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Apple M1 Performance

Soldato
Joined
25 Apr 2007
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5,255
I’m interested to find how the Apple M1 compares to the latest Intel and Ryzen processors. However, there doesn’t seem to be any/many reviews where the M1 is directly compared across a variety of benchmarks. Sure there are plenty of cinebench scores showing good single and multi core performance, but not much else.

I believe that M1’s low power consumption is the big differentiator which makes it perfect for laptops, but how does it compare against the best of AMD and Intel, either desktop or mobile versions?

There’s so much hype about the Apple M1 from Apple fans and Youtubers that it’s impossible to be sure if the hype is earned or not.

What are the opinions of this forum, especially in light of rumoured M1X / M2 chips arriving later this year, with more cores and better graphics performance?
 
Soldato
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The M1 is an excellent daily chip for laptops, but it has limited IO options and while it is an 8 core CPU, it’s a big little setup, so from memory 4 big 4 little.

It’ll still be great for lots of lighter work like photo editing, but if you’re looking to chew through 4K footage, the latest Ryzen CPUs will be better, and pretty much any of the higher end desktop CPUs will outperform it.


On a thin and light laptop though? Doesn’t get any better.
 
Soldato
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Soldato
Joined
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Sunny Sussex
classic Intel. Comparing the 10w M1 against the 30w 1185g7 lol, Intel gotta try to somehow seem relevant. The M1 devices probably have more than double the battery life than an 1185g7 laptop

Also, completely different operating system - we all know office is gimped on a MacBook and it’s only just been developed for the M1.
 
Soldato
OP
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classic Intel. Comparing the 10w M1 against the 30w 1185g7 lol, Intel gotta try to somehow seem relevant. The M1 devices probably have more than double the battery life than an 1185g7 laptop

This is what I mean about the hype making it difficult to know exactly how fast the M1 is. On the one hand, there are people claiming the M1 chews through various operations several times faster than some fairly serious Intel processors and then there are comparisons like this one showing that a 30w Intel destroys an M1.
 

Deleted member 209350

D

Deleted member 209350

Here is a comparison between the latest M1 vs Ryzen's last gen 4800U cpu

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-amd_ryzen_7_4800u-1142

As expected, the single core on M1 is slightly faster with the 4800U taking the multicore crown (Cinebench R23). It depends what you'll be using it for mainly, but you can decide from there.

Also I havent bothered to include any Intel processors because they're not worth getting atm
 
Associate
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22 Jun 2018
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Doon the watah ... Scotland
It’s not really possible to to directly compare easily.

If you were to think of it like cars, the low power chips are small cars. They’ll do all the daily tasks you need and build up to reach 70mph motorway speed fine, but not go much past it.

the M1 would be a small car highly tuned and refined so that it could nip around very very quickly and hit 70mph in no time but top out there and not have much performance past it. Ie, do daily tasks very very well.

then the full fat intel and AMD chips are the big engined saloons. will maybe not hit 70mph as fast as the M1, but they will go way past 70 and keep going, but use more fuel to do so.

the m1x / m2 chips I think could be like well tuned saloon cars… bmw M5 Audi RS6 etc
 
Associate
Joined
31 Dec 2011
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799
I am interested in seeing how the new m1X pans out, I need to replace my macbook pro next year (currently has a haswell i7 in it) for all my xcode and android studio dev, wanting to go Arm as don't fancy spending 2k on a chip that will lose support over the next few years. Hoping it can run windows in a VM reasonably as well.
 
Soldato
Joined
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3,619
At the moment, normal Windows (as opposed to ARM versions) can’t be run in VMs on a M1 chip. I hope this situation changes soon but I imagine it’s not an easy task.
 
Associate
Joined
31 Dec 2011
Posts
799
At the moment, normal Windows (as opposed to ARM versions) can’t be run in VMs on a M1 chip. I hope this situation changes soon but I imagine it’s not an easy task.

Yes I thought that might be the case, in the past I have used fusion and parrallels, I see Parrallels has support for the Arm version, but I suspect it wont run visual studio etc very well. Tried to avoid having a windows Laptop as the macbook has done everything I need and I don't want to have 2 machines.
 
Associate
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31 Dec 2011
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799
Which is why I bought a 16" MBP before they stop making Intel Macs...
Fair enough. My concern though is that they drop intel in a few years. Not completely obviously but the odd feature etc and more push with reliance for arm within xcode and app dev. Just can't take that risk. Nice machine though those 16 inch pros
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Mar 2012
Posts
47,380
Location
ARC-L1, Stanton System
I’m interested to find how the Apple M1 compares to the latest Intel and Ryzen processors. However, there doesn’t seem to be any/many reviews where the M1 is directly compared across a variety of benchmarks. Sure there are plenty of cinebench scores showing good single and multi core performance, but not much else.

I believe that M1’s low power consumption is the big differentiator which makes it perfect for laptops, but how does it compare against the best of AMD and Intel, either desktop or mobile versions?

There’s so much hype about the Apple M1 from Apple fans and Youtubers that it’s impossible to be sure if the hype is earned or not.

What are the opinions of this forum, especially in light of rumoured M1X / M2 chips arriving later this year, with more cores and better graphics performance?

That's easy.

The M1 chips are faster per core than Intel but Zen 3 is faster than the M1.

Not to take anything away from Apple, its impressive, but its says more about Intel than it does about Apple, Intel are falling behind.

I'm running at 4.85Ghz here, the 1165G7 4.7Ghz
At 5Ghz Zen 3 scores over 1700.
Add 15% to this when Zen3D hits, so around ~1900.

xxKkiMR.png
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
20 Jul 2005
Posts
775
Location
Earth
Very much waiting for the m1x on the 16 inch model.

Just started a new job and currently convincing them to let me wait a couple of months before ordering my laptop.
 
Associate
Joined
14 Aug 2017
Posts
1,194
My M1 Air has enough grunt to do dev work, and with a displaylink dock added it can drive multiple screens. It’s capable and smooth.

It is not, however, as fast as the 5950x workstation under the desk, the test run on our current product is significantly slower on the air, which is to be expected as it has far fewer cores.

It’s a lot quieter though!
 
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