6 ms·

There's not achieving that at 5W when running the benchmark though, more like 18W-20W. I question the obsession with perf/watt. It makes sense if you're running

There's not achieving that at 5W when running the benchmark though, more like 18W-20W. I question the obsession with perf/watt. It makes sense if you're running a data center, or if you need to do "light" work. But almost everyone I know with a laptop spends the majority of the time working with it docked to power, and often a monitor. If you're using a laptop for work, and you're not running out of a coffee shop, do you want a Zen3 with 32-64Gb RAM, 8-16 cores and an RDNA2 graphics APU at 50W (Rembrandt), or do you want a a device that will play video for 18 hours? Especially for gaming, Apple's GPU is still years behind AMD and NVidia. They're bragging about 22Gp/s fillrate when latest mobile discrete GPUs do 5-10x that. Certainly, they have achieved a lot and are crushing Intel integrated chips at the low end, but there's a ton of marketing fluff and special case comparisons going on, and I look forward to seeing a real head-to-head matchup, of say a Zen3 based system against a MacBook on a heavy CPU and GPU bound benchmark like a triple-AAA title. Years of synthetic benchmarks that exercise giant CPU caches leaves much to be desired.

modeless 6y ago
Perf/watt matters even if you don't care about power consumption at all, because heat dissipation is usually the limiting factor for sustained performance. Higher perf/watt means higher perf for any given amount of cooling.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  Sure, but people with high perf laptops have high-perf cooling solutions. I'm an engineer/developer and a high end gamer. I have an Alienware laptop (in addition to a Macbook Pro), with an RTX 2070 in it. It never overheats. I take it traveling with me. The M1 has a fillrate 10x slower, and I highly doubt it's competitive on Compute Shader performance either. Even if my RTX laptop were thermally down clocked, it's still got plenty of headroom over the M1 GPU wise. The only time I worry about heat is if I have to have the laptop in my lap. On top of all this, AMD's 6nm Rembrandt coming out next year is likely to have a model in the 20W range, which is on par with the M1's "performance" mode, but with much greater GPU performance. I think the epitaph being written for x86 is a little premature, maybe for Intel, but AMD just delivered 20% IPC improvement, and a huge gfx architecture improvement, with a scalable chiplet architecture going forward. It would be unwise to count them out.
my123 6y ago
Apple is achieving that at 5W actually. 18/20W would totally blow up the phone. :)
- 1_player 6y ago
  Unless I'm missing something, those are estimated, extrapolated values. Chart title says "SPECint2006 Speed Estimated Scores". A14 isn't competing with Intel/AMD at 5W.
  - wmf 6y ago
    They're not extrapolated; that's the actual performance of an iPhone 12. The "estimate" stuff is legalese.
    - cromwellian 6y ago
      Hopefully when they release these things, Anandtech can hook up an actual power meter, run the benchmarks, as well as some real software workloads (e.g. compilers, triple-A games, etc) and measure actual perf vs drawn power vs throttling. It's one thing to run a benchmark when your device is cold, it's another to ask what the performance w/ passive cooling will be life after an hour of strenuous work.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        The review site NotebookCheck has done a good service of consistently recording steady-state CPU performance of mobile devices, including in their latest MacBook Pro 2020 review, so I imagine they will have that data soon.
klelatti 6y ago
The worst possible thing that can happen if you're using a laptop is for work is run out of battery (and no carrying a power brick around everywhere isn't great). Lots of people value a small form factor and no fan. Do you need 16 cores to run Word and Outlook? Probably not. Apple are clearly making trade offs and I suspect that gamers aren't a priority - for lots and lots of people having a laptop with this performance and power efficiency is going to be a compelling proposition.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  > Do you need 16 cores to run Word and Outlook No, but for that, I don't need much more than a Chromebook either. Are we really saying an Surface/Surface Pro can't run office for 99% of the use cases and workloads people use it for? > if you're using a laptop is for work is run out of battery Majority of people I know how have Macbooks have them plugged in when at the office or at home. And many offices have power-bricks in conference rooms pre-installed, especially with USB-C charging, your laptop can charge just by plugging it into your monitor, or in any standard USB-C port in a conference room. Unless your office is Starbucks, let's face it, for most of corporate America, and home work during COVID, people are plugged in a majority of the time.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    Yes I am saying that a Surface / Surface Pro is fine for most people - and that given the option of adding 8 cores or 8 hours of battery life most people will take the battery life. Saying that you'll probably have a power supply nearby is fine - except for the cases when you don't - I can't count the cases when I've seen people scrambling to find power in a meeting and it's a pain and embarassing. People will take avoiding that over cores they don't need.
- musicale 6y ago
  > Apple are clearly making trade offs and I suspect that gamers aren't a priority Baldur's Gate 3 demos notwithstanding, Apple seems to have little interest in PC gaming, which is usually Windows/DirectX first with macOS being a distant afterthought or delayed, overpriced port. They also killed off 32-bit games, which further reduced the PC game landscape on macOS. However, Apple has its own massive ecosystem of game devs on iOS, and it also has Apple Arcade. If a PC game isn't on iOS, you may have to rely on cloud gaming if you want to play it on macOS in the future - which may not be much worse than the current situation of mediocre ports.
coreblocks 6y ago
I do 90% of my work in coffee shops lol

modeless 6y ago

Perf/watt matters even if you don't care about power consumption at all, because heat dissipation is usually the limiting factor for sustained performance. Higher perf/watt means higher perf for any given amount of cooling.

cromwellian 6y ago
Sure, but people with high perf laptops have high-perf cooling solutions. I'm an engineer/developer and a high end gamer. I have an Alienware laptop (in addition to a Macbook Pro), with an RTX 2070 in it. It never overheats. I take it traveling with me. The M1 has a fillrate 10x slower, and I highly doubt it's competitive on Compute Shader performance either. Even if my RTX laptop were thermally down clocked, it's still got plenty of headroom over the M1 GPU wise. The only time I worry about heat is if I have to have the laptop in my lap. On top of all this, AMD's 6nm Rembrandt coming out next year is likely to have a model in the 20W range, which is on par with the M1's "performance" mode, but with much greater GPU performance. I think the epitaph being written for x86 is a little premature, maybe for Intel, but AMD just delivered 20% IPC improvement, and a huge gfx architecture improvement, with a scalable chiplet architecture going forward. It would be unwise to count them out.

my123 6y ago

Apple is achieving that at 5W actually. 18/20W would totally blow up the phone. :)

1_player 6y ago
Unless I'm missing something, those are estimated, extrapolated values. Chart title says "SPECint2006 Speed Estimated Scores". A14 isn't competing with Intel/AMD at 5W.
- wmf 6y ago
  They're not extrapolated; that's the actual performance of an iPhone 12. The "estimate" stuff is legalese.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    Hopefully when they release these things, Anandtech can hook up an actual power meter, run the benchmarks, as well as some real software workloads (e.g. compilers, triple-A games, etc) and measure actual perf vs drawn power vs throttling. It's one thing to run a benchmark when your device is cold, it's another to ask what the performance w/ passive cooling will be life after an hour of strenuous work.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      The review site NotebookCheck has done a good service of consistently recording steady-state CPU performance of mobile devices, including in their latest MacBook Pro 2020 review, so I imagine they will have that data soon.

klelatti 6y ago

The worst possible thing that can happen if you're using a laptop is for work is run out of battery (and no carrying a power brick around everywhere isn't great). Lots of people value a small form factor and no fan. Do you need 16 cores to run Word and Outlook? Probably not. Apple are clearly making trade offs and I suspect that gamers aren't a priority - for lots and lots of people having a laptop with this performance and power efficiency is going to be a compelling proposition.

cromwellian 6y ago
> Do you need 16 cores to run Word and Outlook No, but for that, I don't need much more than a Chromebook either. Are we really saying an Surface/Surface Pro can't run office for 99% of the use cases and workloads people use it for? > if you're using a laptop is for work is run out of battery Majority of people I know how have Macbooks have them plugged in when at the office or at home. And many offices have power-bricks in conference rooms pre-installed, especially with USB-C charging, your laptop can charge just by plugging it into your monitor, or in any standard USB-C port in a conference room. Unless your office is Starbucks, let's face it, for most of corporate America, and home work during COVID, people are plugged in a majority of the time.
- klelatti 6y ago
  Yes I am saying that a Surface / Surface Pro is fine for most people - and that given the option of adding 8 cores or 8 hours of battery life most people will take the battery life. Saying that you'll probably have a power supply nearby is fine - except for the cases when you don't - I can't count the cases when I've seen people scrambling to find power in a meeting and it's a pain and embarassing. People will take avoiding that over cores they don't need.
musicale 6y ago
> Apple are clearly making trade offs and I suspect that gamers aren't a priority Baldur's Gate 3 demos notwithstanding, Apple seems to have little interest in PC gaming, which is usually Windows/DirectX first with macOS being a distant afterthought or delayed, overpriced port. They also killed off 32-bit games, which further reduced the PC game landscape on macOS. However, Apple has its own massive ecosystem of game devs on iOS, and it also has Apple Arcade. If a PC game isn't on iOS, you may have to rely on cloud gaming if you want to play it on macOS in the future - which may not be much worse than the current situation of mediocre ports.

coreblocks 6y ago

I do 90% of my work in coffee shops lol