Benchmarks Confirm Intel's Latest Core i9 Chip Outperforms Apple's M1 Max With Several Caveats

[ilikewhey]

Heat is not a thing? Why does Gamers Nexus produce video after video about case efficiency, fan effectiveness, noise testing, and cooling? Heat and noise are ALWAYS the problem on desktop. We appreciate the extra heat in the winter, wear headphones to cover up the fans, and spend double on noctua fans, and pretend heat is not an issue? Cmon now. We live with it, of course it’s an issue.

at 140 watt? yeah no thats not a issue, i never wore headphone for gaming pc in my life, so i can't comment on it, but with my previous and current cooling setup, the db is always within manageable tolerance.

these fan effectiveness, noise testing, and cooling, they are nice extra things to have, thats what you get with pc, options. so you have the choice of buying what fits your requirement. its only a issue if you don't have the budget to get it, or you are trying to achieve very high OC.

 

[appleArticulate]

It’s faster, and it’s fine. It’s not like it runs macOS in any case.

Eh, if it isn't faster at the same wattage, then no, it's not faster. Anyone can pump more power into something.

 

[PeeWee1963]

Haha, no.

It’s the use case these laptops were engineered for.

My use case just happens to match what the tool was designed for.

You also conveniently left out heat in your diatribe, which I mentioned, that causes thermal throttling and could very well make the processing slower over time versus a more efficient chip.

No need for the childish sarcasm. Although I don’t expect any different from amateur contrarians on an Apple forum. ? But to be completely honest, I dont *really* care what you think. I just responded to your initial comment because you were being condescending. Since it seems to be the norm for you, I’ll probably disengage now.

Keep in mind that the Alderlake chips run at 5.3 Ghz. Do you drive your car with dragster fuel?

 

[TomWGallagher]

Considering Apple has a process node advantage and is on the second generation, that's a really impressive result, regardless of the power draw.

If the competition gets better, then Apple is forced to get better too. Everyone should be rooting for Intel here, as well as AMD, it pushes the Mac to be be better

 

[nikaru]

heat is not a issue in a desktop environment, only ppl complaining about heat are on laptops. my noctua d14 can keep my intel at 5ghz 24/7

Heat is always an issue. More heat requires more cooling which requires more energy and creates more noise and vibrations. Not to mention that the bigger the fans and the cooler, more dust and particles would be accumulated overtime, which requires filters, more maintenance and care. The heat generates an extra cost for cooling solutions and the active cooling components are, at the end of the date, mechanical and will eventually fail and require replacement. In addition, high temperatures accelerates degradation of any electronics and circuits in general. Then you have the cost of energy which may be very high in some countries and in the summer you may need extra AC in the room to avoid overheating. Bottom line, the heat is a big issue for desktop computers as well and it is critical one for laptops.

 

[palmerc]

So basically, Intel puts a desktop processor on the market, and they try to convince the world it's destined for laptops ?

Is it even an awesome desktop processor? It sounds like the only real market for this new Intel chip is either space heaters or white noise generators

 

[PsykX]

Is it even an awesome desktop processor? It sounds like the only real market for this new Intel chip is either space heaters or white noise generators

Not even !

On a side-note, this is what scares me about the upcoming iMac Pro. This computer is supposed to receive M1 Pro/Max according to rumors. But it will be compared against Desktop computers, and this is where it will hurt. The M1 Pro/Max is phenomenal for a Laptop, but I'd qualify it as OK for a Desktop. Unless maybe it has more cores ? Or unless it's an M1 Pro Duo or Quadro ?

 

[cmaier]

Eh, if it isn't faster at the same wattage, then no, it's not faster. Anyone can pump more power into something.

Well, sort of. There isn’t just a knob you can turn. You can increase voltage and the clock rate, which in turn increases power (because P = fCV^2), but that doesn’t mean the chip will actually work. Somewhere on the chip is a critical path, and turning up the clock higher than the inverse of that path time means the chip won’t work.

Or you can design a new chip with more cores (relatively easy) but that doesn‘t increase single-thread speed. Or you can try and eliminate the most critical paths, but, again, that’s a new physical design, it’s a lot of work, and if it was easy then Apple would probably already be offering M1 variations at higher clock rates.

 

[m1maverick]

Gaming laptop is enough to warrant further investigation as to why so much is being drawn. Could it be GPU? The 16" MBP ships with a 140-watt power adapter which suggests it too, at some tasks, requires a lot more than 40 watts.

 

[ilikewhey]

Heat is always an issue. More heat requires more cooling which requires more energy and creates more noise and vibrations. Not to mention that the bigger the fans and the cooler, more dust and particles would be accumulated overtime, which requires filters, more maintenance and care. The heat generates an extra cost for cooling solutions and the active cooling components are, at the end of the date, mechanical and will eventually fail and require replacement. In addition, high temperatures accelerates degradation of any electronics and circuits in general. Then you have the cost of energy which may be very high in some countries and in the summer you may need extra AC in the room to avoid overheating. Bottom line, the heat is a big issue for desktop computers as well and it is critical one for laptops.

as i replied to another comment, 140w is not a issue, especially consider whats out there with the W series and AMD TR, which go well above 200w. ofcourse the more efficient the better, but in terms of applicable usage, 140 watt tdp is sorta around the norm.

 

[Juraj22]

Gaming laptop is enough to warrant further investigation as to why so much is being drawn. Could it be GPU? The 16" MBP ships with a 140-watt power adapter which suggests it too, at some tasks, requires a lot more than 40 watts.

140W charger is used because of feature "fast charging". Typically max. power required is 92W DC, if power brick is 90% efficient, a bit more AC. I don't know exact numbers for efficiency here, so if someone can measure it, it would be nice.

 

[Dragon M.]

It is gaming laptop not an office laptop or netbook. No one buying these laptops think they are going to get 8 hour batter life.

The gaming laptops are known for terrible battery life. And are big and heavy not small and thin like the netbooks. It MacBook air or iPad with all day battery and no fan and no heat. It is for the gamers and people who want to do video editing.

I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing? I’m defending Apple’s design decision for a higher efficiency chip in their laptops.

I think we can pretty easily infer computer gaming wasn’t a goal for the design of the new MBPs, or any of Apple’s computer lineup.

The Intel chip in question is absolutely for the stuff you mentioned. But I’m under the impression the context here is how these chips are relative to Apple’s laptop products and use cases.

Keep in mind that the Alderlake chips run at 5.3 Ghz. Do you drive your car with dragster fuel?

Yes, and no. I’m not really following? If we’re staying on the car metaphor: if I can hit approximately the same speed and acceleration with a commuter car that is capable of 30 mpg versus one at 5 mpg, I think I know which one I’ll take (the MacBook Pro at 30 mpg). If I wanted even better acceleration and speed, I’d buy a race car (i.e. a desktop).

 

[dgdosen]

wrong thread

 

[Bandaman]

The caveat is 1 hour battery life. Apple’s only competitor right now in the lower wattage high performance bracket is AMD. Intel’s latest chip really isn’t serving the same purpose here.

 

[JMacHack]

Keep in mind that the Alderlake chips run at 5.3 Ghz. Do you drive your car with dragster fuel?

Not a very good comparison, Nitromethane burns cool enough that the engines don’t need liquid cooling.

 

[MrAverigeUser]

250% more power draw for 4% more speed. Tough trade to make.

No offence, but.... you somthe wrong calculation:

the Intel machine draws NOT 250% MORE, but 250 OF THE DRAW that the apple mavhine draws.

That means the Intel machine draws 150% more power and NOT 250% more. ok?

still a big, big difference, indeed.

But a reason more to stay serious with one's arguments...

The PR-battle Intel has now started is ridiculous and shows how anxious Intel has get being faced with the great success that apple made woth its SOC-type M1.

Intel will bleed economicaöly - and they derserve well the pain they feel now.

 

[Bubble99]

Not even !

On a side-note, this is what scares me about the upcoming iMac Pro. This computer is supposed to receive M1 Pro/Max according to rumors. But it will be compared against Desktop computers, and this is where it will hurt. The M1 Pro/Max is phenomenal for a Laptop, but I'd qualify it as OK for a Desktop. Unless maybe it has more cores ? Or unless it's an M1 Pro Duo or Quadro ?

No it won’t.

Apple is not Intel.

Apple does not believe in big tower case, big heat sink and fans and drawing more power to be way more powerful than top of line Intel CPUs used in very expensive desktop computers being space heater.

Apple believes in thin, light and lower power used and little heat.

I think the next Mac Pro will mot even be tower case but a mini case.

And newer iMacs will get smaller and thiner and be more like laptop than desktop.

If Apple used Intel philosophy the M2 pro pro Max Pro would be two times more powerful than Intel top of the line CPU. But you will need to carry around power supply and AC to enjoy the space heater and enjoy the jet engine blowing all that hot air around heating up your befroom.

 

[PsykX]

No it won’t.

Apple is not Intel.

Apple does not believe in big tower case, big heat sink and fans and drawing more power to be way more powerful than top of line Intel CPUs used in very expensive desktop computers being space heater.

Apple believes in thin, light and lower power used and little heat.

I think the next Mac Pro will mot even be tower case but a mini case.

And newer iMacs will get smaller and thiner and be more like laptop than desktop.

If Apple used Intel philosophy the M2 pro pro Max Pro would be two times more powerful than Intel top of the line CPU. But you will need to carry around power supply and AC to enjoy the space heater and enjoy the jet engine blowing all that hot air around heating up your befroom.

I know all of that, but I'll stick to this thought : no matter how thin the iMac Pro will be, it will be compared against desktops. Because no matter how power hungry a Desktop is, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't have the concept of "battery life".

Also, Apple is not Intel, but you know for sure it gets compared all the time against Intel. It will continue to be compared for years to come. To, you know, validate that the transition was worth the shot.

 

[asdfjkl;]

I'd make a couple of points:

1. I didn't see it mentioned when I scanned the PC World article, but I'm pretty sure that the benchmarks were run while plugged in. Yes, these chips are faster, but in a laptop they kind of miss the point. On battery (a key feature of a mobile device) they either a) won't come anywhere near this performance or b) will only do so for a few minutes before draining the battery. Not terribly valuable in my opinion.
2. The current state of Intel's architecture reminds me of the Pentium 4 days when they were getting most of their performance improvements, generation to generation, by increasing clock speed. That wasn't and isn't sustainable. This CPU tops out at 5GHz. There's really no more room there.
3. So M1 is not as fast but presumably Apple has plenty of room to grow. I expect we'll see Apple pull ahead of Intel and AMD over the years ahead. Right now, though, there's plenty of competition and that's good for us.

 

[semistandard]

It is both. In the end, the iPhone chip (A14) has the best battery life out of all other 5nm ARM chips you find in Android smartphones. So the iPhone engineers deserve all the credits of what we are seeing with the M1 and M1 Max.

AMD was already giving the M1 a run for it's money as the Razor 14" Blade with the RTX 3060 is in the end a more powerful machine than a similar spec'ed M1 MBP for the same price.

However AMD was doing this on the older 7nm node as Apple bought all 5nm capacity at the time. So I am curious what AMD will do when they come with their new CPU's and also switch to TSMC 5nm / 3nm (when Apple stops being greedy)

However, Apple will always be leading in the battery life department because they simply leverage from the iPhone's chip battery efficiency. Apple has obviously spend much more money than any other company in their iPhone chip. The iPhone is Apple their money maker, so you can imagine that Apple, a company who has more money than most countries, poured a lot of money in the development of their iPhone chip (which is what the M1 and M1 Max basically are also)

Does it really have best battery life? Seems like some phones have better battery life, including one running on last generation of Snapdragon that uses 5nm process... I didn't go into detail - but I am not sure that processor is the only reason (battery capacity and other factors play important role as well), even if it is the case. When Intel jumps from 10nm process to 5/3nm - gains in battery life and performance will be really impressive.

 

[Bubble99]

I know all of that, but I'll stick to this thought : no matter how thin the iMac Pro will be, it will be compared against desktops. Because no matter how power hungry a Desktop is, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't have the concept of "battery life".

Also, Apple is not Intel, but you know for sure it gets compared all the time against Intel. It will continue to be compared for years to come. To, you know, validate that the transition was worth the shot.

The problem with this is it will only be little bit faster if that than may be Intel top of the line CPU. If Apple is going to make iMac thinner knowing Apple and use mini case knowing apple in the Mac pro it is not going to be 30% faster or more.

If Apple would use more power in the desktop computers and use a desktop tower case with heat sinks and lots of fans than Apple could win over Intel than just being little faster at best with comparing desktop to desktop.

Not saying it has to be jet engine the fans but quite is not the answer. It would have to be like most modest windows desktop computers.

So if OS did not matter to me I would pick Apple over the laptop as Apple is winner here , but if Apple cannot come up with better CPU in iMac and Mac Pro. Than on par with Intel Apple is not winning or Intel is not winning by 4% difference by desktop vs desktop. And Intel may win more with overclocking and building computer your self.

Where only Apple is winning is in the Tablet and netbooks blowing any thing Intel throws at at.

But on desktop per desktops only winning or losing by 4% at best. And they both on par than winning or losing when it comes to desktop.

Is not enough win over fans when AMD and Intel will have better CPUs out by the end of this year. And with building desktop computer your self making upgrades and repairs easy and moving into overclocking.

Even if all the windows games and windows software could work on iMac or Mac pro a 4% difference win or lose is not enough to win over fans with more PC options to choose from unless you really like MacOS over windows.

If apple really wants to shine it going to have stop with the obsession of thin and lightweight desktop computers that are just sitting at the desk all the time. And make proper desktop tower that is easy to upgrades and repairs easy and blow away windows tower desktop computer. If all the windows games and windows software worked on MacOS to win fans over.

 

[MrAverigeUser]

in times of catastrophic climate change it is silly to produce processors of "old sryle" as Intel goes in to produce. They have learned just NOTHING.

Having success in developping SOC like apple did with the M1 they are creating a new market or let's say alittle revolutiin!

Winning more market share by lighter and extremely well performing laptops with longer battery life is just an advantage of comfort.
BUT you can as well use this type of technology to develop much bigger units like big servers.

It doesnt make sense in these times to put a Intel processor with that ridiculous draw of energy in a laptop, but it makes sense to use apple's silocin tec processsor technology as well for desktops and even for big servers.... sorry, Intel, you lost.

I think apple is not only going to win market share in the segment of laptops, no: this is only the beginning. I am sure they will soon even develop bigger units with this type of technology.

Energy consumption of the Internet is already more important than trfaiic in the while world!

So - use of this technology worldwide would cut energy consomption by much more than half !

A VERY important possibility to fight againt the ongoing climate catastrophe.

 

[Juraj22]

When Intel Alder Lake has hard cap to 30W, its performance is about half (49% less). Source: anandtech. They measured with silence profile on MSI Raider in Cinebench R20.

So I don't see it very optimistic for thin and light laptops. Imagine this CPU in Macbook pro 14'. Hot and noisy mess once again.

 

[Makosuke]

Credit to Intel, they've managed to produce a BIG-little mobile CPU with very good performance in both single and multi core. Competition is good. I buy plenty of Wintel machines for work, it's good that they will perform well.

But that max TDP of 115W, ouch. That's not desktop CPU power draw these days, but compared to what the M1 Max uses, it might as well be.

It was quite the revelation when I first ran Cinebench on my M1 Max MBP and discovered that, after 10 minutes straight of every CPU core pegged at 100%, I could not hear the fan--at all--unless I put my ear up to the keyboard. That's not just impressive, it's absolutely mind-blowing.

If Apple offered an otherwise-identical MBP with an i9-12900HK in it as an alternative to the M1 Max, I would not even consider the purchase. If the i9 were 25% faster than it is, I would probably consider it briefly, then still go with the M1 Max, because I actually use this thing with it sitting on my lap, and it's wonderful to be able to do that comfortably again--and in absolute silence to boot--even if I'm doing something CPU intensive.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I know all of that, but I'll stick to this thought : no matter how thin the iMac Pro will be, it will be compared against desktops. Because no matter how power hungry a Desktop is, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't have the concept of "battery life".

Also, Apple is not Intel, but you know for sure it gets compared all the time against Intel. It will continue to be compared for years to come. To, you know, validate that the transition was worth the shot.

There will always be some benchmark that Intel will beat Apple with. And, in the future, I don’t doubt that some of those will be more than a 4% difference. However, Apple’s processors will be focused primarily on running macOS as efficiently as possible and running macOS applications as efficiently as possible. So, they’ll be doing things (like including ProRes codecs in the chip) that will increase the performance and improve the everyday experience for macOS. This won’t help them in any random benchmark, but it WILL help their users be productive.

Intel will continue to compare against Apple… MAINLY because they see Apple as being “the one to beat”. And, they will clock their processors to the hilt to force that to be true. Apple will go back to just comparing their systems to the ones that came before, because they also see their current best as the one to beat. I suppose there will ALWAYS be people that wish their desktop did better at some generic benchmark. But, I’d recommend that anyone looking to squeak out 4% more benchmark performance at ANY cost out of a software package that’s available cross-platform… if that is at the top of the list of “things make them happy”… to just use a non-Apple system. Apple’s just not going to need to be as focused on random benchmarks as Intel or AMD because Apple’s the only solution that will run macOS.