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Your Intel mac was stuck in the past while everyone paying attention on PCs were already enjoying TSMC 7nm silicon in the form of AMD Zen processors. Apple Sil

Your Intel mac was stuck in the past while everyone paying attention on PCs were already enjoying TSMC 7nm silicon in the form of AMD Zen processors. Apple Silicon macs are far less impressive if you came from an 8c/16t Ryzen 7 laptop. Especially if you consider the Apple parts are consistently enjoying the next best TSMC node vs. AMD (e.g. 5nm (M1) vs. 7nm (Zen2)) What's _really_ impressive is how badly Intel fell behind and TSMC has been absolutely killing it.

gigatexal 1y ago
that ryzen laptop chip perform it'll just do it at a higher perf/watt than the apple chip will... and on a laptop that's a key metric.
- tracker1 1y ago
  And 20% or so of that difference is purely the fab node difference, not anything to do with the chip design itself. Strix Halo is a much better comparison, though Apple's M4 models do very well against it often besting it at the most expensive end. On the flip side, if you look at servers... Compare a 128+core AMD server CPU vs a large core ARM option and AMD perf/watt is much better.
  - gigatexal 1y ago
    Wait are you saying the diff in perf per watt from apple arm to x86 is purely on fab leading edge ness?
    - Jensson 1y ago
      Basically yeah, if you compare CPU from same fab then its basically the same. Its just Apple buys next gen fabs while AMD and intel has to be on last gen, so the M computers people compare are always one fab gen ahead. It has very little to do with CPU architecture. They do have some cool stuff about their CPU, but the thing most laud them for has to do with fabs.
      - gigatexal 1y ago
        Man that either hella discounts all the amazing work Apple’s CPU engineers are doing or hyping up what AMD’s have done. Idk
        tracker1 1y ago
        I wouldn't discount what Apple has done... they've created and integrated some really good niche stuff in their CPUs to do more than typical ARM designs. The graphics cores are pretty good in their own right even. Not to mention the OS/Software integration including accelerated x86 and unified memory usage in practice. AMD has done a LOT for parallelization and their server options are impressive... I mean, you're still talking 500W+ in total load, but that's across 128+ cores. Strix Halo scaling goes down impressively to the ~10-15W range under common usage, not as low as Apple does under similar loads but impressive in its own way.
        Jensson 1y ago
        Isn't it you who is hyping up Apple here when you don't even compare the two using similar architecture? Compare a 5nm AMD laptop low power cpu to Apple M1 and the M1 no longer looks that much better at all.
        gigatexal 1y ago
        Why are we talking about the M1 that came out eons (in computer time) ago? That the M1 is a benchmark is just sad when the M4 is running circles around competing x86 processors and the M5 is on the horizon which who knows what that has in store.
      - addaon 1y ago
        There's another difference -- willingness to actually pay for silicon. The M1 Max is a 432 mm^2 laptop chip built on a 5 nm process. Contrast that to AMD's "high end" Ryzen 7 8845HS at 178 mm^2 on a 4 nm process. Even the M1 Pro at 245 mm^2 is bigger than this. More area means not just more peak performance, but the ability to use wider paths at lower speeds to maintain performance at lower power. 432 mm^2 is friggin' huge for a laptop part, and it's really hard to compete with what that can do on any metric besides price.
jeswin 1y ago
> Your Intel mac was stuck in the past while everyone paying attention on PCs were already enjoying TSMC 7nm silicon in the form of AMD Zen processors. This is basically it. Coming from dated Intel CPUs, Mac users got a shockingly good upgrade when the M-series computers were released. That amplified Apple's claims of Macs being the fastest computers, even when some key metrics (such as disk performance) were significantly behind PC parts in reality. Yes, they're still better in performance/watt - but the node difference largely explains it like you were saying.

gigatexal 1y ago

that ryzen laptop chip perform it'll just do it at a higher perf/watt than the apple chip will... and on a laptop that's a key metric.

tracker1 1y ago
And 20% or so of that difference is purely the fab node difference, not anything to do with the chip design itself. Strix Halo is a much better comparison, though Apple's M4 models do very well against it often besting it at the most expensive end. On the flip side, if you look at servers... Compare a 128+core AMD server CPU vs a large core ARM option and AMD perf/watt is much better.
- gigatexal 1y ago
  Wait are you saying the diff in perf per watt from apple arm to x86 is purely on fab leading edge ness?
  - Jensson 1y ago
    Basically yeah, if you compare CPU from same fab then its basically the same. Its just Apple buys next gen fabs while AMD and intel has to be on last gen, so the M computers people compare are always one fab gen ahead. It has very little to do with CPU architecture. They do have some cool stuff about their CPU, but the thing most laud them for has to do with fabs.
    - gigatexal 1y ago
      Man that either hella discounts all the amazing work Apple’s CPU engineers are doing or hyping up what AMD’s have done. Idk
      - tracker1 1y ago
        I wouldn't discount what Apple has done... they've created and integrated some really good niche stuff in their CPUs to do more than typical ARM designs. The graphics cores are pretty good in their own right even. Not to mention the OS/Software integration including accelerated x86 and unified memory usage in practice. AMD has done a LOT for parallelization and their server options are impressive... I mean, you're still talking 500W+ in total load, but that's across 128+ cores. Strix Halo scaling goes down impressively to the ~10-15W range under common usage, not as low as Apple does under similar loads but impressive in its own way.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        Isn't it you who is hyping up Apple here when you don't even compare the two using similar architecture? Compare a 5nm AMD laptop low power cpu to Apple M1 and the M1 no longer looks that much better at all.
        gigatexal 1y ago
        Why are we talking about the M1 that came out eons (in computer time) ago? That the M1 is a benchmark is just sad when the M4 is running circles around competing x86 processors and the M5 is on the horizon which who knows what that has in store.
    - addaon 1y ago
      There's another difference -- willingness to actually pay for silicon. The M1 Max is a 432 mm^2 laptop chip built on a 5 nm process. Contrast that to AMD's "high end" Ryzen 7 8845HS at 178 mm^2 on a 4 nm process. Even the M1 Pro at 245 mm^2 is bigger than this. More area means not just more peak performance, but the ability to use wider paths at lower speeds to maintain performance at lower power. 432 mm^2 is friggin' huge for a laptop part, and it's really hard to compete with what that can do on any metric besides price.

jeswin 1y ago

> Your Intel mac was stuck in the past while everyone paying attention on PCs were already enjoying TSMC 7nm silicon in the form of AMD Zen processors. This is basically it. Coming from dated Intel CPUs, Mac users got a shockingly good upgrade when the M-series computers were released. That amplified Apple's claims of Macs being the fastest computers, even when some key metrics (such as disk performance) were significantly behind PC parts in reality. Yes, they're still better in performance/watt - but the node difference largely explains it like you were saying.