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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

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.
      - cubefox 2y ago
        Yeah, and GPU tests, since the benchmarks above were only for the CPU.
    - acdha 2y ago
      That appears to be an unconfirmed rumor and it’s exciting if true (and there aren’t major caveats on power), but did you notice how they mentioned extra work by ARM? The argument isn’t that Apple is unique, it’s that the performance gaps they’ve shown are more than simply buying premium fab capacity. That doesn’t mean other designers can’t also do that work, but simply that it’s more than just the process - for example, the M2 shipped on TSMC’s N5P first as an exclusive but when Zen 5 shipped later on the same process it didn’t close the single core performance or perf/watt gap. Some of that is x86 vs. ARM but there isn’t a single, simple factor which can explain this - e.g. Apple carefully tuning the hardware, firmware, OS, compilers, and libraries too undoubtably helps a lot and it’s been a perennial problem for non-Intel vendors on the PC side since so many developers have tuned for Intel first/only for decades.
      - cubefox 2y ago
        Since it's unclear whether Apple has a significant architectural advantage over Qualcomm and MediaTek, I would rather attribute this to relatively poor AMD architectures. Provisionally. At least their GPUs have been behind Nvidia for years. (AMD holding its own against Intel is not surprising given Intel's chip fab problems.)
- hajile 2y ago
  Let's do the math on M1 Pro (10-core, N5, 2021) vs HX370 (12-core, N4P, 2024). Firestorm without L3 is 2.281mm2. Icestorm is 0.59mm2. M1 Pro has 8P+2E for a total of 19.428mm2 of cores included. Zen4 without L3 is 3.84mm2. Zen4c reduces that down to 2.48mm2. Zen5 CCD is pretty much the same size as Zen4 (though with 27% more transistors), so core size should be similar. AMD has also stated that Zen5c has a similar shrink percent to Zen4c. We'll use their numbers. HX370 has 4P+8C for a total area of 35.2mm2. If being twice the size despite being on N4P instead of N5 like M1 seems like foreshadowing, it is. We'll use notebookcheck's Cinebench 2024 multithread power and performance numbers to calculate perf / power / area then multiply that by 100 to eliminate some decimals. M1 Pro scores 824 (10-core) and while they don't have a power value listed, they do list 33.6w package power running the prime95 power virus, so cinebench's power should be lower than that. HX370 scored 1213 (12-core) and averaged 119w (maxing at a massive 121.7w and that's without running a power virus). This gives the following perf/power/area*100 scores: M1 Pro — 126 PPA HX 379 — 29 PPA M1 is more than 4.3x better while being an entire node behind and being released years before.
  - cyp0633 2y ago
    Power efficiency is a curve, and Apple may have its own reason not to make M1 Pro run at 110W as well
    - sm_1024 2y ago
      I think the OC might have mis-read the power numbers, 110 W is well into desktop CPU power range. Here is a excerpt from Anand Tech: > In our peak power test, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 ramped up and peaked at 33 W. https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370...
      - hajile 2y ago
        You can read the notebookcheck review for yourself. 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...
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]

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.
    - cubefox 2y ago
      Yeah, and GPU tests, since the benchmarks above were only for the CPU.
  - acdha 2y ago
    That appears to be an unconfirmed rumor and it’s exciting if true (and there aren’t major caveats on power), but did you notice how they mentioned extra work by ARM? The argument isn’t that Apple is unique, it’s that the performance gaps they’ve shown are more than simply buying premium fab capacity. That doesn’t mean other designers can’t also do that work, but simply that it’s more than just the process - for example, the M2 shipped on TSMC’s N5P first as an exclusive but when Zen 5 shipped later on the same process it didn’t close the single core performance or perf/watt gap. Some of that is x86 vs. ARM but there isn’t a single, simple factor which can explain this - e.g. Apple carefully tuning the hardware, firmware, OS, compilers, and libraries too undoubtably helps a lot and it’s been a perennial problem for non-Intel vendors on the PC side since so many developers have tuned for Intel first/only for decades.
    - cubefox 2y ago
      Since it's unclear whether Apple has a significant architectural advantage over Qualcomm and MediaTek, I would rather attribute this to relatively poor AMD architectures. Provisionally. At least their GPUs have been behind Nvidia for years. (AMD holding its own against Intel is not surprising given Intel's chip fab problems.)
hajile 2y ago
Let's do the math on M1 Pro (10-core, N5, 2021) vs HX370 (12-core, N4P, 2024). Firestorm without L3 is 2.281mm2. Icestorm is 0.59mm2. M1 Pro has 8P+2E for a total of 19.428mm2 of cores included. Zen4 without L3 is 3.84mm2. Zen4c reduces that down to 2.48mm2. Zen5 CCD is pretty much the same size as Zen4 (though with 27% more transistors), so core size should be similar. AMD has also stated that Zen5c has a similar shrink percent to Zen4c. We'll use their numbers. HX370 has 4P+8C for a total area of 35.2mm2. If being twice the size despite being on N4P instead of N5 like M1 seems like foreshadowing, it is. We'll use notebookcheck's Cinebench 2024 multithread power and performance numbers to calculate perf / power / area then multiply that by 100 to eliminate some decimals. M1 Pro scores 824 (10-core) and while they don't have a power value listed, they do list 33.6w package power running the prime95 power virus, so cinebench's power should be lower than that. HX370 scored 1213 (12-core) and averaged 119w (maxing at a massive 121.7w and that's without running a power virus). This gives the following perf/power/area*100 scores: M1 Pro — 126 PPA HX 379 — 29 PPA M1 is more than 4.3x better while being an entire node behind and being released years before.
- cyp0633 2y ago
  Power efficiency is a curve, and Apple may have its own reason not to make M1 Pro run at 110W as well
  - sm_1024 2y ago
    I think the OC might have mis-read the power numbers, 110 W is well into desktop CPU power range. Here is a excerpt from Anand Tech: > In our peak power test, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 ramped up and peaked at 33 W. https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370-review/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370...
    - hajile 2y ago
      You can read the notebookcheck review for yourself. 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...

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]