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IMO, the most interesting thing about this line is the battery life---within an hour of MBP3 and within 2 hours of Asus's Qualcomm. Making it comparable to ARM

IMO, the most interesting thing about this line is the battery life---within an hour of MBP3 and within 2 hours of Asus's Qualcomm. Making it comparable to ARM architectures. Which is a little surprising because ARM is commonly believed to be much more power efficient than x86. [1] https://youtu.be/Z8WKR0VHfJw?si=A7zbFY2lsDa8iVQN&t=277 https://youtu.be/Z8WKR0VHfJw?si=A7zbFY2lsDa8iVQN&t=277

jiggawatts 2y ago
> because ARM is commonly believed to be much more power efficient than x86. Because most ARM processors were designed for mobile phones and optimised to death for power efficiency. The total power usage of the front end decoders is a single digit percentage of the total power draw. Even if ARM magically needed 0 watts for this, it couldn’t save more power than that. The rest of the processor design elements are essentially identical.
halJordan 2y ago
Yeah if you make a worse core and then downclock it then you will increase power efficiency. AMD thankfully only downclocks the 5c, but Intel is shipping ivy lake equivalents in their flagship products just to get power efficiency up.
arnaudsm 2y ago
ARM got a lot of hype since the release of the M1, but most users only compared it to the terrible Intel MBPs. Ryzen mobile has been consistently close to Apple silicon perf/watt for 5 years. But got little press coverage. Hype can be really decorrelated from real world performance.
- sm_1024 2y ago
  I have heard that part of the reason for little coverage of ryzen mobile CPUs is their limited availability as AMD was focussing on using the fab capacity for server chips.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Any efficiency comparison involving Apples chips also has to factor in that Tim Cook keeps showing up at TSMCs door with a freight container full of cash to buy out exclusive access to their bleeding edge silicon processes. ARM may be a factor but don't underestimate the power of having more money than God. Case in point, Strix Point is built on TSMC 4nm while Apple is already using TSMCs second generation 3nm process.
  - acdha 2y ago
    Process helps but have you seen benchmarks showing equivalent performance between the same process node? I think it’s less that ARM is amazing than the Apple Silicon team being very good and paired with aggressive optimization throughout the stack but everything I’ve seen suggests they are simply building better chips at their target levels (not server, high power, etc.).
    - cubefox 2y ago
      > Our benchmark database shows the Dimensity 9300 scores 2,207 and 7,408 in Geekbench 6.2's single and multi-core tests. A 30% performance improvement implies the Dimensity 9400 would score around 2,869 and and 9,630. Its single-core performance is close to that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (2,884/8,840) and it understandably takes the lead in multi-core. Both are within spitting distance from the Apple A17 Pro, which scores 2,915 and 7,222 points in the benchmark. Then again, all three chips are said to be manufactured on TSMC's N3 class node, effectively leveling the playing field. https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-9400-rumoured-to-trade-blows-with-Apple-A17-Pro-thanks-to-remarkable-performance-uplift.873019.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-9400-rumour...
      - sroussey 2y ago
        I guess getting close to the same single thread score is nice. Unfortunately, since only Apple is shipping it is hard to compare if the others burn the battery to get there. I suspect the others two, like Apple with the A18 shipping next month, will be using the second gen N3. Apple is expected to be around 3500 on that node. Needless to say, what will be very interesting is to see the perf/watt of all three on the same node and shipping in actual products where the benchmarks can be put to more useful tests.
- carstenhag 2y ago
  But how is this the case? I never saw a single article mentioning that a non-Mac laptop was better. (Random article saying M3 pro is better than a Dell laptop https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m3-and-m3-max-battery-life-tested-heres-how-long-they-last https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m3-and-m3-max-bat... )
  - moonfern 2y ago
    You're right, but... The idea comes from the desktop world. AMD's zen 4 desktop cpu's especially the gaming variants like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D almost matches the performance per watt of Apple's M3. Their laptop cpu's as some companies did release same model different cpu were less efficient than intel. But the Asus ProArt P16 (used in the article) did manage an extreme endurance score in the video test called Big Buck Bunny H.264 1080p which runs at 150 cd/m² with 21 hours. With it's higher resolution, oled and 10% less battery capacity that's better 40 minutes better than the macbook pro 16 m3 max. In the wifi test also run at 150 cd/m² the m3 run for 16 hours, the asus 8. ( https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ProArt-P16-laptop-review-AMD-Zen-5-meets-RTX-4070-laptop-and-4K-OLED.871739.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ProArt-P16-laptop-review-... ) For me noise matters, that Asus has a whisper mode which produces 42db as much as an M3 max under full load. Please be aware that if you're susceptible of PWM, that ASUS laptop has issues.
- Filligree 2y ago
  Ryzen mobile is consistently close, yeah. But with the sole exception of the Steam deck, I've yet to see a Ryzen mobile-bearing laptop, Windows included, which is close to the overall performance of the Macbook.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > But with the sole exception of the Steam deck Uuh wut? The Steam Deck is like 3-generation-old hardware in mobile Ryzen terms. In a lot of ways it's similar to a pared-back 4800u with fewer (and older) cores, and a slightly bumped up GPU. To me it's kinda the opposite. Excluding the Steam Deck, I think most of AMD's Ultrabook APUs have been very close to the products Apple's made on the equivalent nodes. Even on 7nm the 4800u put up a competitive fight against M1, and the gap has gotten thinner with each passing year. According to the OpenCL benchmarks, the Radeon 680m on 6nm scores higher than the M1 on 5nm: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks Even back when Ryzen Mobile only shipped with Vega, it was pretty clear that Apple and AMD were a pretty close match in onboard GPU power.
    - amlib 2y ago
      Steam Deck might be behind in terms of hardware but in terms of software it's way beyond your typical x86 linux system power efficiency, and dare I say it's doing better than windows machines with the typical shoddy bioses and drivers, specially when you consider all the extraneous services constantly sapping varying amounts of cpu time. All that contributes to make the SD punch well above its weight.
      - sudosysgen 2y ago
        My Alienware M15 Ryzen edition gets 7-8W power consumption by just running "sudo powertop --autotune". Basically all of the power efficiency stuff in the Steam Deck apply to other Ryzen systems and are in the mainline kernel.
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    "overall performance" does a lot of work here. On sheer benchmarks it's really comparable, with AMD being slightly better depending on what you look at. e.g. the M1 vs the 5700U (a similar class widely available mobile CPU): https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD%20Ryzen%207%205700U https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD%20Ryzen%207%205... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320... They're not profiled the same, and don't belong in the same ecosystem though, which makes a lot more difference than the CPU themselves. In particular the AMD doesn't get a dedicated compiler optimizing every applications of the system to its strength and weaknesses (the other side of it being the compatibility with the two vastest ecosystem we have now)
- rojroy 2y ago
  [flagged]
- sandywaffles 2y ago
  I think that's because all the press talks about actual battery life per laptop and the Apple Silicone laptops ship with literally double the size battery of any AMD based laptop without a discrete GPU. So while the efficiency may be close, actually perceived battery life of the Mac will he more than double when you also consider the priority Apple puts into their power control combined with a larger overall battery.
  - HenryCase 2y ago
    [dead]
wtallis 2y ago
The CPU core's instruction set has no influence on how well the chip as a whole manages power when not executing instructions.
- sm_1024 2y ago
  That is fair, I was taught that decoders for x86 are less efficient and more power hungry than RISC ISAs because of their variable length instructions. I remember being told (and it might be wrong) that ARM can decode multiple instructions in parallel because the CPU knows where the next instruction starts, but for x86, you'd have to decode the instructions in order.
  - pohuing 2y ago
    That seems to not matter much nowadays. There's another great(according to my untrained eye) writeup of the lack of importance on chips and cheese. https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-...
    - dzaima 2y ago
      The various mentioned power consumption amounts are 4-10% per-core, or 0.5-6% of package (with the caveat of running with micro-op cache off) for Zen 2, and 3-10% for Haswell. That's not massive, but is still far from what I'd consider insignificant; it could give leeway for an extra core or some improved ALUs; or, even, depending on the benchmark, is the difference between Zen 4 and Zen 5 (making the false assumption of a linear relation between power and performance, at least), which'd essentially be a "free" generational improvement. Of course the reality is gonna be more modest than that, but it's not nothing.
      - Panzer04 2y ago
        You missed the part where they mention ARM ends up implementing the same thing to go fast. The point is processors are either slow and efficient, or fast and inefficient. It's just a tradeoff along the curve.
dagmx 2y ago
Battery tests are important, but so is how it fairs on battery (what is the performance drop off to maintain that), what’s its performance is ant its peak and how it long before it throttles when pushed. The M series processors have succeeded in all four: battery life, performance parity between battery and plugged in, high performance and performance sustainability. So far, very few benchmarks have been comparing the latter three as part of the full package assessment.
GrumpyYoungMan 2y ago
The display, RAM, and other peripherals are consuming power too. Short of running continuous high CPU loads, which most people don't do on laptops, changes in CPU efficiency have less apparent effect on battery life because it's only a fraction of overall power draw.
Panzer04 2y ago
>5hr Battery life in laptops is mostly a function of how well idle is managed, i think. The less work you can do while running the users core program, the better. I'm not sure how much impact CPU efficiency really has in that case. If you are running a remotely demanding program (say, a game) , your battery life will be bad no matter what (ie. <4hrs) unless you choose a very low TDP that performs badly always. A laptop at idle should be able to manage ~5w power consumption sumtpion regardless of AMD/intel/Apple processor, but it's largely on the OS to achieve that.
999900000999 2y ago
I have a 365 AMD laptop. The battery is great if your doing very light stuff, Call of Duty takes it's battery down to 3 hours. Macs don't really support higher end games, so I can't directly compare to my M1 Air.
- sedatk 2y ago
  How does “great” translate to hours?
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    This is really tricky. The OEMs will use ever trick possible and do something like open GMAIL to claim 10 hours, but given my typical use I average 5 to 6. I make music using a software called Maschine. It's a massive step up over my old( still working just very heavy) Lenovo Legion 2020, which would last about 2 hours given the same usage. This is all subjective at the end of the day. If none of your applications actually work since your on ARM Windows of course you'll have higher battery life.
cubefox 2y ago
Unlike AMD and Qualcomm, Apple uses an expensive TSMC 3nm process, so you would expect better battery life from the "MBP3". I assume they used the process improvements to increase performance instead.
- hajile 2y ago
  Perf per watt is higher for M1 on N5 vs Zen5 on N4P, so the problems go deeper than just process. X Elite also beats AMD/Intel in perf/watt while being on the same N4P node as HX370. https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Zen-5-Strix-Point-CPU-analysis-Ryzen-AI-9-HX-370-versus-Intel-Core-Ultra-Apple-M3-and-Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite.868641.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Zen-5-Strix-Point-CPU-anal...
  - cubefox 2y ago
    Performance per watt also depends on clock speed. Other things equal, higher clock speed means worse performance per watt.
double0jimb0 2y ago
I didn’t watch this link, but my Zenbook S 16 only gets remotely close to my M2 MBA battery life if the zenbook is in whatever is Windows 11 ‘efficiency’ mode, and then it benchmarks at 50% of the M2. I don’t think the two are remotely comparable in perf/watt.
acchow 2y ago
> within an hour of MBP3 Not a good way to measure. The Zenbook S16 has a larger 78Wh battery vs the MacBook Pro’s 69.6Wh. So that’s 11% less battery life despite 12% more battery capacity.

jiggawatts 2y ago

> because ARM is commonly believed to be much more power efficient than x86. Because most ARM processors were designed for mobile phones and optimised to death for power efficiency. The total power usage of the front end decoders is a single digit percentage of the total power draw. Even if ARM magically needed 0 watts for this, it couldn’t save more power than that. The rest of the processor design elements are essentially identical.

halJordan 2y ago

Yeah if you make a worse core and then downclock it then you will increase power efficiency. AMD thankfully only downclocks the 5c, but Intel is shipping ivy lake equivalents in their flagship products just to get power efficiency up.

arnaudsm 2y ago

ARM got a lot of hype since the release of the M1, but most users only compared it to the terrible Intel MBPs. Ryzen mobile has been consistently close to Apple silicon perf/watt for 5 years. But got little press coverage. Hype can be really decorrelated from real world performance.

sm_1024 2y ago
I have heard that part of the reason for little coverage of ryzen mobile CPUs is their limited availability as AMD was focussing on using the fab capacity for server chips.
jsheard 2y ago
Any efficiency comparison involving Apples chips also has to factor in that Tim Cook keeps showing up at TSMCs door with a freight container full of cash to buy out exclusive access to their bleeding edge silicon processes. ARM may be a factor but don't underestimate the power of having more money than God. Case in point, Strix Point is built on TSMC 4nm while Apple is already using TSMCs second generation 3nm process.
- acdha 2y ago
  Process helps but have you seen benchmarks showing equivalent performance between the same process node? I think it’s less that ARM is amazing than the Apple Silicon team being very good and paired with aggressive optimization throughout the stack but everything I’ve seen suggests they are simply building better chips at their target levels (not server, high power, etc.).
  - cubefox 2y ago
    > Our benchmark database shows the Dimensity 9300 scores 2,207 and 7,408 in Geekbench 6.2's single and multi-core tests. A 30% performance improvement implies the Dimensity 9400 would score around 2,869 and and 9,630. Its single-core performance is close to that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (2,884/8,840) and it understandably takes the lead in multi-core. Both are within spitting distance from the Apple A17 Pro, which scores 2,915 and 7,222 points in the benchmark. Then again, all three chips are said to be manufactured on TSMC's N3 class node, effectively leveling the playing field. https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-9400-rumoured-to-trade-blows-with-Apple-A17-Pro-thanks-to-remarkable-performance-uplift.873019.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-9400-rumour...
    - sroussey 2y ago
      I guess getting close to the same single thread score is nice. Unfortunately, since only Apple is shipping it is hard to compare if the others burn the battery to get there. I suspect the others two, like Apple with the A18 shipping next month, will be using the second gen N3. Apple is expected to be around 3500 on that node. Needless to say, what will be very interesting is to see the perf/watt of all three on the same node and shipping in actual products where the benchmarks can be put to more useful tests.
carstenhag 2y ago
But how is this the case? I never saw a single article mentioning that a non-Mac laptop was better. (Random article saying M3 pro is better than a Dell laptop https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m3-and-m3-max-battery-life-tested-heres-how-long-they-last https://www.tomsguide.com/news/macbook-pro-m3-and-m3-max-bat... )
- moonfern 2y ago
  You're right, but... The idea comes from the desktop world. AMD's zen 4 desktop cpu's especially the gaming variants like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D almost matches the performance per watt of Apple's M3. Their laptop cpu's as some companies did release same model different cpu were less efficient than intel. But the Asus ProArt P16 (used in the article) did manage an extreme endurance score in the video test called Big Buck Bunny H.264 1080p which runs at 150 cd/m² with 21 hours. With it's higher resolution, oled and 10% less battery capacity that's better 40 minutes better than the macbook pro 16 m3 max. In the wifi test also run at 150 cd/m² the m3 run for 16 hours, the asus 8. ( https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ProArt-P16-laptop-review-AMD-Zen-5-meets-RTX-4070-laptop-and-4K-OLED.871739.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ProArt-P16-laptop-review-... ) For me noise matters, that Asus has a whisper mode which produces 42db as much as an M3 max under full load. Please be aware that if you're susceptible of PWM, that ASUS laptop has issues.
Filligree 2y ago
Ryzen mobile is consistently close, yeah. But with the sole exception of the Steam deck, I've yet to see a Ryzen mobile-bearing laptop, Windows included, which is close to the overall performance of the Macbook.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > But with the sole exception of the Steam deck Uuh wut? The Steam Deck is like 3-generation-old hardware in mobile Ryzen terms. In a lot of ways it's similar to a pared-back 4800u with fewer (and older) cores, and a slightly bumped up GPU. To me it's kinda the opposite. Excluding the Steam Deck, I think most of AMD's Ultrabook APUs have been very close to the products Apple's made on the equivalent nodes. Even on 7nm the 4800u put up a competitive fight against M1, and the gap has gotten thinner with each passing year. According to the OpenCL benchmarks, the Radeon 680m on 6nm scores higher than the M1 on 5nm: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks Even back when Ryzen Mobile only shipped with Vega, it was pretty clear that Apple and AMD were a pretty close match in onboard GPU power.
  - amlib 2y ago
    Steam Deck might be behind in terms of hardware but in terms of software it's way beyond your typical x86 linux system power efficiency, and dare I say it's doing better than windows machines with the typical shoddy bioses and drivers, specially when you consider all the extraneous services constantly sapping varying amounts of cpu time. All that contributes to make the SD punch well above its weight.
    - sudosysgen 2y ago
      My Alienware M15 Ryzen edition gets 7-8W power consumption by just running "sudo powertop --autotune". Basically all of the power efficiency stuff in the Steam Deck apply to other Ryzen systems and are in the mainline kernel.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  "overall performance" does a lot of work here. On sheer benchmarks it's really comparable, with AMD being slightly better depending on what you look at. e.g. the M1 vs the 5700U (a similar class widely available mobile CPU): https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD%20Ryzen%207%205700U https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD%20Ryzen%207%205... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320... They're not profiled the same, and don't belong in the same ecosystem though, which makes a lot more difference than the CPU themselves. In particular the AMD doesn't get a dedicated compiler optimizing every applications of the system to its strength and weaknesses (the other side of it being the compatibility with the two vastest ecosystem we have now)
rojroy 2y ago
[flagged]
sandywaffles 2y ago
I think that's because all the press talks about actual battery life per laptop and the Apple Silicone laptops ship with literally double the size battery of any AMD based laptop without a discrete GPU. So while the efficiency may be close, actually perceived battery life of the Mac will he more than double when you also consider the priority Apple puts into their power control combined with a larger overall battery.
- HenryCase 2y ago
  [dead]

wtallis 2y ago

The CPU core's instruction set has no influence on how well the chip as a whole manages power when not executing instructions.

sm_1024 2y ago
That is fair, I was taught that decoders for x86 are less efficient and more power hungry than RISC ISAs because of their variable length instructions. I remember being told (and it might be wrong) that ARM can decode multiple instructions in parallel because the CPU knows where the next instruction starts, but for x86, you'd have to decode the instructions in order.
- pohuing 2y ago
  That seems to not matter much nowadays. There's another great(according to my untrained eye) writeup of the lack of importance on chips and cheese. https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2021/07/13/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-...
  - dzaima 2y ago
    The various mentioned power consumption amounts are 4-10% per-core, or 0.5-6% of package (with the caveat of running with micro-op cache off) for Zen 2, and 3-10% for Haswell. That's not massive, but is still far from what I'd consider insignificant; it could give leeway for an extra core or some improved ALUs; or, even, depending on the benchmark, is the difference between Zen 4 and Zen 5 (making the false assumption of a linear relation between power and performance, at least), which'd essentially be a "free" generational improvement. Of course the reality is gonna be more modest than that, but it's not nothing.
    - Panzer04 2y ago
      You missed the part where they mention ARM ends up implementing the same thing to go fast. The point is processors are either slow and efficient, or fast and inefficient. It's just a tradeoff along the curve.

dagmx 2y ago

Battery tests are important, but so is how it fairs on battery (what is the performance drop off to maintain that), what’s its performance is ant its peak and how it long before it throttles when pushed. The M series processors have succeeded in all four: battery life, performance parity between battery and plugged in, high performance and performance sustainability. So far, very few benchmarks have been comparing the latter three as part of the full package assessment.

GrumpyYoungMan 2y ago

The display, RAM, and other peripherals are consuming power too. Short of running continuous high CPU loads, which most people don't do on laptops, changes in CPU efficiency have less apparent effect on battery life because it's only a fraction of overall power draw.

Panzer04 2y ago

>5hr Battery life in laptops is mostly a function of how well idle is managed, i think. The less work you can do while running the users core program, the better. I'm not sure how much impact CPU efficiency really has in that case. If you are running a remotely demanding program (say, a game) , your battery life will be bad no matter what (ie. <4hrs) unless you choose a very low TDP that performs badly always. A laptop at idle should be able to manage ~5w power consumption sumtpion regardless of AMD/intel/Apple processor, but it's largely on the OS to achieve that.

999900000999 2y ago

I have a 365 AMD laptop. The battery is great if your doing very light stuff, Call of Duty takes it's battery down to 3 hours. Macs don't really support higher end games, so I can't directly compare to my M1 Air.

sedatk 2y ago
How does “great” translate to hours?
- 999900000999 2y ago
  This is really tricky. The OEMs will use ever trick possible and do something like open GMAIL to claim 10 hours, but given my typical use I average 5 to 6. I make music using a software called Maschine. It's a massive step up over my old( still working just very heavy) Lenovo Legion 2020, which would last about 2 hours given the same usage. This is all subjective at the end of the day. If none of your applications actually work since your on ARM Windows of course you'll have higher battery life.

cubefox 2y ago

Unlike AMD and Qualcomm, Apple uses an expensive TSMC 3nm process, so you would expect better battery life from the "MBP3". I assume they used the process improvements to increase performance instead.

hajile 2y ago
Perf per watt is higher for M1 on N5 vs Zen5 on N4P, so the problems go deeper than just process. X Elite also beats AMD/Intel in perf/watt while being on the same N4P node as HX370. https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Zen-5-Strix-Point-CPU-analysis-Ryzen-AI-9-HX-370-versus-Intel-Core-Ultra-Apple-M3-and-Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite.868641.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Zen-5-Strix-Point-CPU-anal...
- cubefox 2y ago
  Performance per watt also depends on clock speed. Other things equal, higher clock speed means worse performance per watt.

double0jimb0 2y ago

I didn’t watch this link, but my Zenbook S 16 only gets remotely close to my M2 MBA battery life if the zenbook is in whatever is Windows 11 ‘efficiency’ mode, and then it benchmarks at 50% of the M2. I don’t think the two are remotely comparable in perf/watt.

acchow 2y ago

> within an hour of MBP3 Not a good way to measure. The Zenbook S16 has a larger 78Wh battery vs the MacBook Pro’s 69.6Wh. So that’s 11% less battery life despite 12% more battery capacity.