This isn't an apples to apples comparison like the author says, because the package power (37W) of the Ryzen is still quite a bit higher than the M1's. You can see it right there in the graph from Anandtech.
The 5800X is a beast of a CPU. The IPC improvements over the previous generation really are incredible. It's not surprising to me at all that it beats the M1 in several benchmarks. However, it's not the same class of device at all.
In the real world, there aren't many people making purchasing decision between an M1 Apple laptop or Mac Mini and an AMD 5800X desktop machine anyway. Still interesting to see the comparisons.
The leaked Geekbench results of AMD's upcoming 5800H laptop parts are about 85% of the M1's single core score and matching the M1's multi-core score. TDP is still higher than the M1, obviously, but AMD is also using a 7nm process while Apple got the jump on 5nm by buying exclusivity on TMSC's 5nm process through the end of the year.
I'm extremely impressed with the M1 and I'll be buying an Apple Silicon device as soon as they have something with 32GB or more of RAM. However, the sentiment that the M1 chip obliterates any and every desktop part on the market is getting kind of silly at this point.
However, the sentiment that the M1 chip obliterates any and every desktop part on the market is getting kind of silly at this point.
1. Nobody ever stated that. If anything, it was all of the Intel and AMD users who created that straw man. "See, it's slower than a 64-core Threadripper at 280 watts". No kidding.
2. The M1 is clearly not a desktop-class SoC nor was it intended to be. However, it's more than competitive with many desktop x86 processors that run faster and hotter while consuming much more power.
3. As a first attempt, the M1’s performance per watt is very impressive. Obviously the 5nm process helps but it's never one thing with Apple: it's the unified memory, the 8 instruction decoders (AMD and Intel max out at 4), and the integration of the 16-core Neural Engine, among other features.
Look, it doesn't have to work for everyone. Of course there are workloads where it's not going to be enough. That's fine. My personal workload requires 128GB of ram but I don't go around telling people 8GB laptops are pointless.
I don't think that's the point they were trying to make. I think they were saying that just because the OS has RAM compression doesn't mean it's like doubling the RAM on other operating systems, and that's even before you consider that those other operating systems have RAM compression too. Saying something is like having 16 GB of RAM when you can't actually use it as 16 GB of RAM deserves to be called out.
It's helpful, but it's nowhere near doubling your memory. Especially when you have an SSD to swap inactive data to, the benefit of compression is equivalent to adding something like 0-2GB of RAM.
> In the real world, there aren't many people making purchasing decision between an M1 Apple laptop or Mac Mini and an AMD 5800X desktop machine anyway
I have a 15 inch 2018 i9 MBP that's objectively a terrible device (throttling/keyboard).
With corona and WFH I'm weighing my options - right now everything is out of stock but early next year I'd be interested in building a desktop. My problem is the M1 is so good that if they do a 8 performance cores version for 16 inch MBP in spring there would literally be no point in having a desktop - I could have a single device that outperforms the desktop machine. Frankly I don't see why they couldn't offer a 13 inch varian with more cores - thermals are not a constraint.
Does Apple ever announce anything before the day it happens? This is the company that drops iOS, macOS, and M1 on developers the day they do the public.
I'm not sure where people are pulling all these Apple silicon timelines from, but I can guess :)
There’s not been leaks, but there’s no reason to believe that it won’t be coming any time soon. Hypothetically the latest it would come out is in first half of 2022, but I’d be surprised if it took that long for the 16 inch macbook pro.
Depends. If you go for the base model, yes. If you need more memory or a lot of fast storage or gobs of GPU horsepower or a lot of I/O, the 5800X will be definitely cheaper by a mile.
That being said, at the same config, the 5800X system would indeed only barely be cheaper.
Yep it's probably the first at this size and packaging that you can just hook up to a TV and replace a decent desktop computer with (like I did; goodbye late 2015 iMac 5K...).
> please keep in mind that for single-threaded tasks, a single core doesn’t consume all 95W TDP headroom of the CPU. Based on Anandtech’s analysis, a single 5800X core only consumes 17.3W at 4850 MHz
Yeah, that's irrelevant. One M1 core is not going to use its entire package power either, because there are other powered cores in there like the GPU.
Look at the chart again. One Ryzen core active, 37 watts total package power. It doesn't matter what the per core wattage is, because you can't get that one core without the package.
> One Ryzen core active, 37 watts total package power. It doesn't matter what the per core wattage is, because you can't get that one core without the package.
This is the desktop Zen 3 which is still using the 12nm I/O die. It uses more power as a result, which nobody really cares about on the desktop. The Ryzen laptops use a single die which is entirely 7nm and thereby less power with no corresponding reduction in performance.
Interestingly, the conclusion states the following:
> While M1 is indeed very powerful for its size, when comparing it to the high-end x86 desktop, it is still slower.
Okay, great. I'm not sure what to expect when you compare the lowest end first generation processor from Apple to one of the more high-end of the spectrum x86.
Edit: Forgot to mention how the power draw on the M1 is still significantly less; m1 with all cores @ 100% is ~20W whereas the x86 ryzen was at 17.3W for 1 one core
> To conclude that it performs better than the existing x86 CPUs, is a mistake.
True, no denying that. Exciting times in this market; I wonder how much better gen 2 of Apple's chips will be if the lowest end can do this.
The reason people are making these comparisons between CPUs that are basically in entirely separate market segments is because of apples marketing suggesting that the M1 beats everything, rather than just other low power CPUs, and people taking said marketing at face value.
Can you provide a link where they say it beats everything ?
Because on their marketing page they specifically compare it to laptops and refer to low-power use cases. I have never seen them compare it against HEDT platforms.
Here's the initial announcement video with a timestamp where they called it the "worlds fastest CPU core". They've very quickly stopped using that as the tagline, but it was part of their initial marketing push.
https://youtu.be/5AwdkGKmZ0I?t=529
True, the text on screen did have that phrase without qualifiers, but what he actually said is: “…when it comes to low-power silicon, our high-performance core is the world’s fastest CPU core.”
Well, not quite. They claimed that their own processor designs will beat everything. They made significantly less bold claims about the M1.
While obviously neither of us can predict exactly what they’re planning for the rest of the product line, I think it would be naive to assume they haven’t at least internally validated that they can improve performance above these entry level offerings. Otherwise they just axed almost their entire Mac brand, and quite likely the rest would falter before too long.
I think it's very naive to assume that the marketing department of a megacorporation isn't going to say anything to make more sales.
It's likely that no-one has validated anything when it comes to future tense comparisons.
Read all, believe nothing, especially don't believe the future predictions of someone trying to sell you a laptop today.
Apple has future M1 samples for sure, but they don't have future AMD samples to benchmark against, unless somehow Apple has done some industrial espionage...
In car terms, it's like Tesla trying to persuade someone not to buy a Porsche Taycan. Of course Tesla's going to say their battery lasts longer, even longer than the second generation Taycan no-one has seen that's coming out in a few more years.
> I think it's very naive to assume that the marketing department of a megacorporation isn't going to say anything to make more sales.
Huh? I was just saying the claim (whether it turns out to be true or not) wasn’t about only the M1, and that it’s more reasonable to assume that Apple is confident they can release something above their lowest range offerings.
> The reason people are making these comparisons between CPUs that are basically in entirely separate market segments is because of apples marketing suggesting that the M1 beats everything
I thought it was pretty clear they were talking about mobile with the m1.
I think we're seeing posts around desktop CPUs and AMDs upcoming chips because non-Apple people are concerned/annoyed, possible subconsciously, that Apple Silicon is within striking distance of being some of the best hardware out there. I'm not saying that Apple has earned that crown yet, but if they do, and it's only available on Apple machines, it will annoy a lot of power users who want the best.
>apples marketing suggesting that the M1 beats everything
Nope—Apple’s marketing never said that. Everything they said in their November 10, 2020 press release has been backed up by reviewers and testers. It's you guys that blew their claims out of proportion.
For example, there's no reason to disbelieve that the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro is up to 3x faster than the best-selling laptops (of the 9 months leading up to November 10, 2020) in it's class—13″ to 14″ laptops that cost around $1200.
Is there a popular PC desktop that cost $600-$699 that's faster than the Mac mini? I've already seen the M1 Mac mini discounted to $625…
From the Apple press release [0]:
And in MacBook Air, M1 is faster than the chips in 98 percent of PC laptops sold in the past year. [1]
And with M1, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is up to 3x faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its class. [2]
And when compared to the best-selling Windows desktop in its price range, the Mac mini is just one-tenth the size, yet delivers up to 5x faster performance. [3]
[1]: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM. Performance measured using select industry-standard benchmarks. PC configurations from publicly available sales data over the last 12 months. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
[2]: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production Intel Core i7-based PC systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics and the latest version of Windows 10 available at the time of testing. Best-selling system based on publicly available sales data over the last nine months. Tested with graphics-intensive workloads in commercial applications. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
[3]: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production Intel Core i5-based PC systems with Intel UHD Graphics 630 and the latest version of Windows 10 available at the time of testing. Best-selling system based on publicly available sales data over the last nine months. Tested with select industry-standard graphics benchmarks. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.
Of course it's more reasonable to compare it with other low power CPUs in laptops, and not desktop CPUs with 5x the TDP that cost as much as the mac mini before you even buy the rest of the PC, I agree with you on that - I'm just pointing out that people are making these comparisons because Apple themselves did it first.
I'm just pointing out that people are making these comparisons because Apple themselves did it first.
This is slightly disingenuous—I think most people know they meant the design of their cores are faster than any other core, GHz for GHz. They didn't say "the M1 is faster than any other processor out there".
The 5800X runs at 3.7 GHz, peaking at 4.8 GHz with all 8 cores.
The M1 runs at 3.2 GHz and 4 of the cores are low-power cores. Of course the 5800X is faster; this shouldn't be a surprise.
However, as the AnandTech review has pointed out with their benchmarks, if the M1 ran at the same speed as AMD's processors, the M1 would be faster. That's what Apple implied with the "world's fastest core" thing. Even now, the M1 has 8 vs. AMD's 4 instruction decoders, allowing it to process more instructions per clock cycle, with faster RAM.
They have cranked-up M1's in the lab running at faster speeds that they've benchmarked, so they know what they said is true--even if they can't say how they know yet.
The proper way to understand Apple-speak is "even though the M1 is an entry-level chip, it's more than competitive with Intel and AMD's newest chips at a fraction of the power and heat. Wait until we crank up the speed and add more performance cores in future products to see what they can really do."
>if the M1 ran at the same speed as AMD's processors, the M1 would be faster. That's what Apple implied with the "world's fastest core
That's a ridiculous claim. If the AMD cpu ran at 10Gz it would be even faster. Neither does because neither CPU is designed to run at those frequencies.
The M1 is an amazing CPU and it is extremely fast given its power consumption and the frequency it runs at, but a lot of the claims that run around are straight out of Apple Reality Distortion Field.
You might want to watch that video you’re spamming links to. Note the words immediately prior to what you quoted are: “when it comes to low power silicon”. Your entire narrative falls apart if you don’t quote like a creationist.
> But this device wasn't built for use cases where power consumption doesn't matter.
This makes less difference than you'd think, because power consumption matters all over. If you use too much power you get high temperatures and have to clock down to avoid overheating.
The core designs for desktops and laptops are basically the same. The desktops use more power because it allows them to hold higher clock speeds -- the base clock of the 4800U (8C, 10W) is 1.8GHz, the base clock of the 3945WX (12C, 280W) is 4.0GHz.
This is also why desktops and laptops have about the same single thread performance. Running a single core at full speed is within the laptop power budget.
I care how it compares to other products on the market for my use case. It doesn't matter what it's built for. This is a relevant comparison from that perspective.
That's cool, you shouldn't buy one if you care about portability. I personally love not being tethered to my desk, so I haven't really owned a desktop in a decade. The M1 for me was just so perfect I had to jump out and buy one!
What’s crazy is the 5800X destroys my ThreadRipper 1950X, with 35% better performance even on highly parallelized workloads! On the other hand, my Skylake 2600k CPU still trades blows with 2020 so-called “10nm” desktop processors.
yea its hard to compare, this makes sense as what is the most powerful cpu one can get no matter the power usage but there isn't anything close to M1 when it comes to high performance and long battery life. Even ryzen 4000 series laptops throttle a lot when on battery power while M1 performance doesn't change. I don't expect this to change with Zen 3 laptops either.
The 5800X is a beast of a CPU. The IPC improvements over the previous generation really are incredible. It's not surprising to me at all that it beats the M1 in several benchmarks. However, it's not the same class of device at all.