 I have got not one, but two of the same laptop here on the table. It all comes down to this. Intel versus AMD. Comparing them in laptops has become practically impossible over the last couple of years, because nobody makes an identical machine where only the CPU is different. Excuse me, did I say nobody? The XMG Core 15 claims to give absolutely equal treatment to both sides. So then, with everything else the same, who will be victorious? I don't know. All I know is that the teleprompter appears to have gained sentience and is commanding me to tell you about our sponsor. Instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device with GlassWire. Use offer code LINUS to get 25% off GlassWire at the link down below. With the notable exception of the motherboard chipset and storage, don't worry, we'll get to that, every other part of these two systems is exactly alike. Same RTX 3060 GPU, same 62 watt-hour battery, and same 1920 by 1080, 165 Hertz IPS display. This gives us something that is really rare for mobile devices, an opportunity to run a truly apples to apples comparison between Team Blue and Team Red CPUs. And not just in terms of CPU performance benchmarks, that would make my job easy, but it wouldn't give us the full picture. So on your right, Intel inside the brand spanking new Core i7-11800H, weighing in at 2188 US dollars. And on your left is AMD's mobile bread and butter, the Ryzen 7 5800H. And right out of the gate, AMD's 5800H is showing a big part of what's made it such an enthusiast darling. Even though it also has eight cores and 16 threads and boosts just 0.2 gigahertz lower, it ends up priced almost 100 US dollars below its Intel competition. But there is more here than meets the eye. Take the exterior for instance. We have definitely got the same chassis and therefore the same port arrangement, but that doesn't mean the I.O. is exactly the same. This is a USB type C port. This is a Thunderbolt 4 port, a feature that ranks pretty high on my list of nice-to-haves in a laptop, especially at this kind of price. Now to be clear, USB-C can be used as a single cable docking solution for running your display, network and peripherals, not to mention power. But Thunderbolt just plain does it better, with more bandwidth for displays and storage, daisy chain support and compatibility of course with pesky Thunderbolt-only peripherals. Now Thunderbolt is an Intel technology. So while some desktop AMD motherboards do have it, courtesy of an onboard Intel chip, it hasn't shown up in any AMD laptops as far as I'm aware. But that should change with rumors indicating that Thunderbolt compatibility will show up in the form of USB 4 ports on Ryzen 6000 series chips, code name Warhol, in 2022-ish. But enough about that, let's talk performance. Surprisingly, Intel won the vast majority of our tests. Blender Classroom Run saw anywhere between 8 and 30 seconds of improvement on repeat tests. 3DMark reported a 4.1% CPU score improvement in TimeSpy. It was more of the same when it came to gaming. The 11800H showed a mild lead across the board, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Rainbow Six Siege, and F1 2020, all with improvements of up to 15% over AMD. But there's a catch, power. It's hard to say exactly which factors contribute the most here, but in spite of both CPUs having default TDPs of 45 watts, our Ryzen CPU settled in at around 60 watts with our Intel chips self-reporting power consumption as high as 100 watts and settling in around 80 watts during extended workloads. Wow! I mean, on the desktop, 20 watts is like having some more RGB in your case. But on mobile, PCMark's modern office battery test gave AMD a 31% edge over Intel at the same screen brightness. That's a big deal. Ask any EV owner how they'd feel about 30% more range versus an extra 5 to 15% more power. They're going to take the 30% every time. But Intel's heavier power draw comes from more than just turbling up their cores so aggressively. The Core i7-11800H has support for PCI Express Gen 4, which might feel a bit overkill for a laptop, but it gives manufacturers an opportunity to nearly double the sequential read and write performance of their system drive for just the $60 difference between a Samsung 980 Pro and the 970 EVO Plus that XPG paired with AMD's Ryzen 7 5800H. Now, sequential I.O. isn't the be-all and end-all. In PCMark's storage test, the gap does begin to narrow, and we even found when we ran a test a little over a year ago that no one on our team could tell the difference between a low-end and a high-end SSD doing everyday things like loading games and editing 4K video. So outside of some very specific workloads like frequent large data ingests or big number crunching, I suspect most of you won't be able to tell. But that PCI Express advantage extends past the storage to the GPU as well. And while these RTX 3060s are capable of running PCI Express Gen 4 with up to 16 lanes, which our Intel system is fully utilizing thanks to its four additional PCIe lanes, our AMD system is connected at just one quarter that speed with only eight Gen 3 lanes. But then we did already talk about gaming performance, didn't we? And we know then that AMD's compromises here appear to have been wise ones. At least that's true on a machine running an RTX 3060 rather than a 3070 or a 3080. Boiling it all down then, the Intel machine wins on performance, and the AMD machine wins on battery life. So what do you choose? Well, what? I can't tell you. I already gave you all the numbers and I explained why they're such. From here, it's your call. If you've got the extra Benjamin to spend and you want balls to the wall performance, the Intel version of the Core 15 looks great. It's got Thunderbolt, PCI Express Gen 4 storage, however small the benefit might be, and you might have an easier time sourcing it at the moment. But if battery life is what you're after, then I'd take the AMD. If you were wondering why AMD laptops tend to be a better value, I guess we finally got the answer. Just make sure that you take that extra cash and spend it over at lttstore.com. Oh, or with our sponsor. FreshBooks is easy to use accounting software designed specifically with you in mind, the small business owner. FreshBooks has everything you need to manage your books. Invoicing, expenses, time tracking, and more. And it's designed to be easy to use with built-in automation so you spend less time invoicing, expensing, and tracking projects, and more time doing projects and growing your business. Whether you're a tradesperson, creative agency, or a YouTuber, you can choose a plan that's right for you. They have award-winning Toronto-based customer support if you need it, and you can try it out for free for 30 days today with no credit card required at freshbooks.com slash linus. Thanks for watching. Bye. Oh, actually, hold on. If you're looking for another video to watch, check out the recent one on how laptop manufacturers are slowing down your PC by using higher density RAM. It makes even more of a difference than AMD versus Intel, which is a little awkward.