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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 | 4 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.804s | 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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kmlx ◴[12 Nov 20 08:55 UTC] No.25067856[source]▶
> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

as a power user I will not be touching anything apple ARM until all my hundreds of software apps are certified to work exactly the same as on x86_64. i will not rely on rosetta to take care of this. i need actual testing.

besides this, 8GB of RAM is how much a single instance of chrome uses. i run 3 chrome instances, 2 firefox and 2 safari. and this is just for web.

this could be a good time to jump the apple ship. it's pretty clear their focus is not their power users' focus.

as such i was looking into a lenovo thinkstation p340 tiny. you can configure it with 64gb ram and core i9 with 10 cores and 20 threads for less $$$ than what an underpowered 6 core mac mini is selling for.

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Aaargh20318 ◴[12 Nov 20 12:19 UTC] No.25069011[source]▶
> this could be a good time to jump the apple ship. it's pretty clear their focus is not their power users' focus.

Their focus is not on power users ? They just completed the first, small, step of the migration to ARM. They only updated the very low-end models, those who were never targeted at power users anyway, and we're seeing that their cheapest, lowest-end models are whooping the i9 MBPro's ass.

Sure, the features and RAM may not be there yet, but again, these are the low-end models. If we're seeing this level of performance out of an MBAir or Mini. I can't wait to see what the Mac Pro is going to be capable of.

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aeyes ◴[12 Nov 20 12:47 UTC] No.25069230[source]▶
They also updated the MacBook Pro so that is exactly the performance you are going to get for this generation.

The big screen model might give you more cores and RAM but IPC is going to be exactly the same.

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ralfd ◴[12 Nov 20 13:45 UTC] No.25069755[source]▶
The 13" MBP was never a pro "pro" model. I bet the big screen models next year will have more RAM and maybe an M2 chip.

> but IPC is going to be exactly the same.

I am not sure what you mean with this?

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aeyes ◴[12 Nov 20 15:05 UTC] No.25070612[source]▶
Its the same chip so single core performance is going to be the same, unless they raise the clock.
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1. valuearb ◴[12 Nov 20 17:04 UTC] No.25071867[source]▶
Why don’t you think the M2 will increase clock speed?

And the problem with the M1 isn’t performance, single core is already off the charts. The M2 is going to provide 32Gb and 64Gb systems with up to four thunderbolt/USB4 ports and support for dual 6K monitors.

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2. sudosysgen ◴[12 Nov 20 21:17 UTC] No.25075175[source]▶
I doubt that the M1 or M2 is going to have superior single core performance to the upcoming Zen4/5nm laptop chips.

Let alone multicore performance. Apple's core are also far behind in IO, 64GB of RAM and 4x Thunderbolt is less than what current gen laptop chips can do.

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3. valuearb ◴[12 Nov 20 22:31 UTC] No.25076096[source]▶
I agree that Zen4 should be comparable, but it also will cost 4X to make, and more to implement since it doesn’t include RAM.

The M1 is a system on a chip, with all the benefits and drawbacks of that including RAM and port limits.

The next releases will likely be A) a tweaked M1 for higher end PowerBooks with more RAM and ports and B) a desktop version with plenty of ports, significantly higher clock speeds, and off chip RAM.

I think there will always be faster CPUs out there, but not remotely near the M series in power per watt, and cost per power.

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4. sudosysgen ◴[13 Nov 20 06:06 UTC] No.25079418{3}[source]▶
Zen is also an SoC, but with off-chip memory, this brings other advantages.

Most importantly, Zen 4 is a chiplet design, so for the same amount of cores it will be cheaper to make than the M1 chip.

As for performance per watt, Renoir in low power configurations matches the A12. I would really doubt that a laptop Zen 4 on 5nm LPP wouldn't pass the M1/M2 in both performance and performance per watt, because Renoir is on 7nm with an older uArch and gets close.