266 RAM and has 8 MB of Level 3 cache. Unlike desktop-grade Ryzen 5000-series processors, Ryzen 5 5500U is limited to PCI-Express 3.0 (not PCI-Express 4.0; no 7.9 GB/s NVMe SSDs here).

The processor gets soldered permanently on to the motherboard (FP6 socket interface) and is thus not user-replaceable.

Performance

Multi-thread performance is most comparable to the Ryzen 7 4700U and the Core i7-10850H, which is nothing to sneeze at. The Ryzen will have no trouble chewing through pretty much any workload, as of mid 2022.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of around 27 W, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 14ALC05-82HU006NGE is among the fastest laptops built around the 5500U that we know of. It can be more than 30% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Graphics

The Radeon RX Vega 7 iGPU has 7 CUs at its disposal (64 x 7 = 448 unified shaders) running at up to 1,800 MHz. Its real-life performance is close to what we've seen from GeForce MX250 and Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80 EUs); Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021) runs well at 1080p resolution, low-to-medium settings, to give you an example. As the iGPU has no VRAM of its own, it is paramount that fast system RAM is used.

The graphics adapter definitely supports UHD 2160p monitors at 60 Hz. It will have no trouble HW-decoding HEVC, AVC, VP9, MPEG-2 and other popular video codecs. There is no AV1 support; AV1-encoded videos will be software-decoded, which six Zen 2 cores will handle with ease.

Power consumption

The APU has a default TDP (also known as the long-term Power Limit) of 15 W. That can be changed to anything between 10 W and 25 W by laptop makers and in many cases they do go for a value higher than 15 W to achieve higher performance levels. On the other hand, by going for the lowest value, it will be possible to build a passively cooled system around the Ryzen 5.

The R5 5500U is manufactured using TSMC's 7 nm process for average, as of mid 2023, average efficiency.