6 ms·

Intel is spreading FUD about supposed Ryzen 4000 performance drops on battery

118 points by exar0815 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Walking a fine line here: I'm not saying it's okay for manufacturers to present misleading data like this—they really shouldn't—but, this has basically been standard practice since the beginning of time, hasn't it? Journalists shouldn't be taking a competitor's claims at face value, and I expect the vast majority are smart enough to know this.
- jakogut 6y ago
  I'd like to see Intel make a better product and sell it based on its own merits rather than attacking the accomplishments of their competitors. Smear pieces like this smack of desperation and the lack of a competitive product, or the strategy to create one. A great product would sell itself.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    >I'd like to see Intel make a better product and sell it based on its own merits rather than attacking the accomplishments of their competitors. How do you market a "better" product without comparing it to the rest?
    - jakogut 6y ago
      Accurately represent the product, including its strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition, which is also accurately represented. Alternatively, just compare against your own product portfolio, and leave the benchmarking against the competition to impartial third parties.
- p1necone 6y ago
  Certain companies do this way more than others, and we should absolutely be calling them out on it.
- grayhatter 6y ago
  So what are you saying? Did you mean to say the tone of the article should reflect that it's totally ok that intel obscure the truth with dishonest representations? Or what that meant more as a kudos to extreme tech for doing what apparently is required, dissecting the lies of chip manufacturers? Or something else entirely?
- tubularhells 6y ago
  AMD has consistently downplayed their performance gains in their press releases for the Zen architecture. Stop playing devil's advocate, it doesn't add to the discussion.
  - A-Train 6y ago
    This was a very smart cold blooded strategy. They didn't need to do anything at this point because within a few days after the launch there were plenty of reviews to confirm they had the best high-end CPUs. They knew they were winning.
    - tubularhells 6y ago
      Yes, it was a smart pr move. It wasn't FUD, however, which is the classic Intel/Microsoft strategy.
kissiel 6y ago
My 4750u (in T14 thinkpad) doesn't go to 4GHz clock in the first 10s of load when on battery. After 10s it jumps to 4GHz+. Which means that for my bursty workloads like running unit tests in python, linters, etc. I get 60% of performance. To circumvent that I often use external powerbank just to make it 'plugged in'. Running kernel 5.9 btw. Annoying AF.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  You can tune power management behavior to suit your needs.
  - kissiel 6y ago
    I'd appreciate a resource on how to do so.
    - grayhatter 6y ago
      Commenting to follow up if op delivers.
    - exar0815 6y ago
      What operating system are you using? First step in Windows is this https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Adjust-CPU-Frequency-in-Windows-10/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Adjust-CPU-Frequency-in... In Linux you can control it much more gradually https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling
      - gruez 6y ago
        >First step in Windows is this It's even easier than that. Just click the battery icon in the taskbar and there's a slider that goes from "best battery life" to "best performance". Choosing the latter basically forces the highest boost frequency available.
        6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sounds 6y ago
Same behavior from Intel, using MBA tricks instead of innovating. [1] Intel "'Forgot' to Mention 28-Core, 5-GHz CPU Demo Was Overclocked to such an extreme that it required a one-horsepower industrial water chiller" https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,37244.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,372... [2] Intel decides Cinebench "which has a really niche usefulness" in their Tiger Lake presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHBgb9SY1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHBgb9SY1Y [3] Intel allegedly paid manufacturers "rebates" to limit their purchases of AMD, ended up paying $1.25B to AMD and $1.45B more to the EU for the antitrust practices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v.... From the article: Intel’s explanation for why AMD CPUs lose so much performance on battery is that the systems wait for 7-10 seconds before engaging turbo mode ... the settings that control the amount of time before turbo modes engage and the overall performance delta between AC and DC power are settings that the OEM controls, not AMD. ... Intel’s five comparison systems for itself came from MSI, Lenovo, Intel itself (in the form of a laptop kit), and two from HP. Intel is drawing on a much wider range of manufacturers for its own systems. I don’t know anything about the NUC laptop kit - haven't had the opportunity to test one - but I would have preferred the fifth system be a standard commercial comparison, and the AMD systems should have been drawn from an equally diverse pool of hardware as the Intel ones were. There are four manufacturers represented for Intel, and two for AMD. ... When Intel gave its presentation, it made a point of calling out the fact that Cinebench R20 doesn’t show the same behavior as the other benchmarks it had chosen to highlight. The "oddly" is straight-up FUD. Cinebench R23 also doesn’t show the 30-48 percent pattern of decline Intel claims. Neither does Corona Render. Neither does Handbrake. Neither does JetStream 2. Neither does Blender 2.90. Neither does the Blender 1.0Beta2 benchmark (not shown, but I ran it).
- leoc 6y ago
  There are also some recent suspicions that Intel may be playing games with the Math Kernel Library (again?): https://level1techs.com/video/intel-throttling-mkl-performance-amd https://level1techs.com/video/intel-throttling-mkl-performan... . Intel's "Chief Performance Strategist" Ryan Shrout is not universally well-esteemed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0ZzA9wTFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0ZzA9wTFE .
intricatedetail 6y ago
Intel is getting desperate. Sounds like they want to go down in an ugly way.
offtop5 6y ago
Very happy to see Apple roll out their own processors. Intel is well know for these tricks. Quotable from the article. >is an overreach that recalls Intel’s behavior from the early 2000s in the most unflattering of ways. If I want to know whether the company building the fastest CPU core on a per-clock, per-watt basis thinks AMD’s product stack is valid on the basis of its on-battery performance, I’ll ask Apple.
Traster 6y ago
One of the things that sucked about working for Intel is that you just knew you were working for a company that had the institutional personality of a complete raging arsehole. HR people would explain to you that whilst yes, those floating point units did demonstrably produce the wrong answers, Intel as an organisation doesn't accept that it did anything wrong, customer expectations were simply misplaced. Geopolitically Intel is probably going to need to get bailed out, but it's a toxic company that could do with disappearing. I won't be mourning their Sales & Marketing teams.
- m463 6y ago
  From the outside I have to say one thing. If Intel went away we would all lose. This isn't like the phone company where somebody has won and consumers take the brunt of it. This is a situation where there's a struggle and Intel HAS to compete and AMD has to compete and the winners are consumers. I also think what is probably happening inside intel is that the employees will benefit from the competition. I think it might quell infighting and put good engineering decisions back above shitty dynasties.
jonplackett 6y ago
How long's it gonna be until people are scraping those 'intel inside' badges off their computer to increase resale value.
rasz 6y ago
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Performance-Comparison-Combined.png https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Perfo... oh yes, I totally see this performance drop on battery, Intel simply switched laptops around. Its i7 that drops like a rock on battery.
rurban 6y ago
The new Oracle. Now I am just awaiting the lawsuits

118 points by exar0815 6y ago

Walking a fine line here: I'm not saying it's okay for manufacturers to present misleading data like this—they really shouldn't—but, this has basically been standard practice since the beginning of time, hasn't it? Journalists shouldn't be taking a competitor's claims at face value, and I expect the vast majority are smart enough to know this.

jakogut 6y ago
I'd like to see Intel make a better product and sell it based on its own merits rather than attacking the accomplishments of their competitors. Smear pieces like this smack of desperation and the lack of a competitive product, or the strategy to create one. A great product would sell itself.
- eznzt 6y ago
  >I'd like to see Intel make a better product and sell it based on its own merits rather than attacking the accomplishments of their competitors. How do you market a "better" product without comparing it to the rest?
  - jakogut 6y ago
    Accurately represent the product, including its strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition, which is also accurately represented. Alternatively, just compare against your own product portfolio, and leave the benchmarking against the competition to impartial third parties.
p1necone 6y ago
Certain companies do this way more than others, and we should absolutely be calling them out on it.
grayhatter 6y ago
So what are you saying? Did you mean to say the tone of the article should reflect that it's totally ok that intel obscure the truth with dishonest representations? Or what that meant more as a kudos to extreme tech for doing what apparently is required, dissecting the lies of chip manufacturers? Or something else entirely?
tubularhells 6y ago
AMD has consistently downplayed their performance gains in their press releases for the Zen architecture. Stop playing devil's advocate, it doesn't add to the discussion.
- A-Train 6y ago
  This was a very smart cold blooded strategy. They didn't need to do anything at this point because within a few days after the launch there were plenty of reviews to confirm they had the best high-end CPUs. They knew they were winning.
  - tubularhells 6y ago
    Yes, it was a smart pr move. It wasn't FUD, however, which is the classic Intel/Microsoft strategy.

kissiel 6y ago

My 4750u (in T14 thinkpad) doesn't go to 4GHz clock in the first 10s of load when on battery. After 10s it jumps to 4GHz+. Which means that for my bursty workloads like running unit tests in python, linters, etc. I get 60% of performance. To circumvent that I often use external powerbank just to make it 'plugged in'. Running kernel 5.9 btw. Annoying AF.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
You can tune power management behavior to suit your needs.
- kissiel 6y ago
  I'd appreciate a resource on how to do so.
  - grayhatter 6y ago
    Commenting to follow up if op delivers.
  - exar0815 6y ago
    What operating system are you using? First step in Windows is this https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Adjust-CPU-Frequency-in-Windows-10/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Adjust-CPU-Frequency-in... In Linux you can control it much more gradually https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling
    - gruez 6y ago
      >First step in Windows is this It's even easier than that. Just click the battery icon in the taskbar and there's a slider that goes from "best battery life" to "best performance". Choosing the latter basically forces the highest boost frequency available.
      - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sounds 6y ago

Same behavior from Intel, using MBA tricks instead of innovating. [1] Intel "'Forgot' to Mention 28-Core, 5-GHz CPU Demo Was Overclocked to such an extreme that it required a one-horsepower industrial water chiller" https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,37244.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-28-core-cpu-5ghz,372... [2] Intel decides Cinebench "which has a really niche usefulness" in their Tiger Lake presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHBgb9SY1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHBgb9SY1Y [3] Intel allegedly paid manufacturers "rebates" to limit their purchases of AMD, ended up paying $1.25B to AMD and $1.45B more to the EU for the antitrust practices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v.... From the article: Intel’s explanation for why AMD CPUs lose so much performance on battery is that the systems wait for 7-10 seconds before engaging turbo mode ... the settings that control the amount of time before turbo modes engage and the overall performance delta between AC and DC power are settings that the OEM controls, not AMD. ... Intel’s five comparison systems for itself came from MSI, Lenovo, Intel itself (in the form of a laptop kit), and two from HP. Intel is drawing on a much wider range of manufacturers for its own systems. I don’t know anything about the NUC laptop kit - haven't had the opportunity to test one - but I would have preferred the fifth system be a standard commercial comparison, and the AMD systems should have been drawn from an equally diverse pool of hardware as the Intel ones were. There are four manufacturers represented for Intel, and two for AMD. ... When Intel gave its presentation, it made a point of calling out the fact that Cinebench R20 doesn’t show the same behavior as the other benchmarks it had chosen to highlight. The "oddly" is straight-up FUD. Cinebench R23 also doesn’t show the 30-48 percent pattern of decline Intel claims. Neither does Corona Render. Neither does Handbrake. Neither does JetStream 2. Neither does Blender 2.90. Neither does the Blender 1.0Beta2 benchmark (not shown, but I ran it).

leoc 6y ago
There are also some recent suspicions that Intel may be playing games with the Math Kernel Library (again?): https://level1techs.com/video/intel-throttling-mkl-performance-amd https://level1techs.com/video/intel-throttling-mkl-performan... . Intel's "Chief Performance Strategist" Ryan Shrout is not universally well-esteemed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0ZzA9wTFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0ZzA9wTFE .

intricatedetail 6y ago

Intel is getting desperate. Sounds like they want to go down in an ugly way.

offtop5 6y ago

Very happy to see Apple roll out their own processors. Intel is well know for these tricks. Quotable from the article. >is an overreach that recalls Intel’s behavior from the early 2000s in the most unflattering of ways. If I want to know whether the company building the fastest CPU core on a per-clock, per-watt basis thinks AMD’s product stack is valid on the basis of its on-battery performance, I’ll ask Apple.

Traster 6y ago

One of the things that sucked about working for Intel is that you just knew you were working for a company that had the institutional personality of a complete raging arsehole. HR people would explain to you that whilst yes, those floating point units did demonstrably produce the wrong answers, Intel as an organisation doesn't accept that it did anything wrong, customer expectations were simply misplaced. Geopolitically Intel is probably going to need to get bailed out, but it's a toxic company that could do with disappearing. I won't be mourning their Sales & Marketing teams.

m463 6y ago
From the outside I have to say one thing. If Intel went away we would all lose. This isn't like the phone company where somebody has won and consumers take the brunt of it. This is a situation where there's a struggle and Intel HAS to compete and AMD has to compete and the winners are consumers. I also think what is probably happening inside intel is that the employees will benefit from the competition. I think it might quell infighting and put good engineering decisions back above shitty dynasties.

jonplackett 6y ago

How long's it gonna be until people are scraping those 'intel inside' badges off their computer to increase resale value.

rasz 6y ago

https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Performance-Comparison-Combined.png https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Perfo... oh yes, I totally see this performance drop on battery, Intel simply switched laptops around. Its i7 that drops like a rock on battery.

rurban 6y ago

The new Oracle. Now I am just awaiting the lawsuits