CPU performance (processors)

[elhota]

I recently purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad A485 with AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 2300u CPU and 256 GB SSD.  When surfing the internet, and playing online games I find that it's much slower and lags in comparison to my Lenovo Thinkcentre desktop with an Intel i3-7100 cpu and 1 TB HDD.  The benchmark score for the Ryzen 3 Pro 2300u is 7045 while the benchmark for the i3 7100 is 5773.  But why is the performance of my desktop so much better than the laptop?

Any computer savvy folks out there who can shed some light on this?

[Korth]

As for Intel vs AMD (vs Nvidia):

Blue Team, Red Team, and Green Team each have their fanatical adherents. Intel is by far the most assertive (and least ethical) supplier of Enterprise hardware. AMD traditionally dominates all the middle markets because it tends to deliver best bang for the buck, Intel usually dominates the highest-tier tech and highest-tier pricing, AMD had a lull for much of a decade but both companies have been aggressively leap-frogging consumer products since Ryzen a few years back.

You can't really compare apples and oranges, you've got to isolate CPU vs CPU (along with their mainboards/chipsets, etc) on otherwise identical machinery. Fortunately, google provides hundreds of review sites which have already done this. It only gets tricky when comparing prebuilt machines (like laptop submodels) which are essentially "all-or-nothing, as-is" package deals.

The silicon tech is fiercely competitive so the market is saturated and you basically get exactly what you pay for at every $10 increment.

But brands add a little or a lot to price. And they're essnetially about fashion, not tech. You pay some premium for Lenovo, some for Intel, some for "Enterprise" in the descriptor - which may or may not have actually added to the performance, reliability, or longevity of the product.

[Korth]

You can go through all your BIOS settings, you can google up all the usual WinOS performance tweaks. Google up some reviews for your machine to learn about common limits, problems, and fixes/workarounds. You can also compare benchmarks and other results to determine whether your particular machine happens to be a sub-par or defective specimen. (Lenovo is one of several makers notorious for using borderline silicon bins on their low-end and mid-end products. And all manufacturers seem to have poor quality control when applying thermal interface materials. Price is irrelevant, it's always made cheap.)

"Enterprise" (and "Gaming") laptops invariably ship with tons of branded OEM baggageware you won't use and can always (re)install later anyhow, so make a "just in case" backup/image of everything then start ruthlessly deleting that bloat.

[elhota]

Both my desktop and laptop have integrated graphics cards and 8 GB RAM.  I bought an ASUS laptop back in Sept that had an i5-8250u CPU and that one was fast- as fast as my desktop if not faster.  But the battery life on that laptop was not very good so I returned it.  I wonder if Intel CPUs generally perform better than AMD Ryzen or not.

[Korth]

@elhota 

Synthetic benchmarks do not accurately reflect real-world usage - they've evolved into enthusiast brag-and-swag metrics and exaggerated marketing tools - your complaint is itself a firsthand observation of a common disparity.

You'd have to compare full system specs for both platforms side by side. The CPU and SSD might have been hot selling points but the (unadvertised) capacities of the chipset, RAM, operating system, etc all affect actual performance. Chances are your laptop leans on a CPU-integrated GPU while your desktop has a dedicated GPU card, your laptop has to carefully throttle performances to balance battery draw and manage heat while your desktop has a robust PSU and bulkier cooling systems, your laptop likely has less memory and slower memory than your desktop because mobile form factors are more costly, etc.

[yanzhiqiang]

Desktop computers dont consider saving electricity but laptops do. Desktops are big and dont consider saving space but laptops do. If you want performence and spend same amont of money, buy a desktop. A $1000 desktop far more faster than a $1000 laptop.