These aren't bold assumptions. They're pretty safe bets, based on both the performance of currently released parts, announced parts, announced machines from partners, AMD's roadmap (which they have exceeded their guidance on for the past 2 years) and leaked benchmarks.
If we were talking about stuff in the pipe before Ryzen was released, fair enough. But the performance characteristics of Ryzen 4000 series mobile parts is pretty well established at this point. Give or take 5-10%.
And 5-10% difference from what has been leaked is not going to save intel here in terms of performance or performance per watt.
Datacentre get the best silicon intel can produce (in terms of performance per watt) and there intel is nowhere. They're not going to magically be way better in mobile or desktop, where profit margins are much thinner.
In the answer to Aiden in this post I shown benchmarks of Intel CPUs, how big power hog's those CPUs are. Renoir, even 45W TDP CPUs will use much less power, while clocking higher.
cTDP of 45W Ryzen 7 4800H is 54W, which is second PL state for this APU, which gives it a possibility to boost over 3.5-3.6 GHz on all cores. Zen 2 has higher IPC than Skylake, which will result in better performance and better thermals, for all of CPUs. Especially Renoir advantage will be apparent when you will lock CPUs to certain power targets, like 45W's. We have to remember - Intel CPUs at that power target only run at base clocks. AMD APUs will still boost to over 3 GHz. I'd say Renoir will beat Intel offerings pretty handily.
I wish that MBP 16 will get Renoir APUs, like 4800H and Navi 12, which is Semi-Custom product specifically for Apple. 40 CUs, HBM2, low clocks which make this GPU be possible to fit in 16 inch MBP, in terms of thermal performance.
What about the thermal issues with the 16" MBP. Ive lives on in bad thermal design.
It has zero to do with Ive's design but Intel being Intel and overproviding their CPUs with too much power.
Core i9-9980HK, the 8 Core BTO CPU from MBP16 - 135W max power draw, average 92.
Those "downspikes" of power draw is when the CPU underclocks itself to 1.9 GHz on all cores, and it still draws over 50W of power. Intel CPUs power draw is defined by their clock speeds.
15W Icelake CPUs are drawing between 49 and 64W of power.