16 ms·

Apple M2 vs. AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U Performance in Nearly 200 Benchmarks

155 points by TangerineDream 4y ago

albertopv 4y ago
I wouldn't expect so many not knowing what Phoronix is and how it works. It's a linux enthusiasts web site and Michael has to purchase by himself a lot of tested hardware. Considering those limitations and being alone, its work is quite remarkable.
cybervaz 4y ago
IMO using Linux in such benchmarks for both chips is like comparing a monkey and a goldfish by it's ability to climb trees.
rbanffy 4y ago
A lot of these look more like suboptimal implementations on ARM (or incredibly good implementations on x86). There is a lot of odd performance gaps all over the tests.
- freemint 4y ago
  If no better code exists that's the performance.
  - cainxinth 4y ago
    That’s technically true, but it’s also a bit like saying if there’s no fuel, a car is paperweight.
    - bruce343434 4y ago
      It is practically true! Beware of "Bionic Duckweed" and pricing in apparent future (thus yet nonexistent) tech (or software).
    - jackmott42 4y ago
      With every benchmark there is an objection, because every benchmarks measures a specific thing, and that specific thing is not the thing everyone wants to see measured. These benchmarks tell you what performance you get with this array of programs, on linux, with these machines. You want to know something about the inherent performance capabilties of each cpu, which is very hard to figure out, since we will never know when/if any of these programs has had a totally optimal solution for each piece of hardware. Usually the best you can do is just measure actual programs people use.
    - Macha 4y ago
      Wasn't this precisely the chicken/egg problem electric cars had to solve to start getting the adoption they're seeing now?
  - microtonal 4y ago
    It exists. E.g. on macOS it’d actually use the AMX matrix multiplication units (for benchmarks that use BLAS) and blow away most x86_64 CPUs that have to rely on AVX2.
    - bildung 4y ago
      Fair, but phoronix is a linux site, and thus performance under macOS won't be of interest for most readers. The performance as stated is the actual performance one currently gets under linux, regardless of potential.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        I’d say Phoronix’d audience prefers Linux but are quite friendly to other Unixes. The Mac has a very reasonable Unix running on it. Fun to think that Apple almost has a monopoly on RISC technical workstations…
      - xbar 4y ago
        Which is deeply interesting to people who want to run Asahi Linux on an M2. I found the data compelling--M2 silicon under Linux is generally competitive against contemporary strong x86 laptops, but if you are sensitive about the performance of a particular workload, choose your device carefully.
    - freemint 4y ago
      If it is not emitted by compiler running on a linux distribution targeted to run on M-Family Macs, it does not exist under Linux.
- kramerger 4y ago
  > incredibly good implementations on x86 In my experience Ryzen support on Linux is far from optimal. Have experienced tons of issues on zen+ and zen 2. And don't forget that the x64 code is slowed down by tons of security mitigations. I don't think most of these are available on M2 yet.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    > Ryzen support on Linux is far from optimal What kinds of issues have you seen? I've been running a home server with a Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G and so far it's been stellar. > slowed down by tons of security mitigations. I don't think most of these are available on M2 yet. Are they needed at all? I thought the security mitigations were mostly for x86-specific architectural issues. Would you mind to elaborate?
    - Macha 4y ago
      Nope, Spectre type attacks work on ARM too: https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-amd-and-arm-cpus-hit-by-new-spectre-vulnerability/ https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-amd-and-arm-cpus-hit-by-new-sp... Now the existing discovered ones may not, but I'm sure in time there will be ones for Apple Silicon too. Just like how people for the longest time thought AMD was safer than Intel in this regard, or that ARM wasn't vulnerable.
    - kllrnohj 4y ago
      ARM (and IBM POWER) was vulnerable to meltdown, the huge practical bypass that AMD wasn't vulnerable to at all. Nothing about these attacks have been ISA dependent.
    - kramerger 4y ago
      There have been some issues with power management, load distribution and stability. A quick googling will show you more. Regarding the other point: run lscpu and compare enabled mitigations on Zen3 and M2. We still need a proper analysis to figure out which ones must be enabled on M2.
- hatch_q 4y ago
  Apple is free to improve their Linux support.
  - samstave 4y ago
    Steve jobs maniacally responds to your email from the grave.
  - dralley 4y ago
    It's not "their" linux support it's linux software support for ARM. A lot of software has x86 SIMD acceleration but doesn't necessarily have ARM SIMD acceleration.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    Apple supports Linux via virtualization. If you ask me, that's the most sane way to run Linux on macOS.
    - kllrnohj 4y ago
      You'd have the same ARM performance on Linux questions/problems when run under virtualization though, no? That doesn't actually change the complaint or situation here.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  I don't know if that's a valid excuse. Lammps molecular dynamics is by Sandia national labs, they probably have a good ARM implementation. LeelaChessZero is also a SIMD-implementation IIRC. Both are SIMD-accelerated, but LeelaChessZero is faster on M2, but LAMMPS is faster on AMD. I don't get it at all. Its really hard to see the pattern. Furthermore, its hard for me to imagine that LAMMPS would be much worse on one system over another, given the authors. --------- Then comes the "in-between" benchmarks. DaCappo is slower on low-power settings for M2, but high-power setting M2 faster than any setting. Very strange behavior, I can't imagine why this would happen. ZSTD compression is faster on AMD, but decompression is faster on M2. Same codebase, same authors, but different results over two different runs.
  - jinto36 4y ago
    I'm not familiar with Zstandard and the Zstandard site doesn't discuss how they use threads in compression vs decompression, but I know that for gzip the parallel implementation in pigz is able to split the workload across threads for compression but not decompression. So it could be that similarly in Zstandard, decompression is not an operation that is identically implemented to compression in reverse. There could be differences in thread utilization that shift the balance to being more sensitive to single-core performance.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    > I don't know if that's a valid excuse. It's certainly what Cloudflare found when they were evaluating early ARM server chips. >the first benchmark would be the popular zlib library. At Cloudflare we use an improved version of the library, optimized for 64-bit Intel processors, and although it is written mostly in C, it does use some Intel specific intrinsics. Comparing this optimized version to the generic zlib library wouldn’t be fair. Not to worry, with little effort I adapted the library to work very well on the ARMv8 architecture, with the use of NEON and CRC32 intrinsics. In the process it is twice as fast as the generic library for some files. https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ SIMD code has to be hand written for both instruction sets before you are comparing Apples to Apples, as it were.
drKarl 4y ago
Aren't the U versions more energy efficient but less powerful than the H or HX versions of Ryzen?
- kramerger 4y ago
  Yes. This makes the comparison much more fair.
  - Macha 4y ago
    Yeah, the U series are the correct comparisons against the basic/pro M1/M2, the H is much more like the Max, and the M1 Ultra, if you're actually using that additional power, is somewhere between a H series and a desktop CPU.
_aavaa_ 4y ago
Two glaring issues: 1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB 2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both
- factorialboy 4y ago
  > 1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB But are they priced similarly? > 2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument.
  - cruano 4y ago
    > But are they priced similarly? Meaningless question when they don't sell the M2 chip separately > Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument I guess "for each" would be better ? But OPs point still stands, if you put me on a race car you are not breaking any records no matter how good the car is
    - foepys 4y ago
      It's very meaningful when you want the best bang for the buck.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        It’s still pretty silly because the price is the easiest thing to compare. Just show the prices of 2 systems as closely specced as possible and list power, thermal envelop blah blah. As it is, this doesn’t change my mind about if I’m making the right trade offs by getting the M2
    - threeseed 4y ago
      Apple sells a M2 MacBook Pro which has better performance. So it's not a meaningless question at all.
    - 4y ago
z9znz 4y ago
Given the likelihood that each side could see improvements from code changes and optimizations, and that the results are similar-ish, that leads me to say that one is just as good as the other in general. This is especially true for most people, because most people will not be doing any one of those workloads _most_ of the time. Most of the time of computer use is doing many different things (at the human level and the software level), so the final compute comparison is basically comparing the difference of a small percentage of overall human time. So the choice between M2 and Ryzen is really about everything else - the use case, the hardware styling, the OS features, etc. It's good to know this benchmark info, though, because it means we can cross that concern off mentally.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
samstave 4y ago
I have two flagship ryzen 7 5800 series OMEN HP gaming laptops. I love them. The graphics of the RTX laptop cards allow me to run things like STRAY and CONTROL at epic graphics for a laptop... What SUCKS is Windows 11. This bitch crashes more than any other Windows I have used in history dating back to 3.11 Jeasus, this OS sucks. The AMD v Intel BS means nothing to me. The guts are good, the body is strong, but the soul is too soft.
- darthrupert 4y ago
  Are you sure it's Windows or the hardware that is crashing? I solved similar problems with my new gaming laptop by disabling some sort of turbo mode. Which made it seem like the manufacturer hadn't tested the laptop at all. Apple laptops have problems but not fundamental ones like that.
JacobiX 4y ago
A better title would have been: Linux performance under Apple M2 vs AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U.
- molszanski 4y ago
  Yes, this would be a much better description I love benchmarks and graphs as the next guy, but these one just don't feel right. Linux on Macbook, 16GB vs 8GM ram. Amusing, yes, but not very informative.
- threeseed 4y ago
  It should be Linux performance under M2 MacBook Air versus Ryzen 7 Lenovo ThinkPad X13. This isn't benchmarking the capabilities of the M2 chip at all when we know it will be throttling in the MacBook Air.
- apetresc 4y ago
  Fair, although most people in this target audience see "phoronix.com" and understand that's exactly what that means.
bound008 4y ago
I was really excited to see these benchmarks until I realized: 1. The Ryzen setup has twice the ram 2. The Ryzen setup has twice the cpu cores 3. The Ryzen setup has 3x the power envelope (in watts) as the M2[1] 4. They are using Asahi Linux on the M2.[2] Too bad I missed the window to downvote. If this said: Apple M2 (Linux/8gb/4c) vs. Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (Linux/16gb/8c)... it would have been more honest, and potentially interesting, as it would also be an indication of the progress of Asahi Linux. (edited to add line breaks) [1]: Ryzen 46w (not sure if this includes the GPU) vs M2 15w (not sure if this includes the GPU) [2]: Asahi Linux is super cool, but most M2 chips in the wild are not running it. So it's not a useful comparison.
- danaris 4y ago
  Seems to me the real story here is that even with those disadvantages, the M2 is very much holding its own in the comparison. It's not blowing away the Ryzen, sure, but neither is it being left in the dust.
- emn13 4y ago
  I think you're overstating the issues here; and it's necessary to take what you can get in hard-to-do comparisons like this. There are caveats: certainly. The Ryzen chip's TDP is configurable between 15W and 28W, which would include the GPU (but I doubt most of these tests touch the GPU anyhow). There will be power usage differences, but the TDP difference won't be huge - most differences will be due to utilization differences, which might be large. The RAM issue usually doesn't affect most benchmarks, but it's something to consider if there are odd outliers. The CPU core count number represents the reality of these chips (but M2 has a 4+4 config, apparently?). Using linux is likely far from ideal, but probably necessary for them to run such an extensive and mostly comparable set of benchmarks. It's a significant caveat, but for CPU-limited benchmarks it's hopefully merely of reasonably limited impact (on the order of 30% on average rather than 300%, say?). OS differences tend to be larger for I/O, GPU, and some niche things like context-switching benchmarks. Of course, the power scheduler stuff matters. It's worth pointing out that phoronix itself (on different hardware and slightly older OS versions) looked at some linux vs. macos benchmarks: https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m1-linux-perf https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m1-linux-perf - and while there were a few unsurprising macos wins, there also were some (far fewer) linux wins. I think the benchmark is very interesting for what it is. Despite limitations, it _is_ informative. You can't always get a shrinkwrapped answer to whatever question you really have; so extra data-points such as this are helpful. You know what they say: there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. Or something like that; caveat lector anyhow.
Havoc 4y ago
hn isn’t going to like this at all…
- martin_a 4y ago
  Why do you think so? I've got the impression that HN is using _lots of_ varying platforms, it's not like Apple is vastly prefered (or looked down to) around here.
  - Havoc 4y ago
    There is a lot of enthusiasm for M1/2 on hn. A majority of it justified on technical merit, but also a decent dose of Reality distortion field involved I think.
frankjr 4y ago
One thing I always miss in these benchmarks are noise levels. Being completely silent is a major selling point for me and I would be willing to sacrifice some performance for it. The Air should be silent as it doesn't have any active cooling. I assume that's not the case for the Ryzen.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > Being completely silent is a major selling point for me and I would be willing to sacrifice some performance for it. The Air should be silent as it doesn't have any active cooling. If you're willing to tolerate a low amount of noise, I find that laptop coolers with very large fans (200mm) work great. The large fan generates a high volume of airflow, but the the low fan speed means that it's almost silent.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Sure, but tell me where I can find a laptop that is as thin, light, cheap, and has the battery life of a MacBook Air, while also having this Ryzen part and your favored large fans.
    - maybeOneDay 4y ago
      They are talking about using an external laptop cooler, I believe. Not feasible for some but if you do 90% of your work at your desk then it certainly makes sense as a suggestion.
- kllrnohj 4y ago
  That'd be a comparison of two specific laptops, not a comparison of an M2 vs. a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U. The test you want is valid, but for a completely different review category altogether.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    This isn't an M2 benchmark, as the CPU will be throttled.
cosmiccatnap 4y ago
It's telling that people don't know this is comparing the performance on Linux in the comments just based on the site. It tells you how much the culture of HN has shifted away from technical and engineering types. It's also telling that they think 16gb of ram changes the outcome of very trivial tests that don't use 8gb anyway. A typical programmer knows what phoronix is and does and shouldn't be surprised by how it performs tests since it has done so the same way for a decade...but then I suppose most people on this site are not technical people anymore.
- Arcuru 4y ago
  I actually broadly agree with you, but it's just a difference in specializations. Web developers make up a large percentage of the current HN population and they don't need to know the low level details of an OS or the hardware to do their jobs effectively. Specifying that knowledge of a benchmarking site is required for those having a technical background is just a weird hill to die on though.
prvc 4y ago
Any reason why he dropped SVT-AV1 from the comparison?
sys_64738 4y ago
None of these comparisons manage to sink the Apple chip which is what Intel/AMD ultimately wants. If the myth that x86 is always going to be better isn't quelled enough then it starts to become irrelevant as ARM takes hold. So a lot of this is to try to support it through proof in benchmarks. I'm not saying that's the intent of phoronix.com - far from it. But that's a general philosophy which skewing benchmarks one particular way.
- sph 4y ago
  Why do you have to see conspiracy in this? > "the myth that x86 is always going to be better" > "a lot of this is to try to support it through proof in benchmarks" There is no myth that x86 is always going to be better. Apple created a great architecture, but we can't all migrate to Macs, and sometimes we can't even afford to migrate to ARM. Not because of ideology, but because of legacy systems. So these benchmarks are not to support any kind of propaganda, just trying out new chips to see if we can finally get the same generational leap on the PC as well. Who cares about what Intel/AMD wants. Phoronix isn't the puppet of any of them, just another enthusiast user trying to inform.
kllrnohj 4y ago
It's weird how many absolutely landslide victories there are back and forth even within the same program. Like usually AMD vs. Intel it's mostly neck and neck, eeking out an edge here and there. But here there's quite a few >2x wins and not even consistently within a given program. Like GNU radio can't make up its mind which one will utterly dominate.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  The M1 is a very different chip from traditional x86. It only has 128 bit vectors, which can be a major bottleneck in software that is perfectly vectorized, but it also has way more out of order execution and decode bandwidth.
  - kllrnohj 4y ago
    This Ryzen only has 256 bit vectors, though, it's not like the avx512 monsters that Intel randomly pushes. And in specfp2017 the M1 was overall stronger than even a 5950X ( https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... ). It was specint2017 where it fell behind, almost the reverse of what you'd expect.
InTheArena 4y ago
I think it's a legitimate question to ask how long Apple's ARM advantage continues. I could totally see a repeat of Apple's PowerPC experience, where they do the transition, and just smoke the competition for a generation or two, and then get dragged under by the market effects of the x86 duopoly. The next generation Ryzen series (7000 series) looks like it's going to be absolutely insane. That window may end up being shorter then expected.
- ajross 4y ago
  It's not market effects from x86, it's just process. We've entered a period where (1) Apple is able to command higher margins for its silicon and thus pay for "The Best" of whatever is available, even monopolizing the best processes and (2) "The Best" process isn't Intel, so it's available for purchase. So Apple bought themselves a win, which makes perfect sense. And they had already chosen ARM for iOS (for historical reasons, really -- the original iPhone picked an off-the-shelf Samsung SOC), so that's what they dropped in the Mac. But indeed, this is probably transitory. Eventually TSMC will either lose its lead or ramp its best processes to the point where other manufacturers can buy it. Already, as we see here, they're only mildly ahead of the rest of the pack.
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    I don't think it's fair to say that it's just process, Apple has invested very heavily in their core design and their perf/w + total perf is still unmatched by companies like AMD or Qualcomm on the same process node. It's certainly not a one-horse race but Apple is definitely has world class CPU design capabilities regardless of node.
    - ajross 4y ago
      The "same process node" isn't correct. Nothing from AMD is available in TSMC 5nm yet, and the Snapdragon 888 is on Samsung's clearly struggling 5nm node. Apple is alone at the top of the process ladder right now, and they're getting pretty much exactly the performance[1] benefit you'd expect from that. Certainly the M2 is not a bad SOC, and there's no reason it shouldn't be and remain competetive with everyone else's offerings as the industry evolves. But I do think there's a certain amount of kool aid being drunk by the Mac community about these chips. They're great. But maybe not insanely so. [1] It's absolutely true that Apple's whole-system power integration story remains at the top of the industry. But that was true even when they weren't on the best process.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nbf_1995 4y ago
This article mistakenly calls the M2 a 4c/8t part. However, the M2 (and M1) have 8 physical cores with no SMT, which makes them 8c/8t. 4 of the 8 cores are performance (big) cores while 4 are efficiency cores. This makes the comparison less unbalanced than other commenters have said. Also comparing both on linux when one is having active work done to port linux to it also makes the entire comparison dubious at best, just like most of phoronix's articles.
- moondev 4y ago
  > Also comparing both on linux when one is having active work done to port linux to it also makes the entire comparison dubious at best, just like most of phoronix's articles. Perhaps we could use these numbers to measure progress on the m2+ linux port and m2+ linux performance?
  - nbf_1995 4y ago
    Certainly, there is great work being done by the Asahi team. I'm sure Phoronix will return next year and post an article measuring the year over year gains on Asahi
    - moondev 4y ago
      Great work by Phoronix as well posting the initial results, as well as creating the open-source test suite so anyone can run it on their own hardware any time they would like.
- freemint 4y ago
  They are using the same naming convention Intel uses for their machines where the small core do not count as core but as thread.
  - nbf_1995 4y ago
    Intel's new chips have performance cores with 2 threads and efficiency cores with 1 thread. However, the efficiency cores are still cores. Take a look at their docs for the 1240P https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132221/intel-core-i51240p-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132221/... P cores: 4, E cores: 8, total cores: 12, total threads: 16.
rthomas6 4y ago
This is almost useless without performance per watt measurements.
GeekyBear 4y ago
Marcan posted a recent performance test: >Just tried compiling the Asahi Linux distro kernel (pretty beefy config) on the M1 Ultra Mac Studio. 2 minutes, 1 second. https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1559247076495851520 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1559247076495851520
olliej 4y ago
I think this is a thorough and interesting set of results. Others have commented on the spec differences (2x ram, 2x cores, whatever x power envelope), but I’m not as bothered by them despite being generally pro-Mac :) I don’t think 2x ram matters in many (any?) of these, as for that to impact things you really do have to be using all the ram, and once you started doing that I would expect to see noticeable cratering in perf. 2x core count is more problematic, esp. for things that do max out threads, but many of these benchmarks clearly didn’t (or the M2 is insanely fast in specific tests :) ). Many of those benchmarks that do use thread count == core count allow you to cap the thread count independently which I would hope was done if possible. Power envelope I just don’t really care about, if thermals force the laptop to throttle that doesn’t mean the performance numbers don’t match reality. I did go into this knowing it’s a desktop va laptop benchmark and know there will be trade offs involved. I think it’s also worth doing a performance per dollar comparison here as well, though I have no idea what the result would be in this case. So the hardware stuff out of the way, a few of the benchmarks showed such a massive performance delta (in both directions) that I wonder if we’re seeing code/codegen differences. The reality is that the M2 is an arm system, and most projects have only ever really had x86 to worry about for performance, so they have “if x86 do vector stuff; else do it old skool one at a time”, which can have massive perf impact. In the reverse I’ve seen code that goes arm==float32 x86==float64, which has obvious perf impact. Anther huge killer is anything that uses long double. For everything other than x86 long double basically means float32 or float64. On x86 (everywhere I think except win64?) long double is float80, which is much much slower than the alternatives for far to many reasons to list. So that seems like it could easily footgun code that’s being benchmarked as well. All in all I thought this was a good article and it was an interesting read.
neogodless 4y ago
There are some cool takeaways from this massive collection of benchmark results. But before we get to them, things we already know: * You cannot buy Apple Silicon without buying a Mac (and you can't get the unique characteristics of a Mac and macOS without Apple Silicon) * Apple Silicon is optimized for macOS (and vice versa) * Apple Silicon is remarkably efficient (particularly under macOS) This comparison, of course, is focused on Linux users. It is not going to determine some sort of ambiguously defined but ultimate superiority of silicon across all scenarios. However, if you use Linux on one of the laptops used to compare the CPUs, it can give you insight on performance for those specific use cases. So what are the takeaways? * The fan-less M2 (4p/4e) in the Air with 8GB performs about as well as an air-cooled 15-28W Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (8p) with 16GB on average (and vice versa) * The performance of the M2 is likely more than satisfactory despite Asahi Linux not being the absolute optimal operating system for the silicon * The performance of the Ryzen is likely more than satisfactory despite lower efficiency compared to Apple Silicon * Laptop APU performance in 2022 is really remarkable (even at these low TDPs), and any user (regardless of preferred OS or chosen CPU designer) will likely have a good experience with one of these high performing chips I think running these benchmarks appeals to our curiosity about the state of hardware. It is not a perfect, controlled experiment, but it compares two real-world CPUs (APU and SoC respectively) and gives us insight into their performance given the actual hardware configurations tested. What this does not tell us (again): that Ryzens are better than Apple Silicon, or vice versa, in all cases or in every metric. That if one CPU beats another CPU in some benchmarks, it's the one you want, regardless of all the other considerations you have to put into purchase decisions. That either of these CPUs are "bad".
- jeswin 4y ago
  > Apple Silicon is optimized for macOS (and vice versa) > Apple Silicon is remarkably efficient (particularly under macOS) It is actually quite possible that Apple's advantage was more about being on TSMC's 5nm before everyone else, than something intrinsic about their processor. > The fan-less M2 (4p/4e) in the Air with 8GB performs about as well as an air-cooled 15-28W Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (8p) with 16GB on average (and vice versa) The air cooled M2 MBP doesn't do significantly better than the fan-less MBA; so the results will probably still stand.
ask_b123 4y ago
The price of the Ryzen computer seems to be much higher, unless I'm missing something: $3 310 vs perhaps $2 100 (both models with their disks = 2TB, couldn't find the 512GB Lenovo model so moved the MBA up too). https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/thinkpad-x13-gen-3-(13-inch-amd)/len101t0021?visibleDatas=696%3AAMD%20Ryzen%E2%84%A2%207%20Pro https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th... https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/midnight-apple-m2-chip-with-8-core-cpu-and-10-core-gpu-512gb https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/midnight-appl... Am I missing something?
- nicolaslem 4y ago
  The fact you are probably missing is that not many people pay the Lenovo sticker price. They routinely get heavy discounts once they have been available for a few weeks. This is also true for other enterprise brands such as HP and Dell. I guess they do that because they target mostly businesses and it gives them more flexibility when negotiating bulk deals.
  - ask_b123 4y ago
    Makes sense, thank you for the explanation. And now that I know I see that there is a banner ad in that website about a coupon for a weekend deal which brings down the price to around $1 985, which seems more reasonable. I wonder what's the appeal for bumping up the prices but routinely offering discounts. I guess they might sell some fully priced computers.
    - ant6n 4y ago
      Perhaps some businesses pay sticker price? Can’t imagine them futzing around with coupons.
- Macha 4y ago
  It's the Pro/Enterprise/Business model of the Lenovo laptop. The consumer one is cheaper https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000E-10RU3 https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000E-10RU3 Consumers mostly aren't buying that one (except maybe the tech audience), and businesses aren't paying list price.
sandGorgon 4y ago
this is very cool. the apple m2 is now at the point where the Phoronix test suite is running on it ? We are very close to the Apple M2 being the best Linux laptop right ?
pdimitar 4y ago
Pretty cool that this work exists. I'd love a more direct and comparative benchmark set though e.g. Apple M2 on macOS vs. Ryzen Pro 6850 on Linux, and with at least identical RAM. To me Apple M1 (and maybe M2, have not checked it out yet) remains an absolute leader in performance per watt. Combine the amazing displays and it's almost not a contest. Of course, like every programmer I started getting irritated by macOS because a lot of tinkering and experimentation is simply not possible there. I really hope for at least comparable Linux competitor. Even being behind the M1/M2 with 30% for the same power envelope would be a huge win.
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
> Due to the Apple M2 currently lacking any power/temperature sensor support under Linux, this is simply looking at the raw performance of the M2 and Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U with not being able to accurately compare the M2 power efficiency / performance-per-Watt at this time. Really surprised that anyone would consider this a fair comparison. Thermal management is a huge factor to consider with these tests given safety limiters reduce CPU performance.
guenthert 4y ago
Does anyone know what the reasons might be to compile the Ngspice benchmark with -O0? Oh, nothing nefarious, it seems to be the (IMHO misguided) default settings: https://github.com/guitorri/ngspice/blob/master/INSTALL https://github.com/guitorri/ngspice/blob/master/INSTALL "--disable-debug This option will remove the '-g' option passed to the compiler and add -O2 optimisation (instead of default O0). This speeds up simulating significantly, and is recommended for normal use."
Kukumber 4y ago
Very misleading benchmark, disappointed by phoronix, they usually do quality benchmarks

I wouldn't expect so many not knowing what Phoronix is and how it works. It's a linux enthusiasts web site and Michael has to purchase by himself a lot of tested hardware. Considering those limitations and being alone, its work is quite remarkable.

cybervaz 4y ago

IMO using Linux in such benchmarks for both chips is like comparing a monkey and a goldfish by it's ability to climb trees.

rbanffy 4y ago

A lot of these look more like suboptimal implementations on ARM (or incredibly good implementations on x86). There is a lot of odd performance gaps all over the tests.

freemint 4y ago
If no better code exists that's the performance.
- cainxinth 4y ago
  That’s technically true, but it’s also a bit like saying if there’s no fuel, a car is paperweight.
  - bruce343434 4y ago
    It is practically true! Beware of "Bionic Duckweed" and pricing in apparent future (thus yet nonexistent) tech (or software).
  - jackmott42 4y ago
    With every benchmark there is an objection, because every benchmarks measures a specific thing, and that specific thing is not the thing everyone wants to see measured. These benchmarks tell you what performance you get with this array of programs, on linux, with these machines. You want to know something about the inherent performance capabilties of each cpu, which is very hard to figure out, since we will never know when/if any of these programs has had a totally optimal solution for each piece of hardware. Usually the best you can do is just measure actual programs people use.
  - Macha 4y ago
    Wasn't this precisely the chicken/egg problem electric cars had to solve to start getting the adoption they're seeing now?
- microtonal 4y ago
  It exists. E.g. on macOS it’d actually use the AMX matrix multiplication units (for benchmarks that use BLAS) and blow away most x86_64 CPUs that have to rely on AVX2.
  - bildung 4y ago
    Fair, but phoronix is a linux site, and thus performance under macOS won't be of interest for most readers. The performance as stated is the actual performance one currently gets under linux, regardless of potential.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      I’d say Phoronix’d audience prefers Linux but are quite friendly to other Unixes. The Mac has a very reasonable Unix running on it. Fun to think that Apple almost has a monopoly on RISC technical workstations…
    - xbar 4y ago
      Which is deeply interesting to people who want to run Asahi Linux on an M2. I found the data compelling--M2 silicon under Linux is generally competitive against contemporary strong x86 laptops, but if you are sensitive about the performance of a particular workload, choose your device carefully.
  - freemint 4y ago
    If it is not emitted by compiler running on a linux distribution targeted to run on M-Family Macs, it does not exist under Linux.
kramerger 4y ago
> incredibly good implementations on x86 In my experience Ryzen support on Linux is far from optimal. Have experienced tons of issues on zen+ and zen 2. And don't forget that the x64 code is slowed down by tons of security mitigations. I don't think most of these are available on M2 yet.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  > Ryzen support on Linux is far from optimal What kinds of issues have you seen? I've been running a home server with a Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G and so far it's been stellar. > slowed down by tons of security mitigations. I don't think most of these are available on M2 yet. Are they needed at all? I thought the security mitigations were mostly for x86-specific architectural issues. Would you mind to elaborate?
  - Macha 4y ago
    Nope, Spectre type attacks work on ARM too: https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-amd-and-arm-cpus-hit-by-new-spectre-vulnerability/ https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-amd-and-arm-cpus-hit-by-new-sp... Now the existing discovered ones may not, but I'm sure in time there will be ones for Apple Silicon too. Just like how people for the longest time thought AMD was safer than Intel in this regard, or that ARM wasn't vulnerable.
  - kllrnohj 4y ago
    ARM (and IBM POWER) was vulnerable to meltdown, the huge practical bypass that AMD wasn't vulnerable to at all. Nothing about these attacks have been ISA dependent.
  - kramerger 4y ago
    There have been some issues with power management, load distribution and stability. A quick googling will show you more. Regarding the other point: run lscpu and compare enabled mitigations on Zen3 and M2. We still need a proper analysis to figure out which ones must be enabled on M2.
hatch_q 4y ago
Apple is free to improve their Linux support.
- samstave 4y ago
  Steve jobs maniacally responds to your email from the grave.
- dralley 4y ago
  It's not "their" linux support it's linux software support for ARM. A lot of software has x86 SIMD acceleration but doesn't necessarily have ARM SIMD acceleration.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  Apple supports Linux via virtualization. If you ask me, that's the most sane way to run Linux on macOS.
  - kllrnohj 4y ago
    You'd have the same ARM performance on Linux questions/problems when run under virtualization though, no? That doesn't actually change the complaint or situation here.
dragontamer 4y ago
I don't know if that's a valid excuse. Lammps molecular dynamics is by Sandia national labs, they probably have a good ARM implementation. LeelaChessZero is also a SIMD-implementation IIRC. Both are SIMD-accelerated, but LeelaChessZero is faster on M2, but LAMMPS is faster on AMD. I don't get it at all. Its really hard to see the pattern. Furthermore, its hard for me to imagine that LAMMPS would be much worse on one system over another, given the authors. --------- Then comes the "in-between" benchmarks. DaCappo is slower on low-power settings for M2, but high-power setting M2 faster than any setting. Very strange behavior, I can't imagine why this would happen. ZSTD compression is faster on AMD, but decompression is faster on M2. Same codebase, same authors, but different results over two different runs.
- jinto36 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with Zstandard and the Zstandard site doesn't discuss how they use threads in compression vs decompression, but I know that for gzip the parallel implementation in pigz is able to split the workload across threads for compression but not decompression. So it could be that similarly in Zstandard, decompression is not an operation that is identically implemented to compression in reverse. There could be differences in thread utilization that shift the balance to being more sensitive to single-core performance.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > I don't know if that's a valid excuse. It's certainly what Cloudflare found when they were evaluating early ARM server chips. >the first benchmark would be the popular zlib library. At Cloudflare we use an improved version of the library, optimized for 64-bit Intel processors, and although it is written mostly in C, it does use some Intel specific intrinsics. Comparing this optimized version to the generic zlib library wouldn’t be fair. Not to worry, with little effort I adapted the library to work very well on the ARMv8 architecture, with the use of NEON and CRC32 intrinsics. In the process it is twice as fast as the generic library for some files. https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ SIMD code has to be hand written for both instruction sets before you are comparing Apples to Apples, as it were.

drKarl 4y ago

Aren't the U versions more energy efficient but less powerful than the H or HX versions of Ryzen?

kramerger 4y ago
Yes. This makes the comparison much more fair.
- Macha 4y ago
  Yeah, the U series are the correct comparisons against the basic/pro M1/M2, the H is much more like the Max, and the M1 Ultra, if you're actually using that additional power, is somewhere between a H series and a desktop CPU.

_aavaa_ 4y ago

Two glaring issues: 1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB 2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both

factorialboy 4y ago
> 1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB But are they priced similarly? > 2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument.
- cruano 4y ago
  > But are they priced similarly? Meaningless question when they don't sell the M2 chip separately > Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument I guess "for each" would be better ? But OPs point still stands, if you put me on a race car you are not breaking any records no matter how good the car is
  - foepys 4y ago
    It's very meaningful when you want the best bang for the buck.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      It’s still pretty silly because the price is the easiest thing to compare. Just show the prices of 2 systems as closely specced as possible and list power, thermal envelop blah blah. As it is, this doesn’t change my mind about if I’m making the right trade offs by getting the M2
  - threeseed 4y ago
    Apple sells a M2 MacBook Pro which has better performance. So it's not a meaningless question at all.
  - 4y ago

z9znz 4y ago

Given the likelihood that each side could see improvements from code changes and optimizations, and that the results are similar-ish, that leads me to say that one is just as good as the other in general. This is especially true for most people, because most people will not be doing any one of those workloads _most_ of the time. Most of the time of computer use is doing many different things (at the human level and the software level), so the final compute comparison is basically comparing the difference of a small percentage of overall human time. So the choice between M2 and Ryzen is really about everything else - the use case, the hardware styling, the OS features, etc. It's good to know this benchmark info, though, because it means we can cross that concern off mentally.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

samstave 4y ago

I have two flagship ryzen 7 5800 series OMEN HP gaming laptops. I love them. The graphics of the RTX laptop cards allow me to run things like STRAY and CONTROL at epic graphics for a laptop... What SUCKS is Windows 11. This bitch crashes more than any other Windows I have used in history dating back to 3.11 Jeasus, this OS sucks. The AMD v Intel BS means nothing to me. The guts are good, the body is strong, but the soul is too soft.

darthrupert 4y ago
Are you sure it's Windows or the hardware that is crashing? I solved similar problems with my new gaming laptop by disabling some sort of turbo mode. Which made it seem like the manufacturer hadn't tested the laptop at all. Apple laptops have problems but not fundamental ones like that.

JacobiX 4y ago

A better title would have been: Linux performance under Apple M2 vs AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U.

molszanski 4y ago
Yes, this would be a much better description I love benchmarks and graphs as the next guy, but these one just don't feel right. Linux on Macbook, 16GB vs 8GM ram. Amusing, yes, but not very informative.
threeseed 4y ago
It should be Linux performance under M2 MacBook Air versus Ryzen 7 Lenovo ThinkPad X13. This isn't benchmarking the capabilities of the M2 chip at all when we know it will be throttling in the MacBook Air.
apetresc 4y ago
Fair, although most people in this target audience see "phoronix.com" and understand that's exactly what that means.

bound008 4y ago

I was really excited to see these benchmarks until I realized: 1. The Ryzen setup has twice the ram 2. The Ryzen setup has twice the cpu cores 3. The Ryzen setup has 3x the power envelope (in watts) as the M2[1] 4. They are using Asahi Linux on the M2.[2] Too bad I missed the window to downvote. If this said: Apple M2 (Linux/8gb/4c) vs. Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (Linux/16gb/8c)... it would have been more honest, and potentially interesting, as it would also be an indication of the progress of Asahi Linux. (edited to add line breaks) [1]: Ryzen 46w (not sure if this includes the GPU) vs M2 15w (not sure if this includes the GPU) [2]: Asahi Linux is super cool, but most M2 chips in the wild are not running it. So it's not a useful comparison.

danaris 4y ago
Seems to me the real story here is that even with those disadvantages, the M2 is very much holding its own in the comparison. It's not blowing away the Ryzen, sure, but neither is it being left in the dust.
emn13 4y ago
I think you're overstating the issues here; and it's necessary to take what you can get in hard-to-do comparisons like this. There are caveats: certainly. The Ryzen chip's TDP is configurable between 15W and 28W, which would include the GPU (but I doubt most of these tests touch the GPU anyhow). There will be power usage differences, but the TDP difference won't be huge - most differences will be due to utilization differences, which might be large. The RAM issue usually doesn't affect most benchmarks, but it's something to consider if there are odd outliers. The CPU core count number represents the reality of these chips (but M2 has a 4+4 config, apparently?). Using linux is likely far from ideal, but probably necessary for them to run such an extensive and mostly comparable set of benchmarks. It's a significant caveat, but for CPU-limited benchmarks it's hopefully merely of reasonably limited impact (on the order of 30% on average rather than 300%, say?). OS differences tend to be larger for I/O, GPU, and some niche things like context-switching benchmarks. Of course, the power scheduler stuff matters. It's worth pointing out that phoronix itself (on different hardware and slightly older OS versions) looked at some linux vs. macos benchmarks: https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m1-linux-perf https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m1-linux-perf - and while there were a few unsurprising macos wins, there also were some (far fewer) linux wins. I think the benchmark is very interesting for what it is. Despite limitations, it _is_ informative. You can't always get a shrinkwrapped answer to whatever question you really have; so extra data-points such as this are helpful. You know what they say: there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. Or something like that; caveat lector anyhow.

Havoc 4y ago

hn isn’t going to like this at all…

martin_a 4y ago
Why do you think so? I've got the impression that HN is using _lots of_ varying platforms, it's not like Apple is vastly prefered (or looked down to) around here.
- Havoc 4y ago
  There is a lot of enthusiasm for M1/2 on hn. A majority of it justified on technical merit, but also a decent dose of Reality distortion field involved I think.

frankjr 4y ago

One thing I always miss in these benchmarks are noise levels. Being completely silent is a major selling point for me and I would be willing to sacrifice some performance for it. The Air should be silent as it doesn't have any active cooling. I assume that's not the case for the Ryzen.

nordsieck 4y ago
> Being completely silent is a major selling point for me and I would be willing to sacrifice some performance for it. The Air should be silent as it doesn't have any active cooling. If you're willing to tolerate a low amount of noise, I find that laptop coolers with very large fans (200mm) work great. The large fan generates a high volume of airflow, but the the low fan speed means that it's almost silent.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Sure, but tell me where I can find a laptop that is as thin, light, cheap, and has the battery life of a MacBook Air, while also having this Ryzen part and your favored large fans.
  - maybeOneDay 4y ago
    They are talking about using an external laptop cooler, I believe. Not feasible for some but if you do 90% of your work at your desk then it certainly makes sense as a suggestion.
kllrnohj 4y ago
That'd be a comparison of two specific laptops, not a comparison of an M2 vs. a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U. The test you want is valid, but for a completely different review category altogether.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  This isn't an M2 benchmark, as the CPU will be throttled.

cosmiccatnap 4y ago

It's telling that people don't know this is comparing the performance on Linux in the comments just based on the site. It tells you how much the culture of HN has shifted away from technical and engineering types. It's also telling that they think 16gb of ram changes the outcome of very trivial tests that don't use 8gb anyway. A typical programmer knows what phoronix is and does and shouldn't be surprised by how it performs tests since it has done so the same way for a decade...but then I suppose most people on this site are not technical people anymore.

Arcuru 4y ago
I actually broadly agree with you, but it's just a difference in specializations. Web developers make up a large percentage of the current HN population and they don't need to know the low level details of an OS or the hardware to do their jobs effectively. Specifying that knowledge of a benchmarking site is required for those having a technical background is just a weird hill to die on though.

prvc 4y ago

Any reason why he dropped SVT-AV1 from the comparison?

sys_64738 4y ago

None of these comparisons manage to sink the Apple chip which is what Intel/AMD ultimately wants. If the myth that x86 is always going to be better isn't quelled enough then it starts to become irrelevant as ARM takes hold. So a lot of this is to try to support it through proof in benchmarks. I'm not saying that's the intent of phoronix.com - far from it. But that's a general philosophy which skewing benchmarks one particular way.

sph 4y ago
Why do you have to see conspiracy in this? > "the myth that x86 is always going to be better" > "a lot of this is to try to support it through proof in benchmarks" There is no myth that x86 is always going to be better. Apple created a great architecture, but we can't all migrate to Macs, and sometimes we can't even afford to migrate to ARM. Not because of ideology, but because of legacy systems. So these benchmarks are not to support any kind of propaganda, just trying out new chips to see if we can finally get the same generational leap on the PC as well. Who cares about what Intel/AMD wants. Phoronix isn't the puppet of any of them, just another enthusiast user trying to inform.

kllrnohj 4y ago

It's weird how many absolutely landslide victories there are back and forth even within the same program. Like usually AMD vs. Intel it's mostly neck and neck, eeking out an edge here and there. But here there's quite a few >2x wins and not even consistently within a given program. Like GNU radio can't make up its mind which one will utterly dominate.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
The M1 is a very different chip from traditional x86. It only has 128 bit vectors, which can be a major bottleneck in software that is perfectly vectorized, but it also has way more out of order execution and decode bandwidth.
- kllrnohj 4y ago
  This Ryzen only has 256 bit vectors, though, it's not like the avx512 monsters that Intel randomly pushes. And in specfp2017 the M1 was overall stronger than even a 5950X ( https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... ). It was specint2017 where it fell behind, almost the reverse of what you'd expect.

InTheArena 4y ago

I think it's a legitimate question to ask how long Apple's ARM advantage continues. I could totally see a repeat of Apple's PowerPC experience, where they do the transition, and just smoke the competition for a generation or two, and then get dragged under by the market effects of the x86 duopoly. The next generation Ryzen series (7000 series) looks like it's going to be absolutely insane. That window may end up being shorter then expected.

ajross 4y ago
It's not market effects from x86, it's just process. We've entered a period where (1) Apple is able to command higher margins for its silicon and thus pay for "The Best" of whatever is available, even monopolizing the best processes and (2) "The Best" process isn't Intel, so it's available for purchase. So Apple bought themselves a win, which makes perfect sense. And they had already chosen ARM for iOS (for historical reasons, really -- the original iPhone picked an off-the-shelf Samsung SOC), so that's what they dropped in the Mac. But indeed, this is probably transitory. Eventually TSMC will either lose its lead or ramp its best processes to the point where other manufacturers can buy it. Already, as we see here, they're only mildly ahead of the rest of the pack.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  I don't think it's fair to say that it's just process, Apple has invested very heavily in their core design and their perf/w + total perf is still unmatched by companies like AMD or Qualcomm on the same process node. It's certainly not a one-horse race but Apple is definitely has world class CPU design capabilities regardless of node.
  - ajross 4y ago
    The "same process node" isn't correct. Nothing from AMD is available in TSMC 5nm yet, and the Snapdragon 888 is on Samsung's clearly struggling 5nm node. Apple is alone at the top of the process ladder right now, and they're getting pretty much exactly the performance[1] benefit you'd expect from that. Certainly the M2 is not a bad SOC, and there's no reason it shouldn't be and remain competetive with everyone else's offerings as the industry evolves. But I do think there's a certain amount of kool aid being drunk by the Mac community about these chips. They're great. But maybe not insanely so. [1] It's absolutely true that Apple's whole-system power integration story remains at the top of the industry. But that was true even when they weren't on the best process.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nbf_1995 4y ago

This article mistakenly calls the M2 a 4c/8t part. However, the M2 (and M1) have 8 physical cores with no SMT, which makes them 8c/8t. 4 of the 8 cores are performance (big) cores while 4 are efficiency cores. This makes the comparison less unbalanced than other commenters have said. Also comparing both on linux when one is having active work done to port linux to it also makes the entire comparison dubious at best, just like most of phoronix's articles.

moondev 4y ago
> Also comparing both on linux when one is having active work done to port linux to it also makes the entire comparison dubious at best, just like most of phoronix's articles. Perhaps we could use these numbers to measure progress on the m2+ linux port and m2+ linux performance?
- nbf_1995 4y ago
  Certainly, there is great work being done by the Asahi team. I'm sure Phoronix will return next year and post an article measuring the year over year gains on Asahi
  - moondev 4y ago
    Great work by Phoronix as well posting the initial results, as well as creating the open-source test suite so anyone can run it on their own hardware any time they would like.
freemint 4y ago
They are using the same naming convention Intel uses for their machines where the small core do not count as core but as thread.
- nbf_1995 4y ago
  Intel's new chips have performance cores with 2 threads and efficiency cores with 1 thread. However, the efficiency cores are still cores. Take a look at their docs for the 1240P https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132221/intel-core-i51240p-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132221/... P cores: 4, E cores: 8, total cores: 12, total threads: 16.

rthomas6 4y ago

This is almost useless without performance per watt measurements.

GeekyBear 4y ago

Marcan posted a recent performance test: >Just tried compiling the Asahi Linux distro kernel (pretty beefy config) on the M1 Ultra Mac Studio. 2 minutes, 1 second. https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1559247076495851520 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1559247076495851520

olliej 4y ago

I think this is a thorough and interesting set of results. Others have commented on the spec differences (2x ram, 2x cores, whatever x power envelope), but I’m not as bothered by them despite being generally pro-Mac :) I don’t think 2x ram matters in many (any?) of these, as for that to impact things you really do have to be using all the ram, and once you started doing that I would expect to see noticeable cratering in perf. 2x core count is more problematic, esp. for things that do max out threads, but many of these benchmarks clearly didn’t (or the M2 is insanely fast in specific tests :) ). Many of those benchmarks that do use thread count == core count allow you to cap the thread count independently which I would hope was done if possible. Power envelope I just don’t really care about, if thermals force the laptop to throttle that doesn’t mean the performance numbers don’t match reality. I did go into this knowing it’s a desktop va laptop benchmark and know there will be trade offs involved. I think it’s also worth doing a performance per dollar comparison here as well, though I have no idea what the result would be in this case. So the hardware stuff out of the way, a few of the benchmarks showed such a massive performance delta (in both directions) that I wonder if we’re seeing code/codegen differences. The reality is that the M2 is an arm system, and most projects have only ever really had x86 to worry about for performance, so they have “if x86 do vector stuff; else do it old skool one at a time”, which can have massive perf impact. In the reverse I’ve seen code that goes arm==float32 x86==float64, which has obvious perf impact. Anther huge killer is anything that uses long double. For everything other than x86 long double basically means float32 or float64. On x86 (everywhere I think except win64?) long double is float80, which is much much slower than the alternatives for far to many reasons to list. So that seems like it could easily footgun code that’s being benchmarked as well. All in all I thought this was a good article and it was an interesting read.

neogodless 4y ago

There are some cool takeaways from this massive collection of benchmark results. But before we get to them, things we already know: * You cannot buy Apple Silicon without buying a Mac (and you can't get the unique characteristics of a Mac and macOS without Apple Silicon) * Apple Silicon is optimized for macOS (and vice versa) * Apple Silicon is remarkably efficient (particularly under macOS) This comparison, of course, is focused on Linux users. It is not going to determine some sort of ambiguously defined but ultimate superiority of silicon across all scenarios. However, if you use Linux on one of the laptops used to compare the CPUs, it can give you insight on performance for those specific use cases. So what are the takeaways? * The fan-less M2 (4p/4e) in the Air with 8GB performs about as well as an air-cooled 15-28W Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (8p) with 16GB on average (and vice versa) * The performance of the M2 is likely more than satisfactory despite Asahi Linux not being the absolute optimal operating system for the silicon * The performance of the Ryzen is likely more than satisfactory despite lower efficiency compared to Apple Silicon * Laptop APU performance in 2022 is really remarkable (even at these low TDPs), and any user (regardless of preferred OS or chosen CPU designer) will likely have a good experience with one of these high performing chips I think running these benchmarks appeals to our curiosity about the state of hardware. It is not a perfect, controlled experiment, but it compares two real-world CPUs (APU and SoC respectively) and gives us insight into their performance given the actual hardware configurations tested. What this does not tell us (again): that Ryzens are better than Apple Silicon, or vice versa, in all cases or in every metric. That if one CPU beats another CPU in some benchmarks, it's the one you want, regardless of all the other considerations you have to put into purchase decisions. That either of these CPUs are "bad".

jeswin 4y ago
> Apple Silicon is optimized for macOS (and vice versa) > Apple Silicon is remarkably efficient (particularly under macOS) It is actually quite possible that Apple's advantage was more about being on TSMC's 5nm before everyone else, than something intrinsic about their processor. > The fan-less M2 (4p/4e) in the Air with 8GB performs about as well as an air-cooled 15-28W Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U (8p) with 16GB on average (and vice versa) The air cooled M2 MBP doesn't do significantly better than the fan-less MBA; so the results will probably still stand.

ask_b123 4y ago

The price of the Ryzen computer seems to be much higher, unless I'm missing something: $3 310 vs perhaps $2 100 (both models with their disks = 2TB, couldn't find the 512GB Lenovo model so moved the MBA up too). https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/thinkpad-x13-gen-3-(13-inch-amd)/len101t0021?visibleDatas=696%3AAMD%20Ryzen%E2%84%A2%207%20Pro https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/th... https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/midnight-apple-m2-chip-with-8-core-cpu-and-10-core-gpu-512gb https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/midnight-appl... Am I missing something?

nicolaslem 4y ago
The fact you are probably missing is that not many people pay the Lenovo sticker price. They routinely get heavy discounts once they have been available for a few weeks. This is also true for other enterprise brands such as HP and Dell. I guess they do that because they target mostly businesses and it gives them more flexibility when negotiating bulk deals.
- ask_b123 4y ago
  Makes sense, thank you for the explanation. And now that I know I see that there is a banner ad in that website about a coupon for a weekend deal which brings down the price to around $1 985, which seems more reasonable. I wonder what's the appeal for bumping up the prices but routinely offering discounts. I guess they might sell some fully priced computers.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    Perhaps some businesses pay sticker price? Can’t imagine them futzing around with coupons.
Macha 4y ago
It's the Pro/Enterprise/Business model of the Lenovo laptop. The consumer one is cheaper https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000E-10RU3 https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000E-10RU3 Consumers mostly aren't buying that one (except maybe the tech audience), and businesses aren't paying list price.

sandGorgon 4y ago

this is very cool. the apple m2 is now at the point where the Phoronix test suite is running on it ? We are very close to the Apple M2 being the best Linux laptop right ?

pdimitar 4y ago

Pretty cool that this work exists. I'd love a more direct and comparative benchmark set though e.g. Apple M2 on macOS vs. Ryzen Pro 6850 on Linux, and with at least identical RAM. To me Apple M1 (and maybe M2, have not checked it out yet) remains an absolute leader in performance per watt. Combine the amazing displays and it's almost not a contest. Of course, like every programmer I started getting irritated by macOS because a lot of tinkering and experimentation is simply not possible there. I really hope for at least comparable Linux competitor. Even being behind the M1/M2 with 30% for the same power envelope would be a huge win.

no-dr-onboard 4y ago

> Due to the Apple M2 currently lacking any power/temperature sensor support under Linux, this is simply looking at the raw performance of the M2 and Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U with not being able to accurately compare the M2 power efficiency / performance-per-Watt at this time. Really surprised that anyone would consider this a fair comparison. Thermal management is a huge factor to consider with these tests given safety limiters reduce CPU performance.

guenthert 4y ago

Does anyone know what the reasons might be to compile the Ngspice benchmark with -O0? Oh, nothing nefarious, it seems to be the (IMHO misguided) default settings: https://github.com/guitorri/ngspice/blob/master/INSTALL https://github.com/guitorri/ngspice/blob/master/INSTALL "--disable-debug This option will remove the '-g' option passed to the compiler and add -O2 optimisation (instead of default O0). This speeds up simulating significantly, and is recommended for normal use."

Kukumber 4y ago

Very misleading benchmark, disappointed by phoronix, they usually do quality benchmarks