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One of these has to be true (or both true): 1. ARM is inherently more efficient than x86 CPUs in most tasks 2. Nuvia and Apple are better CPU designers than A

One of these has to be true (or both true): 1. ARM is inherently more efficient than x86 CPUs in most tasks 2. Nuvia and Apple are better CPU designers than AMD and Intel Here are results from Notebookcheck: Cinebench R24 ST perf/watt * M3: 12.7 points/watt * X Elite: 9.3 points/watt * AMD HX 370: 3.74 points/watt * AMD 8845HS: 3.1 points/watt * Intel 155H: 3.1 points/watt In ST, Apple is 3.4x more efficient than Zen5. X Elite is 2.4x more efficient than Zen5. Cinebench R24 MT perf/watt * M3: 28.3 points/watt * X Elite: 22.6 points/watt * AMD HX 370: 19.7 points/watt * AMD 8845HS: 14.8 points/watt * Intel 155H: 14.5 points/watt In MT, Apple is 1.9x more efficient than Zen4 and 1.4x more efficient than HX 370. I expect M3 Pro/Max to increase the gap because generally, more cores means more efficiency for Cinebench MT. X Elite is also more efficient but the gap is closer. However, we should note that in a laptop, ST matters more for efficiency because of the burst behavior of usage. It's easier to gain in MT efficiency as long as you have many cores and run them at lower wattage. In this case, AMD's Zen5 12 core setup and 24 threads works well in Cinebench. Cinebench loves more threads. One thing that is intriguing is that X Elite does not have little cores which hurts its MT efficiency. It's likely a remnant of Nuvia designing a server CPU, which does not need big.Little but Qualcomm used it in a laptop SoC first. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN2tC8DfJnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN2tC8DfJnc 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...

trynumber9 2y ago
The Snapdragon X Elite is on the same node and when actually doing a lot of work (i.e. cores loaded) it is close enough to HX 370 while delivering similar throughput. Why wouldn't the inherent inefficiency of x64 be as noticeable in MT when all the inefficient cores are working? Because it is running at lower clocks? Then what allows it to match the SDXE in throughput? Does that need to lower its clock even more? I'm not seeing what makes it inherent.
rafaelmn 2y ago
From you link - Intel is topping the performance charts (alongside AMD in SC) - they probably tune power usage agressively to achieve these results. I would guess it's more to do with coming from desktop CPU design to mobile vs. phones to laptops.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  >From you link - Intel is topping the performance charts (alongside AMD in SC) - they probably tune power usage agressively to achieve these results. Cinebench 2024 ST: * M3: 142 points * X Elite: 123 points * AMD HX 370: 116 points * AMD 8845HS: 102 points * Intel 155H: 108 points Amongst each company's best laptop ST SoCs, no, Intel and AMD are far behind in both ST scores and perf/watt. If you're referring to desktop speeds, then yes, Intel's 14900k does top the charts in ST Cinebench but it likely uses well over 100w. I mostly care about laptop SoCs. In the case of the M3, it doesn’t even have a fan.
  - rafaelmn 2y ago
    That's what I'm thinking - they make trade-offs to reach peak performance in desktop designs that don't translate optimally to laptops and when you start from mobile designs you probably made the opposite trade-offs - that would be my guess for the discrepancy.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure that M3 Max closely matches the 14900k in ST speeds but using something like 5 - 10% of the power.
      - rafaelmn 2y ago
        Not sure - they had power/thermal envelope in desktop parts and no difference in performance AFAIK.
    - hajile 2y ago
      Laptops vastly outsell desktops, so this tradeoff means hurting the majority of your customers to please a small minority. Servers also care about perf/watt a LOT and they are the highest profit margin segment. Why would AMD choose a target that hurts the majority of their market unless there wasn't another good option available?
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> 1. ARM is inherently more efficient than x86 CPUs in most tasks > 2. Nuvia and Apple are better CPU designers than AMD and Intel The third possibility is that they just pick a different point on the efficiency curve. You can double power consumption in exchange for a few percent higher performance, double it again for an even smaller increase. The max turbo on the i9 14900KS is 253 W. The power efficiency is bad. But it generally outperforms the M3, despite being on a significantly worse process node, because that's the trade off. AMD is only on a slightly worse process node and doesn't have to do anything so aggressive, but they'll also sell you whatever you want. The 8845HS and 8840U are basically the same chip, but former has around double the TDP. In exchange for that you get ~2% more single thread performance and ~15% more multi-thread performance. Whereas the performance per watt for the 8840U is nearly that of the M3, and the remaining difference is basically the process node.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  >The third possibility is that they just pick a different point on the efficiency curve. You can double power consumption in exchange for a few percent higher performance, double it again for an even smaller increase. This only makes sense if the Zen5 is actually faster in ST than the M3. In this case, the M3 is 1.24x faster and 3.4x more efficient in ST than Zen5. AMD's Zen5 chip is just straight up slower in any curve. >The max turbo on the i9 14900KS is 253 W. The power efficiency is bad. But it generally outperforms the M3, despite being on a significantly worse process node, because that's the trade off. It's not a trade off that Intel wants. The 14900KS runs at 253w (sometimes 400w+) because that's the only way Intel is able to stay remotely competitive at the very high end. An M3 Max will often match a 14900KS in performance using 5-10% of the power.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > This only makes sense if the Zen5 is actually faster in ST than the M3. In this case, the M3 is 1.24x faster and 3.4x more efficient in ST than Zen5. It makes sense if Zen5 is faster in MT, since that's when the CPUs will be power limited, and it is. For ST the performance generally isn't power-limited for either of them and then the M3 is on a newer process node. It also depends on the benchmark. For example, Zen5 is faster in ST on Cinebench R23. It's not obvious what's going on with R24, but it's a difference in the code rather than the hardware. The power numbers in that link also don't inspire a lot of confidence. They have two systems with the same CPU but one of them uses 119.3W and the other one uses 46.7W? Plausibly the OEMs could have configured them differently but that kind of throws out the entire premise of using the comparison to measure the efficiency of the CPUs. The number doesn't mean anything if the power consumption is being set as a configuration parameter by the OEM and the number of watts going to the display or a discrete GPU are an uncontrolled hidden variable. > It's not a trade off that Intel wants. It's the one they've always taken, even when they were unquestionably in the lead. They were selling up to 150W desktop processors in 2008, because people buy them, because they're faster. Now they have to do it just to be competitive because their process isn't as good, but the process is a different thing than the ISA or the design of the CPU.
jeswin 2y ago
In the same article, if you picked their R23 benchmarks the advantage vanishes in MT benchmarks; the 3nm M3 Max is actually behind 4nm Strix Point in efficiency.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Cinebench R23 is hand optimized for X86. It uses Intel Embree engine underneath. That's why Cinebench R23 heavily favors x86.
kllrnohj 2y ago
Performance per watt is a bad metric. You want instead performance for a given power budget (eg, how much performance can I get at 15w? 30w? etc...) Otherwise you can trivially win 100% of performance/watt comparisons by just setting clocks to the limit of the lowest usable voltage level. For example compare the 7950X to the 7950X@65w using the officially supported eco mode option: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x-and-ryzen-5-7600x-review-retaking-the-high-end/20 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x... Cinebench R23 MT: 7950X stock: 225 points/watt 7950X @ 65w eco mode: 482 points/watt Over 2x perf/watt improvement on the exact same chip, and a power efficiency that tops the charts, beating every laptop chip in that notebookcheck test by a large amount as well. And yet how many 7950x owners are using the 65w eco mode option? Probably none. Because perf/watt isn't actually meaningful. Rather it's how much performance can I get for a given power budget.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  >Performance per watt is a bad metric. It isn't. It needs context. Sure, you can get an Intel Celeron to have more perf/watt than an M1 if you give the Celeron low enough wattage. The key here is the absolute performance. In this case, both the M3 and the X Elite are not only significantly more efficient than both Zen4 and Zen5 in ST, they are also straight up faster while being more efficient.
kllrnohj 2y ago
> 1. ARM is inherently more efficient than x86 CPUs in most tasks I'm not sure how you're reaching the conclusion of "most tasks" when Cinebench R24 is the only test you used because R23, which doesn't agree, was rejected for hand-wavey nebulous reasons, and nothing else was tested. R24 is hardly a representative workload of "most tasks" nor is it claiming/trying to be.
- hajile 2y ago
  Anandtech shows[0] that M3 is massively ahead in integer performance, but slightly behind in float performance on Spec 2017. Integer workloads are by far the most common, but they tend to not scale to multiple cores very well. Most workloads that scale well across cores also benefit from big FP/SIMD units too. Put another way, the real issue with R24 is that it makes HX370 look better than it would look in more normal consumer workloads. [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370...
  - kllrnohj 2y ago
    > that M3 is massively ahead in integer performance The M3 is certainly an impressive chip, but note that it's only massively ahead in some of the int tests. It's not a consistent gap. > Integer workloads are by far the most common, but they tend to not scale to multiple cores very well. The HX370 does better than the Me in specint MT though. But regardless the anandtech results paint a much closer picture than the single R24 results that GP used as the basis of the efficiency thesis.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      The HX370 should win in SPECINT MT. It has 12 cores to the M3's 8 cores and it runs at significantly higher power. Compare HX370 SPECINT MT To an M3 Pro and let's see the results.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
sudosysgen 2y ago
Why are you comparing a chip optimized for performance with a chip optimized for efficiency? Take an Ultrabook Zen5, not the HX370.

trynumber9 2y ago

The Snapdragon X Elite is on the same node and when actually doing a lot of work (i.e. cores loaded) it is close enough to HX 370 while delivering similar throughput. Why wouldn't the inherent inefficiency of x64 be as noticeable in MT when all the inefficient cores are working? Because it is running at lower clocks? Then what allows it to match the SDXE in throughput? Does that need to lower its clock even more? I'm not seeing what makes it inherent.

rafaelmn 2y ago

From you link - Intel is topping the performance charts (alongside AMD in SC) - they probably tune power usage agressively to achieve these results. I would guess it's more to do with coming from desktop CPU design to mobile vs. phones to laptops.

aurareturn 2y ago
>From you link - Intel is topping the performance charts (alongside AMD in SC) - they probably tune power usage agressively to achieve these results. Cinebench 2024 ST: * M3: 142 points * X Elite: 123 points * AMD HX 370: 116 points * AMD 8845HS: 102 points * Intel 155H: 108 points Amongst each company's best laptop ST SoCs, no, Intel and AMD are far behind in both ST scores and perf/watt. If you're referring to desktop speeds, then yes, Intel's 14900k does top the charts in ST Cinebench but it likely uses well over 100w. I mostly care about laptop SoCs. In the case of the M3, it doesn’t even have a fan.
- rafaelmn 2y ago
  That's what I'm thinking - they make trade-offs to reach peak performance in desktop designs that don't translate optimally to laptops and when you start from mobile designs you probably made the opposite trade-offs - that would be my guess for the discrepancy.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure that M3 Max closely matches the 14900k in ST speeds but using something like 5 - 10% of the power.
    - rafaelmn 2y ago
      Not sure - they had power/thermal envelope in desktop parts and no difference in performance AFAIK.
  - hajile 2y ago
    Laptops vastly outsell desktops, so this tradeoff means hurting the majority of your customers to please a small minority. Servers also care about perf/watt a LOT and they are the highest profit margin segment. Why would AMD choose a target that hurts the majority of their market unless there wasn't another good option available?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> 1. ARM is inherently more efficient than x86 CPUs in most tasks > 2. Nuvia and Apple are better CPU designers than AMD and Intel The third possibility is that they just pick a different point on the efficiency curve. You can double power consumption in exchange for a few percent higher performance, double it again for an even smaller increase. The max turbo on the i9 14900KS is 253 W. The power efficiency is bad. But it generally outperforms the M3, despite being on a significantly worse process node, because that's the trade off. AMD is only on a slightly worse process node and doesn't have to do anything so aggressive, but they'll also sell you whatever you want. The 8845HS and 8840U are basically the same chip, but former has around double the TDP. In exchange for that you get ~2% more single thread performance and ~15% more multi-thread performance. Whereas the performance per watt for the 8840U is nearly that of the M3, and the remaining difference is basically the process node.

aurareturn 2y ago
>The third possibility is that they just pick a different point on the efficiency curve. You can double power consumption in exchange for a few percent higher performance, double it again for an even smaller increase. This only makes sense if the Zen5 is actually faster in ST than the M3. In this case, the M3 is 1.24x faster and 3.4x more efficient in ST than Zen5. AMD's Zen5 chip is just straight up slower in any curve. >The max turbo on the i9 14900KS is 253 W. The power efficiency is bad. But it generally outperforms the M3, despite being on a significantly worse process node, because that's the trade off. It's not a trade off that Intel wants. The 14900KS runs at 253w (sometimes 400w+) because that's the only way Intel is able to stay remotely competitive at the very high end. An M3 Max will often match a 14900KS in performance using 5-10% of the power.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > This only makes sense if the Zen5 is actually faster in ST than the M3. In this case, the M3 is 1.24x faster and 3.4x more efficient in ST than Zen5. It makes sense if Zen5 is faster in MT, since that's when the CPUs will be power limited, and it is. For ST the performance generally isn't power-limited for either of them and then the M3 is on a newer process node. It also depends on the benchmark. For example, Zen5 is faster in ST on Cinebench R23. It's not obvious what's going on with R24, but it's a difference in the code rather than the hardware. The power numbers in that link also don't inspire a lot of confidence. They have two systems with the same CPU but one of them uses 119.3W and the other one uses 46.7W? Plausibly the OEMs could have configured them differently but that kind of throws out the entire premise of using the comparison to measure the efficiency of the CPUs. The number doesn't mean anything if the power consumption is being set as a configuration parameter by the OEM and the number of watts going to the display or a discrete GPU are an uncontrolled hidden variable. > It's not a trade off that Intel wants. It's the one they've always taken, even when they were unquestionably in the lead. They were selling up to 150W desktop processors in 2008, because people buy them, because they're faster. Now they have to do it just to be competitive because their process isn't as good, but the process is a different thing than the ISA or the design of the CPU.

jeswin 2y ago

In the same article, if you picked their R23 benchmarks the advantage vanishes in MT benchmarks; the 3nm M3 Max is actually behind 4nm Strix Point in efficiency.

aurareturn 2y ago
Cinebench R23 is hand optimized for X86. It uses Intel Embree engine underneath. That's why Cinebench R23 heavily favors x86.

kllrnohj 2y ago

Performance per watt is a bad metric. You want instead performance for a given power budget (eg, how much performance can I get at 15w? 30w? etc...) Otherwise you can trivially win 100% of performance/watt comparisons by just setting clocks to the limit of the lowest usable voltage level. For example compare the 7950X to the 7950X@65w using the officially supported eco mode option: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x-and-ryzen-5-7600x-review-retaking-the-high-end/20 https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x... Cinebench R23 MT: 7950X stock: 225 points/watt 7950X @ 65w eco mode: 482 points/watt Over 2x perf/watt improvement on the exact same chip, and a power efficiency that tops the charts, beating every laptop chip in that notebookcheck test by a large amount as well. And yet how many 7950x owners are using the 65w eco mode option? Probably none. Because perf/watt isn't actually meaningful. Rather it's how much performance can I get for a given power budget.

aurareturn 2y ago
>Performance per watt is a bad metric. It isn't. It needs context. Sure, you can get an Intel Celeron to have more perf/watt than an M1 if you give the Celeron low enough wattage. The key here is the absolute performance. In this case, both the M3 and the X Elite are not only significantly more efficient than both Zen4 and Zen5 in ST, they are also straight up faster while being more efficient.

kllrnohj 2y ago

> 1. ARM is inherently more efficient than x86 CPUs in most tasks I'm not sure how you're reaching the conclusion of "most tasks" when Cinebench R24 is the only test you used because R23, which doesn't agree, was rejected for hand-wavey nebulous reasons, and nothing else was tested. R24 is hardly a representative workload of "most tasks" nor is it claiming/trying to be.

hajile 2y ago
Anandtech shows[0] that M3 is massively ahead in integer performance, but slightly behind in float performance on Spec 2017. Integer workloads are by far the most common, but they tend to not scale to multiple cores very well. Most workloads that scale well across cores also benefit from big FP/SIMD units too. Put another way, the real issue with R24 is that it makes HX370 look better than it would look in more normal consumer workloads. [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21485/the-amd-ryzen-ai-hx-370...
- kllrnohj 2y ago
  > that M3 is massively ahead in integer performance The M3 is certainly an impressive chip, but note that it's only massively ahead in some of the int tests. It's not a consistent gap. > Integer workloads are by far the most common, but they tend to not scale to multiple cores very well. The HX370 does better than the Me in specint MT though. But regardless the anandtech results paint a much closer picture than the single R24 results that GP used as the basis of the efficiency thesis.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    The HX370 should win in SPECINT MT. It has 12 cores to the M3's 8 cores and it runs at significantly higher power. Compare HX370 SPECINT MT To an M3 Pro and let's see the results.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

sudosysgen 2y ago

Why are you comparing a chip optimized for performance with a chip optimized for efficiency? Take an Ultrabook Zen5, not the HX370.