Comparing Intel chips versus M chips

Gangster

Gangster

Gangster

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Hi,

I've not been up to date with tech but trying to gauge the differences (benchmark/real life) between an Intel chip and the M chips.

The marketing from Apple is obviously great, and I do like Apple products I am just trying to gauge whether or not to get a second hand iMac 27 or potentially a 27 studio/mac combination *if* the improvement is significant enough.

For example, I am trying to compare the 3.8GHz 8‑core 10th-generation Intel Core i7 versus M1, M2 etc... is there a good overall benchmark that will give me a pretty good idea of just how much quicker it is?

Also the older iMacs have different graphics cards, is there a good go to benchmark that will give me a rough ballpark estimation on the comparison.

I used to have a good idea with benchmarks years ago, but its been a while!

Thanks
 
ChrisD. said:
There really is very little reason to choose an Intel Mac over Apple Silicone if it's a Mac you want.
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Purely a price point e.g. 27'' iMac 2020 around £1,000 verus that same combo (not entirely fair compairson) but brand new would be £2150 (studio display and base mac mini with 8gb).
 
Gangster said:
Purely a price point e.g. 27'' iMac 2020 around £1,000 verus that same combo (not entirely fair compairson) but brand new would be £2150 (studio display and base mac mini with 8gb).
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Personally I wouldn't be spending a grand on deprecated* technology.

*perhaps a strong word, but for macOS, Intel is not far off.
 
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Gangster said:
It's the display that has got me hooked :D. What do you mean by not far off?
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I believe no new OS for Intel Macs this year, and no security updates from 2025. Do check on that though.

There are alternate 5k screens such as LG Ultrafine if you don't want to pay Apple Tax. TBH as nice as the Studio Display is, it's not exactly cheap and you can get perfectly decent 4K monitors for under £500.
 
ChrisD. said:
I believe no new OS for Intel Macs this year, and no security updates from 2025. Do check on that though.

There are alternate 5k screens such as LG Ultrafine if you don't want to pay Apple Tax. TBH as nice as the Studio Display is, it's not exactly cheap and you can get perfectly decent 4K monitors for under £500.
Click to expand...

Oh I see, thanks for the heads up.

I've done some research on the whole 4k monitor thing for Apple but it feels like a headache with the scaling... some saying it impacts performance, some saying it isn't as clear as 'retina' and so on.

AFAIK I could get a 27'' 4K and display it as 1920x1080 for the x2 scaling that MacOS does - would that give the quality I am after with the downside of less screen real estate?

Another issue is no monitors are glass covered, which is what I think helps the displays have such great depth.
 
If you are set on the Apple display, not much beats it at all. And if you don't get an iMac, you don't need to change your screen if you want to upgrade the computer in X years.
 
As others have said, you would be better offer with a Silicon Mac unless you have specific reasons for an intel, ie - bootcamp, hardware, software etc.
Saying that, given the fact that the majority of Mac's offer none to very little in upgradability, i wouldn't be going for a base spec of any (Silicon) Mac and would spec RAM and storage upgrades.

ChrisD. said:
I believe no new OS for Intel Macs this year, and no security updates from 2025. Do check on that though.
Click to expand...
Sonoma 14 will be available for 8th gen Intel Mac's, albeit lacking a few 'Silicon only' features and if we're lucky then there may be another major next year for Intel systems given they were still selling them a few Intel models up until this year. I doubt we'll see two or more majors for Intel Mac's though.
 
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Gangster said:
Hi,

I've not been up to date with tech but trying to gauge the differences (benchmark/real life) between an Intel chip and the M chips.

The marketing from Apple is obviously great, and I do like Apple products I am just trying to gauge whether or not to get a second hand iMac 27 or potentially a 27 studio/mac combination *if* the improvement is significant enough.

For example, I am trying to compare the 3.8GHz 8‑core 10th-generation Intel Core i7 versus M1, M2 etc... is there a good overall benchmark that will give me a pretty good idea of just how much quicker it is?

Also the older iMacs have different graphics cards, is there a good go to benchmark that will give me a rough ballpark estimation on the comparison.

I used to have a good idea with benchmarks years ago, but its been a while!

Thanks
Click to expand...
Pretty much theres only two parts here
  1. The m1/m2 chips have such good performance verses intel because they are not thermal throttling all the time, which is a nice change.
  2. I would advise against getting an intel MacBook as I expect real support other than security updates to be ending soon.
 
M1 is like a million leagues ahead of Intel. I don't understate things when I say this is the biggest transformation on the Mac in two decades.

I've had my M1 Pro for almost two years, I've heard the fan come on once in that time. I use it for software engineering and web development, it is an absolute screamer. Just wish I'd bought more RAM but you can now, that's the only negative is that my applications eat RAM but that isn't the Mac's fault.

Do not buy Intel.
 
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