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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 6 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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maz1b ◴[12 Nov 20 02:16 UTC] No.25065664[source]▶
This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years.

For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and not to mention the fan noise.

Looking forward to a version from Apple that is made for actual professionals, but I imagine these introductory M1 based devices are going to be great for the vast majority of people.

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Bud ◴[12 Nov 20 03:40 UTC] No.25066161[source]▶
It's not just outperforming the MacBook Pro. It's also blowing away the current 2020 top-end iMac, which has a 10-core Intel i9.

And it's doing this while using more than an order of magnitude less power (10W vs. a TDP of 125W for that Intel part).

That's stunning.

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1. xvector ◴[12 Nov 20 03:48 UTC] No.25066209[source]▶
It’s also outperforming the 5950X in single core. Incredible!
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2. Bud ◴[12 Nov 20 03:52 UTC] No.25066240[source]▶
Yeah, and doing this without a fan. It's almost like Apple is rubbing Intel's face in it for sport. It's not even fair.
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3. jeswin ◴[12 Nov 20 04:34 UTC] No.25066482[source]▶
But did the test run long enough to need the fan, and what was the ambient temperature?

The fanless Intel Core-M CPUs could post excellent benchmark scores (for its time). But if you give it a lengthy compile task, it'll slow down dramatically.

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4. lostlogin ◴[12 Nov 20 04:56 UTC] No.25066595{3}[source]▶
Aren’t they both running the same test?

Or are you saying that the test needs to run for way longer to be fair?

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5. Phrodo_00 ◴[12 Nov 20 05:40 UTC] No.25066828{4}[source]▶
> Or are you saying that the test needs to run for way longer to be fair?

Yes, the main computing constraint of mobile devices is heat management (This doesn't really reflect the CPU but the complete device. Putting the CPU in a more ideal setup like a traditional desktop or water cooling will improve the CPU's performance in longer tasks)

6. kllrnohj ◴[12 Nov 20 14:35 UTC] No.25070286[source]▶
The 5950X in a single core load only uses around 18w. Drop 200mhz off of the top end boost frequency and it drops to 11w.

Short duration single core workloads workout a fan is trivial even for CPUs that aren't trying to do so.