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It's not just outperforming the MacBook Pro. It's also blowing away the current 2020 top-end iMac, which has a 10-core Intel i9. And it's doing this while usin
by Bud 6y ago
It's not just outperforming the MacBook Pro. It's also blowing away the current 2020 top-end iMac, which has a 10-core Intel i9.
And it's doing this while using more than an order of magnitude less power (10W vs. a TDP of 125W for that Intel part).
That's stunning.
- xvector 6y agoIt’s also outperforming the 5950X in single core. Incredible!
- Bud 6y agoYeah, and doing this without a fan. It's almost like Apple is rubbing Intel's face in it for sport. It's not even fair.
- jeswin 6y agoBut did the test run long enough to need the fan, and what was the ambient temperature? The fanless Intel Core-M CPUs could post excellent benchmark scores (for its time). But if you give it a lengthy compile task, it'll slow down dramatically.
- lostlogin 6y agoAren’t they both running the same test? Or are you saying that the test needs to run for way longer to be fair?
- Phrodo_00 6y ago> Or are you saying that the test needs to run for way longer to be fair? Yes, the main computing constraint of mobile devices is heat management (This doesn't really reflect the CPU but the complete device. Putting the CPU in a more ideal setup like a traditional desktop or water cooling will improve the CPU's performance in longer tasks)
- kllrnohj 6y agoThe 5950X in a single core load only uses around 18w. Drop 200mhz off of the top end boost frequency and it drops to 11w. Short duration single core workloads workout a fan is trivial even for CPUs that aren't trying to do so.
- ttul 6y agoTSMC’s 5nm node is exceeding everyone’s expectations.
- jeswin 6y ago> And it's doing this while using more than an order of magnitude less power (10W vs. a TDP of 125W for that Intel part). That's the wrong conclusion to make. For instance, the Lenovo ThinkBook 14s (with a Ryzen 4800u) with a 15W TDP posts the same Geekbench multicore scores [1] as the M1 Macbook. But the ThinkBook isn't in any way faster than the top-end iMac for real world compute intensive tasks. The M1 certainly looks efficient, but there's little you can conclude from a single benchmark running for a very short period of time. [1]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4642736 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4642736
- valuearb 6y agoA Ryzen 4800u actually uses up to 25W TDP, depending upon implementation. And it’s 45% slower in single core. Most importantly, the M1 is estimated to cost Apple $65, the 4800u is a $300+ part.
- olnluis 6y agoUnlikely OEM's are paying 300+ for a 4800u. Certainly more than $65, though.
- buran77 6y agoThat makes sense, AMD is selling to OEMs for a profit (over cost) while Apple is its own OEM, if any charging is done it's purely internal and for accounting purposes. This comparison looks at different segments of the fab<>manufacturer<>OEM relationship. Add the user in there and you might say that you can buy an AMD CPU for $100 but an Apple CPU will cost you $1000. Not very meaningful as a comparison.
- valuearb 6y agoCertainly more than $200, so what’s your point?
- distances 6y agoThat price is a meaningless comparison, you can't buy the Apple processor in retail. What's the cost to procedure the AMD part? Something similar I'd guess.
- floatingatoll 6y agoThe data we don’t have is for sustained use over time. An Intel iMac Pro can sustain max performance far longer than an Intel laptop, as it has a far higher thermal exhaust capacity. Does the M1 performance have to be ramped down during sustained use due to exceeding thermal envelope of the fanless MBA? Of the fan’d MBP? We’ll know soon enough!
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoWhile it sounds promising, I'm going to wait for some additional benchmarks and real world usage scenarios; factors like cooling, multi-process work, and of course suboptimal applications (browsers, Electron apps, stuff compiled for Intel) will be a big factor as well. That said, it's promising and I'm really curious to see where this development will lead to in a few years' time.
- m12k 6y agoMe too - let's see what the sustained performance is like. That said, with this much headroom, I'm cautiously optimistic that even with some throttling going on, it'll still be plenty fast for anything I'm likely to throw at it.
- matwood 6y ago> Electron apps iOS/iPhones/iPads already smoke every other device in running javascript. Apple Silicon may end up being the best thing to ever happen for Electron apps.
- adrian_b 6y agoWithout doubt, the Apple M1 has the highest single-threaded performance of any non-overclocked CPU, being a little faster than AMD Zen 3 and Intel Tiger Lake. Nevertheless, because Apple has chosen to not increase their manufacturing costs by including more big cores, the multi-threaded performance is not at all impressive, being lower than that of many much cheaper laptops using AMD Ryzen 7 4800U CPUs. So for any professional applications, like software development, these new Apple computers will certainly not blow away their competition performance-wise, and that before taking into account their severe limitations in memory capacity and peripheral ports.
- sjwright 6y agoBut given that M1 is clearly the basic CPU for low cost, thin-and-light devices, we can strongly infer that Apple’s next M chip will be significantly more capable. Chips with eight or more performance cores would be a certainty for the upper tier of laptops and iMacs.
- misterdabb 6y agoGiven that the M1 is a full node ahead of Zen 3 and two nodes ahead of whatever Intel has to offer, one would think that when on same node, Intel and AMD will be just as capable. But the truth is comparing to future offerings is bullshit, and we have to stick to what's available today. Impressive power/performance and all that, I have to say. We will see how sustained load looks like and how it runs non-optimized software. But to put in perspective 1 CCX of zen 3 performs better on 7nm (but draws up to 65W). With approximately the same die size (although w/o GPU and other things, the M1 has).