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What you're missing is that the CPU in Dell is the U series, which has a base TDP of 15 watts and goes up to 25 watts if the cooling is good. The CPU in MB Air

What you're missing is that the CPU in Dell is the U series, which has a base TDP of 15 watts and goes up to 25 watts if the cooling is good. The CPU in MB Air is a 10 watt Y series, which is really weak (MacBook 12" leve weak). So you get miles more performance in Dell. Judging by the lack of comments on the CPU difference, Apple is really successful in fooling the public into thinking that a MB Air i5 is the same as any other ultrabook i5, which it is not at all. Dell's CPU: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196603/intel-core-i5-1035g1-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196603/... MB Air's CPU: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196589/intel-core-i5-1030ng7-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-50-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196589/... Apple used to put the U-series CPUs into Air up until 2015, leaving the much more performant H-series for the Pro. But ever since the 2016 they now put the U-series into the 13" Pro while the Air gets a really weak CPU. They effectively shifted the performance one step up in pricing. While all the PC manufacturers stuck to using the U series in the air-like chassis,relegating the Y series to laptops that need to be very thin and light, and small tablets.

artimaeis 7y ago
You're right that they _are_ using different classes of CPU -- I'd not initially been able to find solid info on what CPUs the new Air was using which was why I left it off. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the Air CPU is "a really weak CPU" compared to the Dell one though... just to clear this up I mean that the i5-1030ng7 is slightly less capable than the i5-1035g1, but the difference isn't huge. Here's a couple of geekbench results across those particular models that I found: looks like multi core performance _is_ notably better on the 1035g1, but the single core performance is only about 10% lower. https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1551286?baseline=1534392 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1551286?baselin... So with the new evidence of the comparative performance of the CPU available I feel like we're still basically at the same spot -- user preference. With a slight nod towards Dell for including a more performant CPU.
- nickflood 7y ago
  Huh, the benchmarks are similar, you're right! Very interesting, and the Dell's CPU has a suspiciously low base clock, too. It'd be interesting to see some numbers on the sustained performance from both of those and I couldn't find any benchmark that measures this kind of performance. I'm concerned because I know from experience that the 12-inch Macbook 2016 is horrible for anything serious while the contemporary Dell XPS 13 9350 is very versatile. For me the Macbook stayed at 800 MHz most of the time, which made it unusable, while the Dell maintained at least a 2 GHz clock. Those laptops, too, show very similar performance numbers in Geekbench - https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1555969?baseline=1563012 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1555969?baselin... Which means Geekbench samples those bursty clocks on the Y-series that get up for tens of seconds at most. And while it may seem like bursty loads are okay for the average user, I'd say the reality is more complex - I routinely see my wife leaving lots of tabs open in her browser, which leads to some CPU usage, and sometimes some sites just decide they need to run heavy Javascript, Facebook for example is quite heavy. As soon as this happens, the Y series laptop would throttle down and impact other work. I saw it myself on the 12-inch Macbook, and given how Apple skimped on the cooling solution for the 2018 Air, I think the 2020 model may be prone to this as well.
  - artimaeis 7y ago
    I definitely wish there was someone out there publishing like SPEC[1] test differences across various laptops -- would make for much more meaningful comparison than Geekbench scores, but that's the real advantage of Geekbench right now is that it's pretty easy to find samples across nearly every line of computer. For what it's worth, the CPUs in those 12-inch Macbooks were pretty terrible. The base models were equipped with the M-series 4.5W chips. They had options for a couple of 7.5W chips, but even they didn't hold up in performance due to the lack of forced cooling on the 12-inch. I think 2017 is the last year they made them, and even its Geekbench score shows how underpowered it was: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/423 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/423 I'm still definitely looking forward to seeing how the cooling solution holds up on the 2020 Air. [1] - https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/ https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/
deleted 7y ago
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artimaeis 7y ago

You're right that they _are_ using different classes of CPU -- I'd not initially been able to find solid info on what CPUs the new Air was using which was why I left it off. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the Air CPU is "a really weak CPU" compared to the Dell one though... just to clear this up I mean that the i5-1030ng7 is slightly less capable than the i5-1035g1, but the difference isn't huge. Here's a couple of geekbench results across those particular models that I found: looks like multi core performance _is_ notably better on the 1035g1, but the single core performance is only about 10% lower. https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1551286?baseline=1534392 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1551286?baselin... So with the new evidence of the comparative performance of the CPU available I feel like we're still basically at the same spot -- user preference. With a slight nod towards Dell for including a more performant CPU.

nickflood 7y ago
Huh, the benchmarks are similar, you're right! Very interesting, and the Dell's CPU has a suspiciously low base clock, too. It'd be interesting to see some numbers on the sustained performance from both of those and I couldn't find any benchmark that measures this kind of performance. I'm concerned because I know from experience that the 12-inch Macbook 2016 is horrible for anything serious while the contemporary Dell XPS 13 9350 is very versatile. For me the Macbook stayed at 800 MHz most of the time, which made it unusable, while the Dell maintained at least a 2 GHz clock. Those laptops, too, show very similar performance numbers in Geekbench - https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1555969?baseline=1563012 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/1555969?baselin... Which means Geekbench samples those bursty clocks on the Y-series that get up for tens of seconds at most. And while it may seem like bursty loads are okay for the average user, I'd say the reality is more complex - I routinely see my wife leaving lots of tabs open in her browser, which leads to some CPU usage, and sometimes some sites just decide they need to run heavy Javascript, Facebook for example is quite heavy. As soon as this happens, the Y series laptop would throttle down and impact other work. I saw it myself on the 12-inch Macbook, and given how Apple skimped on the cooling solution for the 2018 Air, I think the 2020 model may be prone to this as well.
- artimaeis 7y ago
  I definitely wish there was someone out there publishing like SPEC[1] test differences across various laptops -- would make for much more meaningful comparison than Geekbench scores, but that's the real advantage of Geekbench right now is that it's pretty easy to find samples across nearly every line of computer. For what it's worth, the CPUs in those 12-inch Macbooks were pretty terrible. The base models were equipped with the M-series 4.5W chips. They had options for a couple of 7.5W chips, but even they didn't hold up in performance due to the lack of forced cooling on the 12-inch. I think 2017 is the last year they made them, and even its Geekbench score shows how underpowered it was: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/423 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/423 I'm still definitely looking forward to seeing how the cooling solution holds up on the 2020 Air. [1] - https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/ https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/

deleted 7y ago

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