5 ms·

> the M chips utterly destroy them on performance per watt. It’s not even close. AMD laptop CPUs easily compete with or even beat the M chips according to this

by toolz 4y ago

> the M chips utterly destroy them on performance per watt. It’s not even close. AMD laptop CPUs easily compete with or even beat the M chips according to this comparison. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5215vs4104/AMD-Ryzen-7-7730U-vs-Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MHz https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5215vs4104/AMD-Ryzen-7-...

josephg 4y ago
Hm; that shows TDP - but TDP is a pretty meaningless number these days. How is the battery life in practice? Are there laptops with AMD chips which can run all day like Apple's M1/M2 laptops?
- bigbluedots 4y ago
  Oops, look over there for the new goalposts!
  - josephg 4y ago
    The context was this: > High end Intel and AMD chips hold the performance crown but the M chips utterly destroy them on performance per watt. It’s not even close. I think asking about battery life is pretty relevant.
    - polishTar 4y ago
      Strongly agree. It's not moving the goalposts when the metric is useless. TDP means nothing nowadays because CPUs can significantly exceed them when turboing if they've got thermal headroom. IMO, real power consumption in joules over the course of a benchmark needs to be the standard when it comes to comparing efficiency.
    - skykooler 4y ago
      I wish this was a more common benchmark for graphics cards - with newer graphics cards pushing higher and higher TDPs, it would be nice to have a way to look for "best performance while keeping power draw the same as the previous GPU".
  - blackflame7000 4y ago
    [dead]
  - mort96 4y ago
    TDP is not a number you can use in performance per watt comparisons. No goalposts were moved.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago
  Rembrandt is excellent... on linux, if you throttle it. The main issue is that AMD/Intel turbo so hard, while Apple clocks their M chips much more conservatively. They are also much bigger, wider designs than AMD (which means they are more expensive but can afford to run slower). Another is that Windows + OEM garbage + random background apps do so much useless processing in the background. And I'm not even a pro-linux "bloat" zealot... it really is just senseless and unacceptable out-of-the-box.
  - josephg 4y ago
    > Another is that Windows + OEM garbage + random background apps do so much useless processing in the background. And I'm not even a pro-linux "bloat" zealot... it really is just senseless and unacceptable out-of-the-box. Modern MacOS is nearly as bad. I upgraded a couple of years ago from a dual core 2016 macbook pro. The machine - even freshly formatted - spent an obscene amount of CPU time doing useless things - like in photoanalysisd (presumably looking for my face in my iphoto library for the 100th time). Or indexing my hard drive again, for no reason. The efficiency cores in my new M1 machine seem to hover at about 50% most of the time I'm using the computer. I've started to think of them as the silly corner for Apple's bored software engineers to play around in, so the random background processes they start don't get in the way of getting actual work done. I wish I could figure out how to turn all this crap off. Its no wonder linux on M1 chips is already benchmarking better than the same machines running MacOS, at least on CPU bound tasks. (That said, OEM bloatware on windows is a whole other level of hurt.)
    - brucethemoose2 4y ago
      Oof, I didn't know it was that bad. On the other hand, a low frequency efficiency core is a good place for "bloat" to live. I think thats how Android/iOS remain usable too. Windows bloat on AMD runs on the big 4Ghz+ cores. And I suspect it does on Intel laptops with E cores too, as Windows isn't integrated enough to know that the Adobe updater and Norton Antivirus and the HP App Store are E core tasks. And even if it does, Intel runs their E cores faster than Apple anyway.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
KerrAvon 4y ago
That doesn’t look apples-to-apples to me. That’s thousands of samples of a two year old low-end M1 vs 2 samples of a brand new Ryzen mid-range (AFAICT). (And the Ryzen still loses at single core performance.)
- jeswin 4y ago
  1. AMD just got to 5nm, and hence this is more apples-to-apples if we're talking about design efficiency (rather than TSMC's capabilities) 2. The brand new M2s are only about 20% faster, so the results are still valid.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Missed opportunity to call it apples-to-Apples ;-) But I do wonder, given the other comments here about TDP and these days of thermally-limited performance, what the results are if both are locked to the same constant frequency.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    Nah, besides crazy speculative behaviour, automatic overcloking is how modern chips are so fast compared to a few years ago. And usually for battery power, it's often better to run really hot for a small ammount of time, that to run for a extended ammount of time at lower clocks.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  It's an apples-to-apples comparison when it comes to the node process. AMD's latest CPUs are made on 5nm and 4nm nodes, something that Apple was only able to do with the M1/M2 because they booked all of TSMC's 5nm node capacity. It's only recently that other companies like AMD are able to use TSMC's 5nm node process.

by toolz 4y ago

josephg 4y ago

Hm; that shows TDP - but TDP is a pretty meaningless number these days. How is the battery life in practice? Are there laptops with AMD chips which can run all day like Apple's M1/M2 laptops?

bigbluedots 4y ago
Oops, look over there for the new goalposts!
- josephg 4y ago
  The context was this: > High end Intel and AMD chips hold the performance crown but the M chips utterly destroy them on performance per watt. It’s not even close. I think asking about battery life is pretty relevant.
  - polishTar 4y ago
    Strongly agree. It's not moving the goalposts when the metric is useless. TDP means nothing nowadays because CPUs can significantly exceed them when turboing if they've got thermal headroom. IMO, real power consumption in joules over the course of a benchmark needs to be the standard when it comes to comparing efficiency.
  - skykooler 4y ago
    I wish this was a more common benchmark for graphics cards - with newer graphics cards pushing higher and higher TDPs, it would be nice to have a way to look for "best performance while keeping power draw the same as the previous GPU".
- blackflame7000 4y ago
  [dead]
- mort96 4y ago
  TDP is not a number you can use in performance per watt comparisons. No goalposts were moved.
brucethemoose2 4y ago
Rembrandt is excellent... on linux, if you throttle it. The main issue is that AMD/Intel turbo so hard, while Apple clocks their M chips much more conservatively. They are also much bigger, wider designs than AMD (which means they are more expensive but can afford to run slower). Another is that Windows + OEM garbage + random background apps do so much useless processing in the background. And I'm not even a pro-linux "bloat" zealot... it really is just senseless and unacceptable out-of-the-box.
- josephg 4y ago
  > Another is that Windows + OEM garbage + random background apps do so much useless processing in the background. And I'm not even a pro-linux "bloat" zealot... it really is just senseless and unacceptable out-of-the-box. Modern MacOS is nearly as bad. I upgraded a couple of years ago from a dual core 2016 macbook pro. The machine - even freshly formatted - spent an obscene amount of CPU time doing useless things - like in photoanalysisd (presumably looking for my face in my iphoto library for the 100th time). Or indexing my hard drive again, for no reason. The efficiency cores in my new M1 machine seem to hover at about 50% most of the time I'm using the computer. I've started to think of them as the silly corner for Apple's bored software engineers to play around in, so the random background processes they start don't get in the way of getting actual work done. I wish I could figure out how to turn all this crap off. Its no wonder linux on M1 chips is already benchmarking better than the same machines running MacOS, at least on CPU bound tasks. (That said, OEM bloatware on windows is a whole other level of hurt.)
  - brucethemoose2 4y ago
    Oof, I didn't know it was that bad. On the other hand, a low frequency efficiency core is a good place for "bloat" to live. I think thats how Android/iOS remain usable too. Windows bloat on AMD runs on the big 4Ghz+ cores. And I suspect it does on Intel laptops with E cores too, as Windows isn't integrated enough to know that the Adobe updater and Norton Antivirus and the HP App Store are E core tasks. And even if it does, Intel runs their E cores faster than Apple anyway.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago

KerrAvon 4y ago

That doesn’t look apples-to-apples to me. That’s thousands of samples of a two year old low-end M1 vs 2 samples of a brand new Ryzen mid-range (AFAICT). (And the Ryzen still loses at single core performance.)

jeswin 4y ago
1. AMD just got to 5nm, and hence this is more apples-to-apples if we're talking about design efficiency (rather than TSMC's capabilities) 2. The brand new M2s are only about 20% faster, so the results are still valid.
userbinator 4y ago
Missed opportunity to call it apples-to-Apples ;-) But I do wonder, given the other comments here about TDP and these days of thermally-limited performance, what the results are if both are locked to the same constant frequency.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  Nah, besides crazy speculative behaviour, automatic overcloking is how modern chips are so fast compared to a few years ago. And usually for battery power, it's often better to run really hot for a small ammount of time, that to run for a extended ammount of time at lower clocks.
heavyset_go 4y ago
It's an apples-to-apples comparison when it comes to the node process. AMD's latest CPUs are made on 5nm and 4nm nodes, something that Apple was only able to do with the M1/M2 because they booked all of TSMC's 5nm node capacity. It's only recently that other companies like AMD are able to use TSMC's 5nm node process.