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

macsba said:
Yep, I have a friend in the Perth area and told him to wait until 2022 to replace his 2012 27 inch iMac.
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This is one thing I don’t get - like your friend, I have an ancient MacBook Air (mid-2012) which is working just fine. Sure, the battery is shot and I’ve had to buy another power supply because the cable is frayed, but it’s still going!

I assume your friend and I are the exception, otherwise how do apple make money!?!
 
MacRumors said:
In comparison to Macs, the single-core performance is better than any other available Mac, and the multi-core performance beats out all of the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro models, including the 10th-generation high-end 2.4GHz Intel Core i9 model. That high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 1096 and a multi-core score of 6870.
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Hey Juli, the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro uses 9th-generation H-series Intel CPUs. Not 10th. Though, if there's truth to that Boot Camp rumor...
 
pearvsapple said:
Except Cinebench is not a good representation of “real world.” It is a synthetic benchmark that ignores many real world variables.
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That couldn't be further from the truth. It's as real world as it can get. It renders a real 3D scene from a real world 3D software and a real world in-use rendering engine.
If you know your machine's Cinebench score you can easily compare it to other Cinebench scores of the same version and you know exactly what kind of performance improvement you can get in rendering inside Cinema.

Geekbench is the definition of a synthetic test. Cinebench is on the exact opposite side of that.
 
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jz0309 said:
maybe, but how many years did it take apple to get to this point?
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Good point, but if M1 machines sell well, there will be a lot of motivation for Nvidia and Qualcomm to copy as much as possible for competing devices. The Windows market is nothing to sneeze at and MS does not want to take the risk of losing any marketshare.
Besides, competition is good for consumers. It will also keep Apple from becoming complacent and keep advancing innovation
 
To all the Apple fanboys: As a heavy PC user I see the significance of this. It doesn’t take much wisdom to predict that placing iPhone / iPad processing in a PC shell would give an incredible performance paired with outstanding battery life. To be honest though, I had expected even more battery time, but real life will show.
What frightens me though is the financial model. To achieve the performance everything goes on a single chip, this means you need to pay up front for all memory that you desire (which you already do for Apple anyway). The prices are just nuts and Apple is milking the customer. I hope the silicon is life long stable.
But not gonna lie, this is the perfect technology for devices like Mac air and I will upgrade from my 2017 model when finances permit.
Still would go with a PC desktop because ... would not be able to push down the vast sums Apple’s throats.
 
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phobos said:
That couldn't be further from the truth. It's as real world as it can get. It renders a real 3D scene from a real world 3D software and a real world in-use rendering engine.
If you know your machine's Cinebench score you can easily compare it to other Cinebench scores of the same version and you know exactly what kind of performance improvement you can get in rendering inside Cinema.

Geekbench is the definition of a synthetic test. Cinebench is on the exact opposite side of that.
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Geekbench is not synthetic. It runs some of the most used code algorithms in use today. Here is a description of what Geekbench does. It also gives a breakdown of all the different test.


While Cinebench just just one thing - shows you how fast it can render a scene which while useful it is only for that one particular task.
 
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thunng8 said:
Geekbench is not synthetic. It runs some of the most used code algorithms in use today. Here is a description of what Geekbench does. It also gives a breakdown of all the different test.


While Cinebench just just one thing - shows you how fast it can render a scene which while useful it is only for that one particular task.
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I don't disagree with the fact that Cinebench does one task.
I'm addressing the claim that it's a synthetic benchmark. It's not. It's a stripped down version of a real program performing a real world task.

I don't see how a real world program can be called synthetic while Geekbench trying to emulate popular tasks is not.
 
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I’ve mentioned many times that going from an iPad pro to an Intel machine always felt like going backwards and using an arcane technology. For the past 2 years I tended to avoid my desktop at all cost if i could avoid it and unless i needed to run a certain software.
Now that’s all changed. We finally have a modern computer after decades of stagnation.
 
you are right - missed that - runed geekbench 5 now and came down to 3673
ok
the MBP has 16g and SSD 970 EVO 2TB

Bildschirmfoto 2020-11-12 um 09.28.20.jpg
 
beastforum said:
How can the MacBook Air have a higher multicore score? They are the same chip and the MBP is much more likely to have a higher multicore speed due to having a fan.
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Yes, it seems that these benchmarks are not quite reliable after all, at least of you have a single one. Wait until there are many averaged entries for a single machine.
 
beastforum said:
How can the MacBook Air have a higher multicore score? They are the same chip and the MBP is much more likely to have a higher multicore speed due to having a fan.
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It is not uncommon for the same type of machines to have slight variations in their scores in the Geekbench browser. In this case I guess it could be down to different OS builds and/or GB pre-release versions.

What this could also show is that the M1 is not thermally limited in the MacBook Air, or at least that Geekbench is not challenging enough to trigger CPU thermal management.
 
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Delighted with this, they have sold me an Apple Silicon MacBook for next year. Not because I’m waiting for the next generation, but because of the world we are in right now I’m spending less time using my smaller laptop.

Really excited to see the reviews!
 
Well, I have a 2019 iMBP 16" and I think for the time being I will sit on it (not literally) as I do still like to use Windows on it for the odd game when I am travelling. That said if this is really the performance we can expect you gotta wonder why game manufacturers don't look to bring games to Mac natively in the future? Also makes you wonder if the performance is overstated and there is a limitation somewhere and if it really isn't what the heck PC manufacturers are going to do. Shows how poor Intel have been for the last decade really. I think those suggesting the end of Intel / AMD are probably jumping to conclusions though as there is no way for Windows peeps yet to harness this power (most of whom wont spend this much on a Laptop).
 
MBA is the best Apple product of this year. Thin & light, better display, no fan, amazing capabilities because of the M1 and no touchbar for $999? That's the best value for Apple product we have seen in a long time.

On the other hand, I don't really see the point of releasing the two-port MBP 13".
 
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dukeblue219 said:
So, what's the likely catch? I'm willing to believe this processor is exceptionally powerful per watt, and give Apple credit where credit is clearly due, but there must be a tradeoff somewhere. Intel, AMD, even IBM or Qualcomm, know a lot about CPU design and have been fighting over the best engineers for decades.

It strikes me as unlikely that Apple has simply beaten all of them in all use cases, with less power, on their first desktop class CPU. It's not that I'm calling BS, just that engineering doesn't usually work that way; there's usually a tradeoff made somewhere.
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Looking at all the tricks and bypasses Intel, AMD and ARM used that ended up in security flaws like Spectre or Meltdown it is not unlikely that there could be a potential risk hiding somewhere in the architecture. On the other hand Geekbench might just profit from a super fast direct memory connection of the SoC. Compared to Intel the 5nm manufacturing process is a big benefit for Apple as well and you have to consider how hold the Intel Core-i architecture is by now. The 17 year old Pentium M was the first start of that series and all goes back to the Pentium III and Pentium Pro. Compared to that the ARM and AMD architecture are relatively new. Regarding IBM Power I would say that the M1 doesn't compete on the same level. This architecture is all about super fast memory connection for SAP workload and with SMT8 they offer massive multithread performance.
 
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