AMD took the rap for the Ryzen 5 7520U
Intel seems to have decided to resume its advertising campaign against AMD, but again it did it strangely. The processor giant created a Core Truths presentation in which it decided to reveal the “terrible secret” that even in the Ryzen 7000 line, AMD continues to use Zen 2 processor cores.
More precisely, the Ryzen 5 7520U APU, which belongs to the Mendocino line, became the object of Intel's close attention. Let's remember that it has four Zen 2 cores with a frequency of up to 4.3 GHz, iGPU Radeon 610M and is characterized by a TDP of 8–15 W. The Mendocino line is designed for cheap and thin laptops.
AMD makes no secret of the fact that it uses old cores; moreover, the current naming system directly indicates this, since the third digit (in this case it is 2) in the CPU number indicates the architecture (2 – Zen 2). Moreover, according to recent reports, AMD will continue to use Zen 2 for budget processors next year.
To be fair, Intel has not been practicing such an approach in recent years, updating even the most budget processors, albeit with a delay relative to more expensive ones. True, the most budget Intel CPUs rely only on small cores, which, among other things, do not support Hyper-Threading.
It's also worth noting that in its presentation, Intel compares the Ryzen 5 7520U with the Core i5-1335U. The latter has two large cores and eight small ones. Yes, this is a much more modern and powerful processor, but there are two big buts.
Firstly, the price of such a CPU alone is $340, according to the Intel website. If we look at the prices of laptops, PCs with a Core i5-1335U start in the range of $550–$600, while a laptop with a Ryzen 5 7520U can be purchased for $380–$420.
Secondly, Intel reproaches AMD for the fact that the Ryzen 5 7520U is based on the Zen 2 architecture from 2019, which is true, but cites its Core i5-1335U as an example, stating that it, unlike its competitor, was presented in 2023 and is based on the company's latest architecture, Raptor Lake. But the truth is that the Core i5-1335U is a copy of the Core i5-1235U with a slightly increased frequency, and this is Alder Lake from 2021–2022.
This looks even more interesting if you scroll through the Intel document further and see that the company itself, further dividing the CPU into segments, compares the Ryzen 5 7520U with the Core i3 N305, and not with the Core i5-1335U. The company classifies the latter as the Premium segment, but AMD itself classifies the Ryzen 7 7840U and Ryzen 7 7735U into the same segment.