Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro

[theotherphil]

Compute is not bad....results of the Apple Silicon MBP vs my 2019 Quad Core I7

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2019) vs MacBookPro17,1 - Geekbench

browser.geekbench.com

 

[davidjytang]

Tired of this “fanless so it is not going to work” talk.

Does the iPad Pro have any fan? Does it work flawlessly? I think it does. People are still thinking with the “Intel” mind. It’s gone, get used to it. This is next gen.

I can’t wait for my base MacBook Air. I wanted to keep it at the base price exclusively and I will be enjoying it if this is the case especially after my 2019 MacBook Air. It stutters even when scrolling a web page...

With prolonged use on intensive apps, iPad Pro can still thermal throttle.
I agree that with new processor it would be harder to thermal throttle.
However thermal throttling is still possible and that is reason Apple still put fans in MacBook Pro 13in M1.

As for MacBook Air, it is aimed for lighter use anyway. Fanless for lighter usage I guess that's the way Apple envisioned their lineup.

 

[thunng8]

While I will say I'm impressed by the new processor, I will say I'm not impressed by the obliviousness of the stupid people who live and breath Apple. Sure, Intel processors suck, but AMD does not. Here is a the CHEAPEST of AMDs newest processor, the Ryzen 5600x, which only has 6 cores compared to the M1 with 8 cores. It beats the M1 processor in both single core and multicore most of the time.
I'll admit that Intel is crap though. Here is there best consumer card and it doesn't come close to the M1 or the 5600x.
Anyways, don't be dumb and say something before you can prove it.

Those are desktop processors - and I will also bet most of those entries are from enthusiasts that have overclocked their CPUs. Nomimal TDP is 65W but overclocked would be north of 100W compared to 10W or so in the fanless macbook air.

 

[ani4ani]

So given none of these benchmarks are not even twice as fast as any Intel Mac, which PC were they referencing that meant the Air was “more than three times faster” than the best selling PC in its class?

 

[SWAON]

What about the Mac Mini Benchmarks? Any info on that?

 

[Johnny907]

Yeah, imagine how this will perform once they pair the M2 with a chipset that doesn’t suck and can support more than 2 TB3 ports and only a single external monitor.
See you in a year, Apple.

 

[thedocbwarren]

Those are desktop processors - and I will also bet most of those entries are from enthusiasts that have overclocked their CPUs. Nomimal TDP is 65W but overclocked would be north of 100W compared to 10W or so in the fanless macbook air.

Thins sounds amazing, however, how was Geekbench run? under emulation or natively? And given that is it functioning as expected and comparable?

 

[ErikGrim]

That's what I'm waiting on. I've always been a desktop person, and I have had three iMacs since 2004. Eagerly awaiting number four.

This is making my iMac 2020 cry

 

[theotherphil]

For those of us who don't bother and have never bothered purchasing computers with iGPUs, because we need to run specific gfx intensive apps for our jobs, it matters to us. If it doesn't matter to you, that's awesome. Sorry but, I'm from the older generation, still reminiscing of the days when Apple put the "pro" moniker on one of their machines, it actually meant something.

So you wouldn't buy a base level machine, such as those announced yesterday then? Gotcha

 

[radus]

i7-1185G7 ( 4-Core )

up to
Single-Core 1610
Multi-Core 6113

Thunderbolt 4, PCIE 4,

i7-1185G7 - Geekbench 5 CPU Search - Geekbench

browser.geekbench.com

 

[CarlJ]

Apple seldom does benchmarks, and why should they? Undersell it and let the whole internet go nuts when they find out how much they sandbagged expectations.

Very much this. When people were kicking around theories for what the first machines would be, I kept saying they’re likely do do the low-end machines first, like the Air, and either deliver crazy battery life, or substantially better performance out of a “low-end” machine (all the while working in the background to perfect their more advanced chips for the more complicated target of high-end GPUs and GPUs). I didn't really expect them to so thoroughly do both.

This will play very well in the coming weeks and months when people realize just how powerful these “low end” machines are. I expect this also isn’t anything like the upper reach of what they have on the roadmap.

And, since it’s all in-house (except for the fans), and they have more money than most small nations, they can throw resources at it to get whatever amount of performance they feel fits their needs. They no longer er have to go ask Intel to please consider their requests. If the machine designers want some special feature, they now only have to convince Tim to ask the chip designers to work on it.

 

[iZac]

Why would manufacturers drop x86?

Are there any comparable non-Apple ARM chips?

Unfortunately there are no ARM based alternatives available for them (at least none that compete with what Apple’s doing, or even with what Intel or AMD are doing). And none of them have the in-house CPU design capability that Apple does.

You're totally right, this may show Apple to be way ahead of either x86 or competing ARM architectures, but I feel like Qualcomm could more easily ramp up higher wattage ARM processors than Intel can get out of its current rut.

 

[mr_jomo]

Compute is not bad....results of the Apple Silicon MBP vs my 2019 Quad Core I7

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2019) vs MacBookPro17,1 - Geekbench

browser.geekbench.com

and neither is the Air ditto:

MacBookAir10,1 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a MacBookAir10,1 with an Apple Silicon processor.

browser.geekbench.com

 

[Shanpdx]

So given none of these benchmarks are not even twice as fast as any Intel Mac, which PC were they referencing that meant the Air was “more than three times faster” than the best selling PC in its class?

comparison between the 10W/15W/28W TDP laptop CPUs, not comparing with the Desktop CPUs

 

[Machspeed007]

So, what's the likely catch?

At this point: software.
I sure hope the transition is easier on that front this time around.

 

[lympero]

Still looks like a device designed for users who want to consume content rather than producing. And in that case, why don’t you just buy an iPad which is more portable, lighter, has a stylus etc etc

 

[CaTOAGU]

Will it run Crysis?

No.

I heard a tale once of someone that tried to build a rig to run Crysis. One hundred fibre linked machines, each liquid nitrogen cooled, directly hooked up to the main electricity distribution grid. When they turned it on it plunged the city of Chicago into darkness, which was strange because they didn’t live in Chicago. It still wasn’t enough to run Crysis. Though I did hear they managed to sustain 10 chrome tabs without too much trouble.

 

[tadzooks]

How is it that in the benchmarks shown, the air is faster than the pro which has a fan? The air was like 7433 and the pro was less at 6433 with 16Gb

 

[ani4ani]

comparison between the 10W/15W/28W TDP laptop CPUs, not comparing with the Desktop CPUs

I understand that, but Apple claimed the Air was more than 3x faster than the best selling pc laptop in the Air’s class. I would guess that would be a Dell XPS or similar?

 

[CalMin]

Thins sounds amazing, however, how was Geekbench run? under emulation or natively? And given that is it functioning as expected and comparable?

It's native.

 

[pearvsapple]

To be fair, it’s up against the outdated Skylake architecture on the outdated 14nm process.

 

[Ulfric]

anyone else who are skeptical like me with Geekbench, Good news for us.

Maxon has released Cinebench 23 with M1 support. We would finally be able to see the real-world performance comparison between Apple silicon & x86

https://www.maxon.net/en-us/products/cinebench-r20-overview/

 

[rmuddana]

At this point: software.
I sure hope the transition is easier on that front this time around.

Exactly! Raw power matters but without applications that utilizes, it is useless. Hopefully it has better apps compared to chromebooks that uses ARM based processors like M1.

It will be interesting to watch how enterprise customers adopt to this new chip. Since Intel chip options are available they maybe okay for a while.

As a developer I would be looking for good virtualization support like Intel's in M1. It may be okay for normal house hold use!

 

[bklement]

Well, let’s see what Nvidia does to counter this. They are buying ARM and i would imagine there will be a nice profitable void for Windows machines to counter Apple.

My guess is Nvidia is eying the server market with the arm purchase, selling gpu's into servers is already their biggest business. Selling the whole server rather than just the gpu's in north of 10 thousands of dollars may be their main goal, not Windows portables with tiny margins.

 

[throAU]

"We know what we’re getting with Intel. With Arm, we don’t. And while there are good reasons to think Apple has figured it out, history hasn’t always been kind to other manufacturers who have tried Arm-based computers."

Even if when running intel apps it is same perf (vs. a 2020 intel machine) +/- 10% with no fan noise (at $200 less for equivalent spec vs. what I bought in March/April), it is plenty good enough to be better than anything they could get out of intel. I fully expect much better than that, and I do believe it WILL generate far better performance than that on intel binaries but... even looking at it as pessimistic as that - it is plenty good enough.

Don't lose sight of that.