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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: 0.213s | 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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pengaru ◴[26 Aug 25 00:31 UTC] No.45020864[source]▶
My M1 Macbook Pro I used at work for several months until the Ubuntu Ryzen 7 7840U P14s w/32GB RAM arrived didn't seem particularly amazing.

The only real annoying thing I've found with the P14s is the Crowdstrike junk killing battery life when it pins several cores at 100% for an hour. That never happened in MacOS. These are corporate managed devices I have no say in, and the Ubuntu flavor of the corporate malware is obviously far worse implemented in terms of efficiency and impact on battery life.

I recently built myself a 7970X Threadripper and it's quite good perf/$ even for a Threadripper. If you build a gaming-oriented 16c ryzen the perf/$ is ridiculously good.

No personal experience here with Frameworks, but I'm pretty sure Jon Blow had a modern Framework laptop he was ranting a bunch about on his coding live streams. I don't have the impression that Framework should be held as the optimal performing x86 laptop vendor.

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1. pdimitar ◴[28 Aug 25 12:24 UTC] No.45051304[source]▶
Can you share your entire Threadripper configuration, please? I am looking to build a Linux workstation in the next 12-18 months and started weighing my options.

Weirdly, the choice pool seems to have shrunken in the last few years.