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Intel Alder Lake Chips for Desktops Faster Than M1 Max in Benchmarks, But Use Much More Power

cylack said:
So Intel’s 12th gen chip is marginally faster than Apple’s 1.5 gen chip, but uses a lot more energy? Nothing to brag about for Intel.
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It’s not marginally faster, the 12700k is much faster in multithreaded and the 12900k is even faster still. Of course, Apple wins on performance efficiency by a mile. But Intel ain’t dead and it’s coming back.

Meteor lake on intel 4 in 2023 should improve x86 performance per watt.
 
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Rigby said:
The kicker is that the CPUs can be capped at 150W power consumption and barely lose performance compared to the full 241W:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1455961649282752525

Seems like squeezing out the last 10% of performance takes a disproportional amount of power. The all-core boost frequency of the i9-12900K (4.9 GHz, even over prolonged periods) is just insane.

I think the real star among the new CPUs is actually the i5. Less than $300, lower power, and still beats the M1 Max in both single- and multi-thread Geekbench.
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What are the temps though?
 
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MacStreamer said:
And those computers use Intel chips.
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The question is for how much longer.

M1 is not an Intel competitor, never will be, but it chums the water for everyone else that wants to take a bite out of Intel's market share. I'm guessing we're a couple years from an entirely different PC landscape where we see multiple processor vendors peddling non-x86 architectures. Samsung and Qualcomm are often raised. I would not be surprised to see AMD also invest some of that new Ryzen cash into ARM or RISC-V architectures. I believe Intel has shown that they're culturally incapable of developing an alternative to x86.

Maybe the first steps will be in the Linux world but Microsoft isn't stupid. They'll say they aren't supporting ARM generally until the moment they do.

I don't expect that to happen until the more traditional PC makers have ARM based systems to run it on though. The failure of Intel is a threat to PC manufacturers too. There are a lot of people who won't move to Apple Silicon because they need Windows. If MS allowed Windows to run natively on AS without at least some caveats, then windows customers will be tempted to move to Apple as a Windows platform and away from HP, Dell, ASUS, etc... Those other players can't respond yet, and it would be bad business for Microsoft to undermine the bulk of their customer base (HP is a Microsoft customer, you and I are not).

I'd like to see more of these benchmarks explicitly compare performance under MacOS on M1 versus Windows on Intel-- right now all the benchmarks put the pressure on Intel only. A few headlines highlighting that Windows is also lagging because of their Intel dependence might help push the transition along.
 
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The days of using a laptop during the winter and having to "go over and turn 'your' fan on" because your laptop is burning YOU up and making you sweat... are over!

When a chip's heat and power reach the limit it's time to jump to a new architecture where the fans DON'T kick on!!

But where/what is this NEW platform?

(Now that the Intel chips need dual fans, and the NVIDIA cards need a triple fan assembly?)

? (give me a break).

They (Intel + NVIDIA) are hitting the ceilings and the M1, yeah 1, IS "like the latest catch phrase" just getting started!!

Just like when the G5's got ditched by Apple and they moved to Intel. What's interesting about this is FEAR, doubt, and uncertainty.

Which Apple seems to have NEVER FLIPPIN' HAD! This just shows Apple's elite tech prowess!

Late.
 
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firewood said:
and watches and AirPods. I once benchmarked my Apple Watch 4 at over 1 gigaflop... on a single core (of the 2). There's a vast amount of thermal headroom between a watch on your wrist that doesn't even get warm to the touch, and a desktop with big fans (future Mac Pro M?).
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It wasn't that long ago when this was one of my favorite jokes about the tradeoffs in engineering-- I couldn't remember the details, so did some searching to find it again and it's pretty amazing to read:

A man was walking down the street with two suitcases when a stranger came up and asked, "Have you got the time?" The man put down the suitcases and looked at his wristwatch and said, "It's exactly five-forty six and fifty point six seconds and the barometric pressure is 30.06 and rising and if you'd like to see where we are by satellite positioning, I can show you that too, or get onto the Internet, check your e-mail, make a long distance call, send a fax. It's also a pager and it plays recorded books and it receives FM." "That's amazing. I've got to have that watch. I'll pay you ten thousand for that." "No, it's not ready for sale yet. I'm the inventor. I'm still working out the bugs. I haven't got it all programmed yet, it's not completely voice-activated." "I've got to buy that watch. Fifteen thousand. Twenty." "Well, okay." He takes off the watch and the stranger walks away with it and the guy holds up the suitcases. "Don't you want the batteries?"​
 
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Shirasaki said:
Yes. More power draw for this generation. Remember Pentium 4 days? Maybe this is the same Core 2 Duo cycle again. I’m more than willing to see how Intel could pull off their design in the next 3 to 4 years while also looking forward to have the ability to run Windows 10 x86 version on apple silicon with decent performance. (No, I’m NOT talking about Rosetta)
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Do I remeber? I remeber moving from my fast 486 DX66 to my first Pentium 166 ?
 
Breaking news alert!
A 5.0 V8 Ford Mustang runs faster than a Honda lawnmower while consuming more fuel.

Did that summarize the topic? ?

(I know, I know, Honda also makes automobiles)
 
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I read many comments pointing at the fact that Apple is yet to release a desktop-class M chip.
But actually it already has. The M1 was put in both the Mac Mini and the iMac. Surely not "pro", but definitely desktops.
I think that Apple will make little to no difference between desktop and laptop chips from now on. The main distinction will be the "regular" and the "pro" version of these. Perhaps the only exception will be the Mac Pro. But for all the others, the same SoCs will be used on both laptop and desktop.
It's already like that.
 
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The
neekon said:
So let me get this straight, you're telling us that a desktop level chip which uses significantly more power draw and has 60% more cores(16 vs 10) or 2x as many power cores(16 vs 8) is faster than a laptop chip that uses maybe 50-100w total?

I have breaking news guys, water is wet, the sky is blue, and fire is hot.

this is a dumb article.
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M1 is a laptop AND desktop SoC.
It's already on iMac and Mac Mini.
 
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till said:
I remember when Intel was making pretty power-efficient desktop CPUs. 241W is insane, a lousy fit even for the gaming enthusiast market since it now needs seriously beefed up cooling.
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It takes 231w at peak load when running some synthetic benchmarks. It's actually quite reasonable during gaming, and a marginal bump in frame rates over their previous processors as well as AMD zen3.
 
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Train said:
Desktop CPU vs. mobile CPU

Let‘s start comparing apples to apples when the iMac Pro/Mac Pro launches next year with the M1-based desktop CPU.
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MacRumors said:
While the first 12th-generation processors are desktop class, they still make for an interesting comparison with Apple's M1 Pro and M1 Max chips in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, as rumors suggest that Apple plans to release a new 27-inch iMac with the same M1 Pro and M1 Max chips in the first half of next year.
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The apple chips could still catch up if power is increased for the desktops. It would be interesting to see comparable benchmarks, but Apple may still be using the same chips, so it's kind of apples to apples.

To other commenters, some people need the most powerful CPU they can get. They're not all fanboys browsing MacRumors as fast as they can claiming they're doing better for the environment, while also buying a new gadget at every opportunity
 
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macsplusmacs said:
So Intel hates Mother Earth. Got it.
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Not to try and virtue signal, but I love being able to plug in my 100w solar panel to charge my Jackery 300 portable battery, charge it to 100% and then charge my 13” MacBook Pro (the Jackery has a 60w USB-C PD connector), knowing that I owe absolutely zero money to the power company while doing so. I can then charge my iPads and iPhones and run my CPAP on it via DC converter when the power goes out. Really been thinking of moving to an M1 Air to halve my power needs. Going off grid is not really a realistic goal where I live, but I would love to power the majority of my electronics via solar recharge. Cannot do that with some Intel tower and a 750w PSU.
 
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Train said:
Desktop CPU vs. mobile CPU

Let‘s start comparing apples to apples when the iMac Pro/Mac Pro launches next year with the M1-based desktop CPU.
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Yes, let’s do that. Let’s also compare Alder Lake H-Series with DGPU next year once they finally start shipping with the M1 Pro/Max and see how many batteries per hour you need to stay on the go with a Windows-based space heater from Dell, Alienware, Gigabyte, MSI, et al. While the MBP runs for hours at the same performance level.
 
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This is what might happen: today's "Pro" chips will be 2022 low-mid tier. Perhaps they'll rename M1 Pro/Max to M2, while making little to no changes to the architecture. In 2023 Apple releases a new M2 Pro, which in 2024 will change name to M3, and so on.
So basically we'll have a radically more powerful SoC every other year.
If you think about it, it's somehow already like this.
This allows them to announce a "new"-ish version of the SoC every year, while actually reusing the previous year's ones for the low-mid tier of the present year.

Or perhaps they'll develop a new chip to go in pro machines every year, and use the previous old Pro SoC into non-pro machines. This year every computer gets a refreshed, more powerful SoC.

Either way, my point is that they'll somehow recycle the previous year's Pro chips and use them in present year's non-pro machines, so that every SoC lives for at least a couple of years.
 
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