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Intel Alder Lake Mobility CPU Faster Than Apple M1 Max

110 points by marcobambini 5y ago

akmarinov 5y ago
I feel like it should be pointed out that the M1 Max is still, at heart, an M1 and performs as such on single thread performance. The M1 was released in Nov of 2020, if rumors are true, we're due an M2 in Feb of 2022.
- sebow 5y ago
  Essentially this, there are just more cores and more memory.(however the bandwidth aspect is the most interesting one imo). 2022 will be the year of big surprises: m2, amd's new series, riscv, whatever intel comes up with, and why not: even other players making an appearance(especially in the server space)
- matwood 5y ago
  I feel like this isn't mentioned enough. Right as Intel and AMD get out their M1 competitors a year later, the M2 is probably going to be coming out. Apple doesn't really pre-announce so it's not in people's heads.
mr2loco 5y ago
Nice to see something good from Intel. The Company has been struggling with getting top chips out for a while now
djxfade 5y ago
At what TDP though? The Max powers the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and RAM a TDP of less than 60w
- mikevm 5y ago
  Yeah, this is pretty much meaningless without taking power into account.
- emn13 5y ago
  Given the lack of unified memory and the inferior process node, the expectation is that this would be much less power efficient (and the article points this out too).
- ac29 5y ago
  Anandtech measured power consumption of the Max at up to 92W: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...
emn13 5y ago
It's quite impressive they managed to pull that off with a clearly inferior process node (which is still noticeable with the power draw, likely) Still, if ever they manage to at least be competitive on the process node front, that might make things interesting... As is, while technically impressive they even managed this, it's not like the difference is large enough to be impactful.
- pokot0 5y ago
  I don't know. It does not feel impressive to me that the absolute leader in CPU for the past decades latest unreleased cpu beats what I can buy in a store today by a sliver on one benchmark (with all the doubts about power consumption). The big elephant in the room for Intel is the x86 instruction set. It's a technical debt that is not addressed in anyway as far as I can see. Until then, we'll have to choose between the Apple way or the inefficient way.
  - emn13 5y ago
    I still think it's not clear how relevant the whole x86 story is. The closest comparison I can find is the apple A13 bionic vs. the amd 5850u pro - both on TSMC's N7p process I believe (but I'm no expert in all the various flavors). The A13 has a 6W TDP; the 5850u 15W (and I can't find a good benchmark source with actual powerconsumption with benchmarking runs, so TDP is the best I have). And the TDP can be scaled down or up at least on the AMD side. All those caveats aside: - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_ryzen_7_pro_5850u-1905 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_ryzen_7_pro_5850u-1905 - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_a13_bionic-1654 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_a13_bionic-1654 Geekbench scores: A13: 1336 single, 3187 multi 5850u: 1414 single, 8140 multi And there are lots of tricks apple uses to keep power consumption down _in addition to_ using arm; and that's partially why it does better than e.g. qualcomm. But many of those tricks aren't somehow arm or apple exclusive; they're just a question of (expensive) engineering or die size - things that aren't fundamental to intels usage of x86. I mean, it might well be that x86 hits some ceiling well before arm's ISA does, but I don't see actual evidence of that being a huge factor yet. At the very least, it feels like it's clear the process node helps, as does all kinds of other engineering, but that the impact of the ISA is not as obvious. Course, I might just be missing the obvious evidence, sure ;-).
dijit 5y ago
I'm skeptical. Not only because M1 is at TSMC "5nm" (which is probably equivalent to Intel 7nm) but also because this happens every time intel gets kicked to the curb. "Guys, don't go AMD, the new Intel CPU will be faster" When the product arrives it usually comes with a huge trade-off such as thermals and power consumption and doesn't do the performance originally claimed anyway. This has happened after every Ryzen launch, suspiciously only a day or so after each event. It's so obvious and I don't think I'm going to fall for that again. No more promises: Goodbye Intel, I'll see you when your product can be in my hands and do what you claim.
- newacct583 5y ago
  > this happens every time intel gets kicked to the curb. > > "Guys, don't go AMD, the new Intel CPU will be faster" To be fair, for years and years, new Intel CPUs were faster/better/whatever. What you remember as "kicked to the curb" was really something more like an occasionally great product in a sea of mediocrity where the industry was having terrible trouble competing. Someone would have a chip out with great reviews, and then the new Intel architecture would ship and everyone would forget about it. The current environment where they lag in almost all the high end product spaces is very much a novelty.
  - onli 5y ago
    > Someone would have a chip out with great reviews, and then the new Intel architecture would ship and everyone would forget about it. What time period or space are you talking about here? Because that did not happen in the last 10 years for consumer and server processors. The last decade saw AMD with the FX processors failing to be competitive, at first single threaded, over time also multi-threaded and in performance per watt. Then after many years Ryzen came out and was at first just surprisingly competitive, then plainly better in every metric. And that's where we are now. The whole back-and-forth you are describing did not happen at all, and there were only AMD and Intel anyway, not "someone" or multiple players.
    - ants_a 5y ago
slavoingilizov 5y ago
It wouldn't make a difference in the comparison against M1 Max, but the benchmark was also done on Windows 11, which introduced bugs for AMD scheduling. Fixed now, but maybe the AMD results have been skewed because of this. Overall, this is the least scientific and realistic benchmark article ever - until people get their hands on the chips and test them properly everything is speculation. Also - competing for absolute benchmark rankings, when you still need to put a discrete GPU in an intel laptop to even connect a 4k screen is meaningless - people should stop making purchasing decisions just based on benchmarks.
- thereddaikon 5y ago
  The use of Geekbench also hurts it. Its one of the least realistic synthetic benchmarks around and one of the easiest to game. I'm not sure what you're on about in regards to 4k needing a dGPU. That's not true.
- caskstrength 5y ago
  > you still need to put a discrete GPU in an intel laptop to even connect a 4k screen What do you mean by this? I started using 4k screen with my shitty employer-issued Intel-based Lenovo laptop more than 4 years ago.
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  > you still need to put a discrete GPU in an intel laptop to even connect a 4k screen What do you mean by this? I have an 8th gen i5u in an HP laptop at work, and it's been driving an external 4k@60Hz screen for years. It has no dedicated GPU at all, just the integrated UHD 620 or something like that. It can even daisy chain two external displays, in addition to the integrated panel. Not sure if it can drive two external 4k like this, I only have FHD + 4K to test.
  - tandr 5y ago
    I somehow cannot make same setup HP work with 4k@60Hz at all - 4k@30Hz works, but not 60Hz. Would you be kind an post screenshot (link to an imgur.com) showing that this indeed, is possible, and I shall have hope? Also, what monitors do you have, sorry?
dotdi 5y ago
> The Apple M1 Max is a fantastic chip and is going to push both AMD and Intel to perform at their very best. And while I doubt x86 architecture will ever beat ARM on power efficiency, absolute power (within roughly comparable battery life) is another matter altogether. I'm not sure I can follow this line of reasoning. If ARM chips will always be more efficient, then how can you continue stating comparable battery life. Moreover, there is no mention of TDP. Past flagship Intel processors have been fighting thermal throttling on mobile devices, and it's already been demonstrated that the M1 Max chips don't run into throttling even under load. It's interesting to see first benchmarks of the new Alder Lakes chips, but we will see how well they work in real products, i.e. with thermal and other constraints.
- oleganza 5y ago
  Doesn't 2x efficiency translate into 2x performance if one doubles cores? Well, maybe 1.8-1.9x due to various overhead, and the package gets more complicated the more you stuff into it.
- camillomiller 5y ago
  Just use a 4kg battery! :)
  - wincy 5y ago
    Let’s just go back to “portable computers” like the good ok’ Compaq 8086! Has a nice, well constructed handle for carrying around, only weighs 13kg (very luggable, Intel could partner with HP and could call it the “lovable luggable”). Think of the possibilities, at that point you can put an actual box fan in there so you can have a 1500W PSU to power your new Intel chip that just uses the entire 14nm Intel die at this point. Another bonus is that with such a high power usage in these winter months it’ll have the same heating efficiency as running a space heater in your office! It’s a win/win for everyone. Hey it’s also 3% faster than the M1 Max!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
ksec 5y ago
Copying my answer [1] from the Alder Lake Preview. 1. Base Power and Turbo Power. Finally a simple term so we dont have to constantly argue about TDP and PL1 / PL2. Which still happens fairly often on HN. And some of us have been ranting about this for almost a decade. 2. + 19% IPC improvement vs 11900K which is basically an Icelake. Or ~10% improvement over TigerLake ( Which was never made available on Desktop ) 3. PCI-E 5 and DDR5. Intel went from falling behind in PCI-E offering to leaping ahead of AMD. We should expect PCI-E 5.0 SSD shipping soon after ( 14 - 16GBps ) 4. Chipset is on 14nm. No USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4. But integrated WiFi 6E MAC. 5. For those interested, this put Alder Lake, on a Desktop Platform, with Intel 7nm High Performance Node, at roughly 20-25W per Performance Core. With a ( non-verified ) Geekbench Score fairly similar ( ~6% faster ) to M1 HP Core. The Apple M1, on a TSMC 5nm Low Power node, at roughly 5W per core. 6. It will be interesting to see how the new efficiency cores perform. Which is basically a new generation Atom Core. These were previously scheduled for a Graviton like 64 - 128 Core chip on server. Not sure if that is still the case with Intel's chiplet strategy or what they called Tiles. 7. Worth wondering, Alder Lake was originally scheduled on Intel 7nm or what is now called Intel 4/3nm in 2019. What would happen had Intel not been so badly managed? But if that didn't happen, Pat Gelsinger may never be back at Intel. 8. AMD Zen 4, also with DDR5 and PCI-E 5.0 will be coming in late 2022. Depending on Intel's pace of execution, which seems to be getting better and better every time Pat Gelsinger provides an update, AMD may have some tough competition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29017221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29017221
- tagrun 5y ago
  There is USB4 but it's limited to higher end motherboards for now.
- ju-st 5y ago
  > 3. PCI-E 5 and DDR5. Intel went from falling behind in PCI-E offering to leaping ahead of AMD. We should expect PCI-E 5.0 SSD shipping soon after ( 14 - 16GBps ) The x4 lanes usually used for m.2 SSDs are PCIe4.
- liuliu 5y ago
  Alder Lake is on Intel 7 otherwise known as 10nm process.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Marketing BS, PR BS, etc. In the long run, Apple will dominate the laptop market, because there's a substantial tech advantage that Intel can't easily mitigate/reduce.
- PedroBatista 5y ago
  Don't know what do you mean by "dominate the laptop market" because in terms of market share it certainly isn't. Also, contrary to popular belief the A14 and it's child/sibling the M1 isn't made of magic and the "double in every stuff" each generation train has long gone away ( see A15 ). The M1 is great, performance per watt is really great, but the "tech advantages" Apple has are due to Intel's horrible track record as a tech company in the last decade. I think the M1 was another "AMD moment" for Intel, I'm mildly optimistic they are starting to get their shit together. While I'm mildly certain Apple is starting to suffer from the same rot Intel has been suffering.
- cromka 5y ago
  > In the long run, Apple will dominate the laptop market, because there's a substantial tech advantage that Intel can't easily mitigate/reduce Tech advantage is not what drives sales in laptop market. Price does. Unless Apple comes up with a $600 entry-level MacBook SE, to think that "Apple will dominate the laptop" is just absurd.
- qayxc 5y ago
  > In the long run, Apple will dominate the laptop market, because there's a substantial tech advantage That's a very short-sighted view. The fact of the matter is that there's no offer from Apple in the $800 segment. There's also a lack of 2-in-1 devices (and arguably the iPad family cannot fill this niche as long as iPadOS remains dumbed-down). So unless the entire Laptop market shifts to $1000+ devices exclusively, there's no way this will happen. Unfortunately I cannot provide you with hard sales data, since the relevant market reports cost upwards $2.500, but their overall market share is about 10% [0] so go figure. [0] https://bit.ly/3pNAamq https://bit.ly/3pNAamq
  - mnw21cam 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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consp 5y ago
Considering there is no information about which cooler (read 1kW chiller) was used this time these results are meaningless.
- eptcyka 5y ago
  Exactly, given enough liquid helium, anyone can conjure up arbitrary benchmark numbers.
  - maratc 5y ago
    I believe they use liquid nitrogen, which achieves the same results while not being ridiculously expensive :)
    - eptcyka 5y ago
      Liquid nitrogen is considerably warmer too :)
klelatti 5y ago
Is big.SMALL a term being widely applied or just a tongue in cheek adaption of big.LITTLE by this website?
mcintyre1994 5y ago
> And while I doubt x86 architecture will ever beat ARM on power efficiency, absolute power (within roughly comparable battery life) is another matter altogether. This is a bit confusing, are they suggesting that laptops with this Alder Lake Mobility CPU will have "rougly comparable battery life" to M1 Max Macbook Pros, with better performance, despite having worse power efficiency?
- WithinReason 5y ago
  That's possible by having a bigger battery
  - mcintyre1994 5y ago
    That's true, but do they have much headroom to do that without increasing the watt-hours? I know max size Macbook Pros have been at the TSA flight limit on that metric for ages and that's one reason it never increases.
- camillomiller 5y ago
  No, they’re just burying the most important metric, which is performance-per-watt
- ArgyleSound 5y ago
  There's a 100Wh restriction on laptop batteries imposed by civil aviation, which the 16" MacBook Pro hits, so this is not a problem that can simply be solved with thicker chassis and larger batteries either.
  - rascul 5y ago
    > There's a 100Wh restriction on laptop batteries imposed by civil aviation This made me curious so I looked it up and found this bit on FAA's web site: > Size limits: Lithium metal (non-rechargeable) batteries are limited to 2 grams of lithium per battery. Lithium ion (rechargeable) batteries are limited to a rating of 100 watt hours (Wh) per battery. These limits allow for nearly all types of lithium batteries used by the average person in their electronic devices. With airline approval, passengers may also carry up to two spare larger lithium ion batteries (101–160 Wh) or Lithium metal batteries (2-8 grams). This size covers the larger after-market extended-life laptop computer batteries and some larger batteries used in professional audio/visual equipment. https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/more_info/?hazmat=7 https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/more_info/?hazmat=7
camillomiller 5y ago
Wow, what an Intel shill piece. Can we have Alder lake’s power per watt metrics? Can we see the size of the laptops it will be installed in? Will it be able to reach the same performance while on battery, like the new MacBook Pros? C’mon, I understand Intel is in a push to counter the Intel-is-screwed narrative, but their comms department should try to do better than this old school benchmark “leaks” post, with cherry picked comparisons and such.
- klelatti 5y ago
  I actually think this sort of thing is counterproductive - makes me more sceptical of potentially more credible assessments.
  - omegalulw 5y ago
    Not to mention power comparisons are not entirely fair considering the node disadvantage Intel has. I would be excited if Intel can show higher clicks and overall IPC with reasonable excess power attributable to node difference.
    - Sevaris 5y ago
      It's absolutely fair. Try to find an Intel CPU on the market without a node disadvantage. Doesn't exist. We can only (and it only makes sense to) compare what exists now, what consumers are able to buy right now. If Intel magically comes up with a CPU that runs on a similar node, then sure, but until then, the reality is that they're on the market at a node disadvantage. That's not something you can just wave away as "oh, well, Apple has a better node". All that matters is what devices you can buy and what their performance/power metrics are actually like.
      - klelatti 5y ago
        Agreed. The argument seems to be I’ll be happy with Intel if IPC etc is competitive as I want the raw power and don’t care about battery life etc. Which might just be true for a very small section of the laptop buying market but leads to a much less useful product for the very large majority.
jes 5y ago
Are security mitigations a consideration here?
post_break 5y ago
Even if true I'm done with Intel. I'd rather give my money to AMD at this point. Team Red moving forward. All those years with 4 cores maximum is over.
dartharva 5y ago
LOL at the comments down in that article: >So someone sent you some bullshit in the mail and you jizzed all over yourself. It means nothing unless you tested it. Anyone can make a graph and fill it with whatever number they choose. Intel has been making up numbers for more than a decade.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
HN's obsession for power per watt is hilarious. Just because you can push out X TFlops at 20W does not mean you can push out 5X TFlops at 100W. It doesn't work this way. Despite my disappointment in Intel in the past years, I can only be happy about them pushing PCIE5 and DDR5. This confirms my next PC upgrade, although likely on a future Ryzen will be a spicy one.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  You can buy an Apple Silicon machine with DDR5 right now, if you are waiting for that.
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    With soldered on, unreplaceable, unupgradeable LPDDR5, which is not DDR5. There's massive differences in the specs. I could have bought SoCs way before Apple decided it was a perfect way to get people to have to buy brand new hardware every time. They're not new technology.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      LPDDR is soldered down because it's faster that way. There is no such thing as LPDDR on a stick. All 11th-generation Intel parts with LPDDR are also soldered on, because that's the only way to build them. I guarantee you that all Alder Lake mobile designs will have soldered RAM.
      - ohgodplsno 5y ago
        Your original comment is false, as Apple's M1 uses LPDDR5, something that has about half the clock rate and transfer rate of current DDR4. It is not DDR5 as is commonly expected when talking about DDR5, and is merely Apple's marketing Kool-aid. Additionally, Tiger Lake is merely LPDDR-compatible, not forced. You can have a Tiger Lake with regular DDR, and upgrades are easy to do. So, once again, _some_ Alder Lake designs will have soldered LPDDR5, which is low grade DDR4. This is still not DDR5.
qubex 5y ago
I’m just going to say: after the monopoly-induced stagnation of the 2010s, finally we’re back to something looking like competition-driven Moore’s Law-level performance increases.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  I don't really think it is fair to describe the situation where there are two major competitors and one of them ships abject garbage for ten years as a "monopoly". Can we blame Intel for the junk AMD made starting from Barcelona all the way up to and including Naples?
- sjcoles 5y ago
  Nah, this is one of the last pushes before true stagnation due to physics. The next 5-10 years will have rapid innovation where you'll see ever growing caches and/or unified caches, higher bit interconnects (a la 512bit ddr5 bus on the m1 max), and a bigger emphasis on heterogeneous computing. Nano ribbons and better gaa should give another boost in 3-5years or so but we're rapidly approaching an end to what we can do.
willis936 5y ago
After reading the comments here: I want everyone to know that wccftech is tabloids, not reporting. Go there if you're the Men in Black looking for alien leads or if you're just bored and are curious about the (incredibly dubious side of the) hardware rumor mill. If you don't believe me, just click around a bit.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
Has anyone benchmarked the M1 Max using high power mode ?
deleted 5y ago
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m3kw9 5y ago
It left out power measurements so go figure
yona 5y ago
Can we get this in a Framework laptop?
baybal2 5y ago
Alder boosts to 40+ Watts, from previous 27W on U series *lakes.

110 points by marcobambini 5y ago

I feel like it should be pointed out that the M1 Max is still, at heart, an M1 and performs as such on single thread performance. The M1 was released in Nov of 2020, if rumors are true, we're due an M2 in Feb of 2022.

sebow 5y ago
Essentially this, there are just more cores and more memory.(however the bandwidth aspect is the most interesting one imo). 2022 will be the year of big surprises: m2, amd's new series, riscv, whatever intel comes up with, and why not: even other players making an appearance(especially in the server space)
matwood 5y ago
I feel like this isn't mentioned enough. Right as Intel and AMD get out their M1 competitors a year later, the M2 is probably going to be coming out. Apple doesn't really pre-announce so it's not in people's heads.

mr2loco 5y ago

Nice to see something good from Intel. The Company has been struggling with getting top chips out for a while now

djxfade 5y ago

At what TDP though? The Max powers the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and RAM a TDP of less than 60w

mikevm 5y ago
Yeah, this is pretty much meaningless without taking power into account.
emn13 5y ago
Given the lack of unified memory and the inferior process node, the expectation is that this would be much less power efficient (and the article points this out too).
ac29 5y ago
Anandtech measured power consumption of the Max at up to 92W: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

emn13 5y ago

It's quite impressive they managed to pull that off with a clearly inferior process node (which is still noticeable with the power draw, likely) Still, if ever they manage to at least be competitive on the process node front, that might make things interesting... As is, while technically impressive they even managed this, it's not like the difference is large enough to be impactful.

pokot0 5y ago
I don't know. It does not feel impressive to me that the absolute leader in CPU for the past decades latest unreleased cpu beats what I can buy in a store today by a sliver on one benchmark (with all the doubts about power consumption). The big elephant in the room for Intel is the x86 instruction set. It's a technical debt that is not addressed in anyway as far as I can see. Until then, we'll have to choose between the Apple way or the inefficient way.
- emn13 5y ago
  I still think it's not clear how relevant the whole x86 story is. The closest comparison I can find is the apple A13 bionic vs. the amd 5850u pro - both on TSMC's N7p process I believe (but I'm no expert in all the various flavors). The A13 has a 6W TDP; the 5850u 15W (and I can't find a good benchmark source with actual powerconsumption with benchmarking runs, so TDP is the best I have). And the TDP can be scaled down or up at least on the AMD side. All those caveats aside: - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_ryzen_7_pro_5850u-1905 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-amd_ryzen_7_pro_5850u-1905 - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_a13_bionic-1654 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-apple_a13_bionic-1654 Geekbench scores: A13: 1336 single, 3187 multi 5850u: 1414 single, 8140 multi And there are lots of tricks apple uses to keep power consumption down _in addition to_ using arm; and that's partially why it does better than e.g. qualcomm. But many of those tricks aren't somehow arm or apple exclusive; they're just a question of (expensive) engineering or die size - things that aren't fundamental to intels usage of x86. I mean, it might well be that x86 hits some ceiling well before arm's ISA does, but I don't see actual evidence of that being a huge factor yet. At the very least, it feels like it's clear the process node helps, as does all kinds of other engineering, but that the impact of the ISA is not as obvious. Course, I might just be missing the obvious evidence, sure ;-).

dijit 5y ago

I'm skeptical. Not only because M1 is at TSMC "5nm" (which is probably equivalent to Intel 7nm) but also because this happens every time intel gets kicked to the curb. "Guys, don't go AMD, the new Intel CPU will be faster" When the product arrives it usually comes with a huge trade-off such as thermals and power consumption and doesn't do the performance originally claimed anyway. This has happened after every Ryzen launch, suspiciously only a day or so after each event. It's so obvious and I don't think I'm going to fall for that again. No more promises: Goodbye Intel, I'll see you when your product can be in my hands and do what you claim.

newacct583 5y ago
> this happens every time intel gets kicked to the curb. > > "Guys, don't go AMD, the new Intel CPU will be faster" To be fair, for years and years, new Intel CPUs were faster/better/whatever. What you remember as "kicked to the curb" was really something more like an occasionally great product in a sea of mediocrity where the industry was having terrible trouble competing. Someone would have a chip out with great reviews, and then the new Intel architecture would ship and everyone would forget about it. The current environment where they lag in almost all the high end product spaces is very much a novelty.
- onli 5y ago
  > Someone would have a chip out with great reviews, and then the new Intel architecture would ship and everyone would forget about it. What time period or space are you talking about here? Because that did not happen in the last 10 years for consumer and server processors. The last decade saw AMD with the FX processors failing to be competitive, at first single threaded, over time also multi-threaded and in performance per watt. Then after many years Ryzen came out and was at first just surprisingly competitive, then plainly better in every metric. And that's where we are now. The whole back-and-forth you are describing did not happen at all, and there were only AMD and Intel anyway, not "someone" or multiple players.
  - ants_a 5y ago

slavoingilizov 5y ago

It wouldn't make a difference in the comparison against M1 Max, but the benchmark was also done on Windows 11, which introduced bugs for AMD scheduling. Fixed now, but maybe the AMD results have been skewed because of this. Overall, this is the least scientific and realistic benchmark article ever - until people get their hands on the chips and test them properly everything is speculation. Also - competing for absolute benchmark rankings, when you still need to put a discrete GPU in an intel laptop to even connect a 4k screen is meaningless - people should stop making purchasing decisions just based on benchmarks.

thereddaikon 5y ago
The use of Geekbench also hurts it. Its one of the least realistic synthetic benchmarks around and one of the easiest to game. I'm not sure what you're on about in regards to 4k needing a dGPU. That's not true.
caskstrength 5y ago
> you still need to put a discrete GPU in an intel laptop to even connect a 4k screen What do you mean by this? I started using 4k screen with my shitty employer-issued Intel-based Lenovo laptop more than 4 years ago.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
> you still need to put a discrete GPU in an intel laptop to even connect a 4k screen What do you mean by this? I have an 8th gen i5u in an HP laptop at work, and it's been driving an external 4k@60Hz screen for years. It has no dedicated GPU at all, just the integrated UHD 620 or something like that. It can even daisy chain two external displays, in addition to the integrated panel. Not sure if it can drive two external 4k like this, I only have FHD + 4K to test.
- tandr 5y ago
  I somehow cannot make same setup HP work with 4k@60Hz at all - 4k@30Hz works, but not 60Hz. Would you be kind an post screenshot (link to an imgur.com) showing that this indeed, is possible, and I shall have hope? Also, what monitors do you have, sorry?

dotdi 5y ago

> The Apple M1 Max is a fantastic chip and is going to push both AMD and Intel to perform at their very best. And while I doubt x86 architecture will ever beat ARM on power efficiency, absolute power (within roughly comparable battery life) is another matter altogether. I'm not sure I can follow this line of reasoning. If ARM chips will always be more efficient, then how can you continue stating comparable battery life. Moreover, there is no mention of TDP. Past flagship Intel processors have been fighting thermal throttling on mobile devices, and it's already been demonstrated that the M1 Max chips don't run into throttling even under load. It's interesting to see first benchmarks of the new Alder Lakes chips, but we will see how well they work in real products, i.e. with thermal and other constraints.

oleganza 5y ago
Doesn't 2x efficiency translate into 2x performance if one doubles cores? Well, maybe 1.8-1.9x due to various overhead, and the package gets more complicated the more you stuff into it.
camillomiller 5y ago
Just use a 4kg battery! :)
- wincy 5y ago
  Let’s just go back to “portable computers” like the good ok’ Compaq 8086! Has a nice, well constructed handle for carrying around, only weighs 13kg (very luggable, Intel could partner with HP and could call it the “lovable luggable”). Think of the possibilities, at that point you can put an actual box fan in there so you can have a 1500W PSU to power your new Intel chip that just uses the entire 14nm Intel die at this point. Another bonus is that with such a high power usage in these winter months it’ll have the same heating efficiency as running a space heater in your office! It’s a win/win for everyone. Hey it’s also 3% faster than the M1 Max!
  - deleted 5y ago
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ksec 5y ago

Copying my answer [1] from the Alder Lake Preview. 1. Base Power and Turbo Power. Finally a simple term so we dont have to constantly argue about TDP and PL1 / PL2. Which still happens fairly often on HN. And some of us have been ranting about this for almost a decade. 2. + 19% IPC improvement vs 11900K which is basically an Icelake. Or ~10% improvement over TigerLake ( Which was never made available on Desktop ) 3. PCI-E 5 and DDR5. Intel went from falling behind in PCI-E offering to leaping ahead of AMD. We should expect PCI-E 5.0 SSD shipping soon after ( 14 - 16GBps ) 4. Chipset is on 14nm. No USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4. But integrated WiFi 6E MAC. 5. For those interested, this put Alder Lake, on a Desktop Platform, with Intel 7nm High Performance Node, at roughly 20-25W per Performance Core. With a ( non-verified ) Geekbench Score fairly similar ( ~6% faster ) to M1 HP Core. The Apple M1, on a TSMC 5nm Low Power node, at roughly 5W per core. 6. It will be interesting to see how the new efficiency cores perform. Which is basically a new generation Atom Core. These were previously scheduled for a Graviton like 64 - 128 Core chip on server. Not sure if that is still the case with Intel's chiplet strategy or what they called Tiles. 7. Worth wondering, Alder Lake was originally scheduled on Intel 7nm or what is now called Intel 4/3nm in 2019. What would happen had Intel not been so badly managed? But if that didn't happen, Pat Gelsinger may never be back at Intel. 8. AMD Zen 4, also with DDR5 and PCI-E 5.0 will be coming in late 2022. Depending on Intel's pace of execution, which seems to be getting better and better every time Pat Gelsinger provides an update, AMD may have some tough competition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29017221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29017221

tagrun 5y ago
There is USB4 but it's limited to higher end motherboards for now.
ju-st 5y ago
> 3. PCI-E 5 and DDR5. Intel went from falling behind in PCI-E offering to leaping ahead of AMD. We should expect PCI-E 5.0 SSD shipping soon after ( 14 - 16GBps ) The x4 lanes usually used for m.2 SSDs are PCIe4.
liuliu 5y ago
Alder Lake is on Intel 7 otherwise known as 10nm process.

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

Marketing BS, PR BS, etc. In the long run, Apple will dominate the laptop market, because there's a substantial tech advantage that Intel can't easily mitigate/reduce.

PedroBatista 5y ago
Don't know what do you mean by "dominate the laptop market" because in terms of market share it certainly isn't. Also, contrary to popular belief the A14 and it's child/sibling the M1 isn't made of magic and the "double in every stuff" each generation train has long gone away ( see A15 ). The M1 is great, performance per watt is really great, but the "tech advantages" Apple has are due to Intel's horrible track record as a tech company in the last decade. I think the M1 was another "AMD moment" for Intel, I'm mildly optimistic they are starting to get their shit together. While I'm mildly certain Apple is starting to suffer from the same rot Intel has been suffering.
cromka 5y ago
> In the long run, Apple will dominate the laptop market, because there's a substantial tech advantage that Intel can't easily mitigate/reduce Tech advantage is not what drives sales in laptop market. Price does. Unless Apple comes up with a $600 entry-level MacBook SE, to think that "Apple will dominate the laptop" is just absurd.
qayxc 5y ago
> In the long run, Apple will dominate the laptop market, because there's a substantial tech advantage That's a very short-sighted view. The fact of the matter is that there's no offer from Apple in the $800 segment. There's also a lack of 2-in-1 devices (and arguably the iPad family cannot fill this niche as long as iPadOS remains dumbed-down). So unless the entire Laptop market shifts to $1000+ devices exclusively, there's no way this will happen. Unfortunately I cannot provide you with hard sales data, since the relevant market reports cost upwards $2.500, but their overall market share is about 10% [0] so go figure. [0] https://bit.ly/3pNAamq https://bit.ly/3pNAamq
- mnw21cam 5y ago

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consp 5y ago

Considering there is no information about which cooler (read 1kW chiller) was used this time these results are meaningless.

eptcyka 5y ago
Exactly, given enough liquid helium, anyone can conjure up arbitrary benchmark numbers.
- maratc 5y ago
  I believe they use liquid nitrogen, which achieves the same results while not being ridiculously expensive :)
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    Liquid nitrogen is considerably warmer too :)

klelatti 5y ago

Is big.SMALL a term being widely applied or just a tongue in cheek adaption of big.LITTLE by this website?

mcintyre1994 5y ago

> And while I doubt x86 architecture will ever beat ARM on power efficiency, absolute power (within roughly comparable battery life) is another matter altogether. This is a bit confusing, are they suggesting that laptops with this Alder Lake Mobility CPU will have "rougly comparable battery life" to M1 Max Macbook Pros, with better performance, despite having worse power efficiency?

WithinReason 5y ago
That's possible by having a bigger battery
- mcintyre1994 5y ago
  That's true, but do they have much headroom to do that without increasing the watt-hours? I know max size Macbook Pros have been at the TSA flight limit on that metric for ages and that's one reason it never increases.
camillomiller 5y ago
No, they’re just burying the most important metric, which is performance-per-watt
ArgyleSound 5y ago
There's a 100Wh restriction on laptop batteries imposed by civil aviation, which the 16" MacBook Pro hits, so this is not a problem that can simply be solved with thicker chassis and larger batteries either.
- rascul 5y ago
  > There's a 100Wh restriction on laptop batteries imposed by civil aviation This made me curious so I looked it up and found this bit on FAA's web site: > Size limits: Lithium metal (non-rechargeable) batteries are limited to 2 grams of lithium per battery. Lithium ion (rechargeable) batteries are limited to a rating of 100 watt hours (Wh) per battery. These limits allow for nearly all types of lithium batteries used by the average person in their electronic devices. With airline approval, passengers may also carry up to two spare larger lithium ion batteries (101–160 Wh) or Lithium metal batteries (2-8 grams). This size covers the larger after-market extended-life laptop computer batteries and some larger batteries used in professional audio/visual equipment. https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/more_info/?hazmat=7 https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/more_info/?hazmat=7

camillomiller 5y ago

Wow, what an Intel shill piece. Can we have Alder lake’s power per watt metrics? Can we see the size of the laptops it will be installed in? Will it be able to reach the same performance while on battery, like the new MacBook Pros? C’mon, I understand Intel is in a push to counter the Intel-is-screwed narrative, but their comms department should try to do better than this old school benchmark “leaks” post, with cherry picked comparisons and such.

klelatti 5y ago
I actually think this sort of thing is counterproductive - makes me more sceptical of potentially more credible assessments.
- omegalulw 5y ago
  Not to mention power comparisons are not entirely fair considering the node disadvantage Intel has. I would be excited if Intel can show higher clicks and overall IPC with reasonable excess power attributable to node difference.
  - Sevaris 5y ago
    It's absolutely fair. Try to find an Intel CPU on the market without a node disadvantage. Doesn't exist. We can only (and it only makes sense to) compare what exists now, what consumers are able to buy right now. If Intel magically comes up with a CPU that runs on a similar node, then sure, but until then, the reality is that they're on the market at a node disadvantage. That's not something you can just wave away as "oh, well, Apple has a better node". All that matters is what devices you can buy and what their performance/power metrics are actually like.
    - klelatti 5y ago
      Agreed. The argument seems to be I’ll be happy with Intel if IPC etc is competitive as I want the raw power and don’t care about battery life etc. Which might just be true for a very small section of the laptop buying market but leads to a much less useful product for the very large majority.

jes 5y ago

Are security mitigations a consideration here?

post_break 5y ago

Even if true I'm done with Intel. I'd rather give my money to AMD at this point. Team Red moving forward. All those years with 4 cores maximum is over.

dartharva 5y ago

LOL at the comments down in that article: >So someone sent you some bullshit in the mail and you jizzed all over yourself. It means nothing unless you tested it. Anyone can make a graph and fill it with whatever number they choose. Intel has been making up numbers for more than a decade.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

HN's obsession for power per watt is hilarious. Just because you can push out X TFlops at 20W does not mean you can push out 5X TFlops at 100W. It doesn't work this way. Despite my disappointment in Intel in the past years, I can only be happy about them pushing PCIE5 and DDR5. This confirms my next PC upgrade, although likely on a future Ryzen will be a spicy one.

jeffbee 5y ago
You can buy an Apple Silicon machine with DDR5 right now, if you are waiting for that.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  With soldered on, unreplaceable, unupgradeable LPDDR5, which is not DDR5. There's massive differences in the specs. I could have bought SoCs way before Apple decided it was a perfect way to get people to have to buy brand new hardware every time. They're not new technology.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    LPDDR is soldered down because it's faster that way. There is no such thing as LPDDR on a stick. All 11th-generation Intel parts with LPDDR are also soldered on, because that's the only way to build them. I guarantee you that all Alder Lake mobile designs will have soldered RAM.
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago
      Your original comment is false, as Apple's M1 uses LPDDR5, something that has about half the clock rate and transfer rate of current DDR4. It is not DDR5 as is commonly expected when talking about DDR5, and is merely Apple's marketing Kool-aid. Additionally, Tiger Lake is merely LPDDR-compatible, not forced. You can have a Tiger Lake with regular DDR, and upgrades are easy to do. So, once again, _some_ Alder Lake designs will have soldered LPDDR5, which is low grade DDR4. This is still not DDR5.

qubex 5y ago

I’m just going to say: after the monopoly-induced stagnation of the 2010s, finally we’re back to something looking like competition-driven Moore’s Law-level performance increases.

jeffbee 5y ago
I don't really think it is fair to describe the situation where there are two major competitors and one of them ships abject garbage for ten years as a "monopoly". Can we blame Intel for the junk AMD made starting from Barcelona all the way up to and including Naples?
sjcoles 5y ago
Nah, this is one of the last pushes before true stagnation due to physics. The next 5-10 years will have rapid innovation where you'll see ever growing caches and/or unified caches, higher bit interconnects (a la 512bit ddr5 bus on the m1 max), and a bigger emphasis on heterogeneous computing. Nano ribbons and better gaa should give another boost in 3-5years or so but we're rapidly approaching an end to what we can do.

willis936 5y ago

After reading the comments here: I want everyone to know that wccftech is tabloids, not reporting. Go there if you're the Men in Black looking for alien leads or if you're just bored and are curious about the (incredibly dubious side of the) hardware rumor mill. If you don't believe me, just click around a bit.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

Has anyone benchmarked the M1 Max using high power mode ?

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m3kw9 5y ago

It left out power measurements so go figure

yona 5y ago

Can we get this in a Framework laptop?

baybal2 5y ago

Alder boosts to 40+ Watts, from previous 27W on U series *lakes.