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

447 points stephenheron | 1 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

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fafhnir ◴[26 Aug 25 10:53 UTC] No.45024834[source]▶
I have the same experience here with my MacBook Air M1 from 2020 with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. After three years, I upgraded to a MacBook Pro with M3 Pro, 36GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage. I use this as my main machine with 2 displays attached via a TB4 dock.

I'm working in IT and I get all new machines for our company over my desk to check them, and I observed the exact same points as the OP.

The new machines are either fast and loud and hot and with poor battery life, or they are slow and "warm" and have moderate battery life.

But I had no business laptop yet, ARM, AMD, or Intel, which can even compete with the M1 Air, not to speak of the M3 Pro! Not to speak about all the issues with crappy Lenovo docks, etc.

It doesn’t matter if I install Linux or Windows. The funny point is that some of my colleagues have ordered a MacBook Air or Pro and use their Windows or Linux and a virtual machine via Parallels.

Think about it: Windows 11 or Linux in a VM is even faster, snappier, more silent, and has even longer battery life than these systems native on a business machine from Lenovo, HP, or Dell.

Well, your mileage may vary, but IMHO there is no alternative to a Mac nowadays, even if you want to use Linux or Windows.

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alt227 ◴[26 Aug 25 15:11 UTC] No.45027708[source]▶
> there is no alternative to a Mac nowadays

I need to point this out all the time these days it seems, but this opinion is only valid if all you use is a laptop and all you care about is single core perfomance.

The computing world is far bigger than just laptops.

Big music/3d design/video editing production suites etc still benefit much more from having workstation PCs with higher PCI bandwidth, more lanes for multiple SSDs and GPUs, and high level multicore processing performance which cannot be matched by Apple silicon.

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shermantanktop ◴[26 Aug 25 15:54 UTC] No.45028281[source]▶
Doesn’t Apple have significant market share for pro music and video editing?

For studio movies, render farms are usually Linux but I think many workstation tasks are done on Apple machines. Or is that no longer true?

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1. dr_kiszonka ◴[27 Aug 25 00:44 UTC] No.45034144{3}[source]▶
> Doesn't Apple have significant market share for pro music and video editing?

I thought so too, but I see a lot more people using non-Apple systems for music production than I expected. I don't know whether I was too influenced by Apple's marketing (computers for creators) or something has changed.