When purchasing a new PC with an x86 processor, buyers have a choice that has been familiar for many, many years: Either the red team, i.e. AMD CPUs, or the blue team, i.e. Intel.
For Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, historically you could only choose Intel. This has changed over the past decade, with the addition of AMD as a fixed choice to the list, particularly for the classic T-series ThinkPads.
We tested both: The Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 Intel last year, and its AMD-equipped counterpart recently. Of course, the two have many similarities, since they both rely on the same basic design. But there are also important differences. The most important is of course the difference in processor.
ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 AMD vs ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 Intel: The main differences
In our full ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 review AMD beat the T14 Gen 6 version with Intel Lunar Lake by around 11% in terms of overall CPU performance. The difference is even greater when considering multi-core performance alone: The AMD T14 Gen 6 is around 30% faster than the T14 Lunar Lake. This means that for tasks like rendering and CPU compiling, the AMD Ryzen model will perform much better.
While that’s a positive for the AMD version, Intel also has some strong points: The Intel ARC 140V iGPU is about 75% faster in games, and battery life is 41% better on the Lunar Lake variant. Overall, for mobility and graphics-intensive tasks, the Intel model is preferable.
However, the AMD model certainly gains in scalability, as the Lunar Lake T14 Gen 6 has soldered RAM, while the AMD T14 Gen 6 can be upgraded up to 64 GB. On the other hand, the Intel model has Intel Wi-Fi, which many consider superior to the solution ThinkPad AMD Wi-Fi powered by Mediatek.
Overall, there are good reasons to choose one or the other. Which team are you on – Blue or Red?
