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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 | 2 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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simonh ◴[12 Nov 20 07:37 UTC] No.25067435[source]▶
It may be possible the variations are due to differences in the thermal environment when the tests were conducted. I would expect the pro and mini to beat the air as they should have better thermals, but that may only show up over longer term tests and environmental factors could win out in shorter tests. Just a theory.
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joking ◴[12 Nov 20 09:20 UTC] No.25068009[source]▶
if I recall correctly, the geekbench score does run on small bursts and it's designed to find the peak performance without taking the thermal limitations in account.
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1. GeekyBear ◴[12 Nov 20 12:59 UTC] No.25069347[source]▶
SPEC, on the other hand, takes hours to run.

Of course the iPhone chip isn't as beefy as the M1, but the results still speak for themselves.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...

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2. vaxman ◴[15 Nov 20 10:38 UTC] No.25100016[source]▶
Apple has since explained that M1s are slightly different between the Air, Pro and Mini, accounting for the different thermal chassis. (In the case of the Pro they enable an 8th GPU core.) It sounds like they are three different chips rather than the same chip in different configurations --I think he said that in marketing speak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lK0ySxQyrs

Apple makes it clearer that in the real world, these machines are only going to offer their incredible performance on Metal, iPad/iPhone apps and for any Mac apps that happen to have been ported over to M1 by their developers (using Xcode). These machines will only offer similar performance to existing Intel Macs when running existing Intel Mac apps because the incredible performance will be reserved for Apple's Rosetta2 software to make those unmodified apps compatible.

But what went unsaid, except during the part where they say they 'learned from their experience in the past processor transitions', is that by introducing the chip at the low-end of the lineup first, they create a market for the (few remaining relevant) Mac developers to invest in porting their code over to ARM and likewise, because these new machines run iPad apps at full speed on upto 6K displays, there is incentive for the iPad/iOS-only devs to expand the functionality beyond what their wares can do on a tablet/phone. (Any Mac dev that drags their feet porting may find that there are 50 iPad apps that now run fullscreen performing 75% of their functionality, costing them sales in the big volume accounts where they buy licenses by the thousands.) Meanwhile, the type of users who can get by with two USB ports, 16GB of RAM and a single external monitor probably don't run many third-party Mac apps and are going to have an awesome experience with the iPad apps and Apple's native apps.