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Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

447 points stephenheron | 2 comments | 25 Aug 25 21:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Hi,

My daily workhorse is a M1 Pro that I purchased on release date, It has been one of the best tech purchases I have made, even now it really deals with anything I throw at it. My daily work load is regularly having a Android emulator, iOS simulator and a number of Dockers containers running simultaneously and I never hear the fans, battery life has taken a bit of a hit but it is still very respectable.

I wanted a new personal laptop, and I was debating between a MacBook Air or going for a Framework 13 with Linux. I wanted to lean into learning something new so went with the Framework and I must admit I am regretting it a bit.

The M1 was released back in 2020 and I bought the Ryzen AI 340 which is one of the newest 2025 chips from AMD, so AMD has 5 years of extra development and I had expected them to get close to the M1 in terms of battery efficiency and thermals.

The Ryzen is using a TSMC N4P process compared to the older N5 process, I managed to find a TSMC press release showing the performance/efficiency gains from the newer process: “When compared to N5, N4P offers users a reported +11% performance boost or a 22% reduction in power consumption. Beyond that, N4P can offer users a 6% increase in transistor density over N5”

I am sorely disappointed, using the Framework feels like using an older Intel based Mac. If I open too many tabs in Chrome I can feel the bottom of the laptop getting hot, open a YouTube video and the fans will often spin up.

Why haven’t AMD/Intel been able to catch up? Is x86 just not able to keep up with the ARM architecture? When can we expect a x86 laptop chip to match the M1 in efficiency/thermals?!

To be fair I haven’t tried Windows on the Framework yet it might be my Linux setup being inefficient.

Cheers, Stephen

Show context
blacksmith_tb ◴[25 Aug 25 23:27 UTC] No.45020465[source]▶
I considered getting a personal MBP (I have an M3 from work), but picked up a Framework 13 with the AMD 7 7840U. I have Pop!_OS on it, and while it isn't quite as impressive as the MBP, it is radically better than other Windows / Linux laptops I have used lately, battery life is quite good, ~5hr or so, not quite on par with the MBP but still good enough that I don't really have any complaints (and being able to up upgrade RAM / SSD / even mobo is worth some tradeoff to me, where my employers will just throw my MBP away in a few years).
replies(4): >>45020978 #>>45021113 #>>45022114 #>>45022791 #
bigmadshoe ◴[26 Aug 25 03:57 UTC] No.45022114[source]▶
5 hours seems a lot worse than the ~10 hours I get on my M4 Air.
replies(3): >>45022521 #>>45022670 #>>45027517 #
threatripper ◴[26 Aug 25 05:16 UTC] No.45022521[source]▶
I get like 3 hours on my MBP when I use it. MacBooks have better runtime only when they are mostly idle, not when you fully load them.
replies(2): >>45022602 #>>45022726 #
baq ◴[26 Aug 25 05:29 UTC] No.45022602[source]▶
Can confirm, when developing software (a big project at $JOB) getting 3h out of a M3 MBP is a good day. IDE, build, test and crowdstrike are all quite power hungry.
replies(2): >>45023010 #>>45023182 #
mbreese ◴[26 Aug 25 06:33 UTC] No.45023010[source]▶
I wonder how much of that is crowdstrike. At $LASTJOB my Mac was constantly chugging due to some mandated security software. Battery life on that computer was always horrible compared to a personal MB w/o it.
replies(1): >>45023222 #
1. yalok ◴[26 Aug 25 07:05 UTC] No.45023222{3}[source]▶
Exactly. Antiviruses are evil in this sense - crippling battery life significantly.

Wherever possible, I send “pkill -STOP” to all those processes, and stall them and thus save battery…

replies(1): >>45025390 #
2. mbreese ◴[26 Aug 25 12:05 UTC] No.45025390[source]▶
The firewall on that computer killed the battery (with repeated crashing). It also refused to work with a USB Ethernet adapter so I could only use wifi. It was clearly a product meant to check a security box, written by a company that knew nothing about Macs, bought by Enterprise Windows admins. It was incredibly frustrating. (The next version of MacOS moved firewalls away from in-kernel to extensions. I like to think it was my repeated crash logs that made the difference.)

I half wonder if that’s part of the issue with Windows PCs and their battery life. The OS requires so much extra monitoring just to protect itself that it ends up affecting performance and battery life significantly. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if this alone was the major performance boost Macs have over Windows laptops.