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

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1080 points antipaul | 5 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mcintyre1994 ◴[12 Nov 20 07:21 UTC] No.25067338[source]▶
> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency.

> The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067.

> Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the MacBook Air , it has a 3.2GHz base frequency.

So single core we have: Air 1687, Mini 1682, Pro 1714

And multi core we have: Air 7433, Mini 7067, Pro 6802

I’m not sure what to make of these scores, but it seems wrong that the Mini and Pro significantly underperform the Air in multi core. I find it hard to imagine this benchmark is going to be representative of actual usage given the way the products are positioned, which makes it hard to know how seriously to take the comparisons to other products too.

> When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the MacBook Air outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.

This seems a bit odd too - the A14 iPad Air outperforms all iPad Pro devices?

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throwaway4good ◴[12 Nov 20 08:30 UTC] No.25067719[source]▶
The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes.

Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

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adrian_b ◴[12 Nov 20 09:08 UTC] No.25067936[source]▶
As expected, the Apple M1 is a little faster than Inter Tiger Lake in single-thread applications, but it is a little slower than AMD Renoir in multi-threaded applications.

So for things like software development where you compile frequently your projects, the new Apple computers are a little slower than similar computers with AMD CPUs.

So even when taking only CPU performance into consideration, there are reasons to choose other computers than those with Apple Silicon, depending on what you want to do.

Of course, nobody will decide to buy or not buy products with "Apple Silicon" based on their performance.

Those who want to use Apple software will buy Apple products, those who do not want to use Apple software will not buy Apple products, like until now, regardless which have better performance.

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1. Tepix ◴[12 Nov 20 09:12 UTC] No.25067965[source]▶
> Of course, nobody will decide to buy or not buy products with "Apple Silicon" based on their performance.

That's exactly the reason why you would chose Apple Silicon right now where you can choose between Intel and Apple SoC. There are of course other reasons such as battery life and price.

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2. AnthonyMouse ◴[12 Nov 20 14:10 UTC] No.25069980[source]▶
Not really. Right now Apple Silicon would be translating most code and therefore be slower and possibly have worse battery life. By the time that isn't true anymore, the option of buying Intel from Apple will be gone and your choices will be ARM from Apple or a PC with Intel/AMD.

The x64 options from Apple are also uncompetitive with existing PCs already because they're using Intel processors when AMD's are faster.

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3. greedo ◴[12 Nov 20 19:12 UTC] No.25073628[source]▶
Most code? I would imagine that most code run on Apple laptops today would start with Safari. And then Slack, some IDEs, etc etc. These will all get ported extremely fast if they haven't already been.

There will be a long tail of edge case software that runs in emulation, but that won't affect the majority of users.

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4. AnthonyMouse ◴[12 Nov 20 20:16 UTC] No.25074338{3}[source]▶
That's not how the long tail works. Any given esoteric piece of software won't be used by very many people, but very many people will use some esoteric piece of software.

You also have the problem with proprietary software that even if a port exists, it's not the version you have an existing license for, and you may not be able to afford a new laptop and all new software at the same time.

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5. greedo ◴[12 Nov 20 20:50 UTC] No.25074811{4}[source]▶
That's partially correct, and partially wrong. Long tail means that few people will buy/use a particular software package, but that if you have lots of such packages, you can make money. In the case of Apple Silicon, if there's an "esoteric" package, by definition it's only used by a small number of people.