Great numbers. I am upgrading from a 2012 27 iMac, so numbers will be even more astounding. LOL
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
M1 iMac is Up to 56% Faster Than Prior-Generation High-End 21.5-Inch iMac
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Comparisons like this aren't always productive when compared with older hardware as you say but the M1 iMac form factor wouldn't be possible with the those Intel CPUs which are sacrificing heat and inevitable noise for performance.
There's much more room for improvement with the ARM series CPUs even with the forthcoming new CPUs which appear to have improved onboard GPU (Xe graphics).
Apple are chasing the better quality of life on offer with 24" 5.5K retina display and comparatively silent operation. Lets see how any future M1X arrangement with more compute and GPU options come along to compare with heavier duty Intel CPUs at similar TDPs.
Currently the 5K at 27" and 218ppi is the best for me. 32" 6K would be the next logical step for me, once affordable.
I have 4x 5K monitors at home (1x iMac, 3x LG Ultrafine 5Ks)
logo stickers for $39 I think we are bashing Intel not for the history but for the presence. They've stopped innovating which is why they deserve the bashing.
Sure, Intel was awesome for years but since about 2014 or so they went downhill and never actually recovered. What a shame.
Anyway, I'm glad Apple is doing its own. They will no control everything and that will be a gamechanger in the future. We are witnessing something special here.
Sure, Intel was awesome for years but since about 2014 or so they went downhill and never actually recovered. What a shame.
Anyway, I'm glad Apple is doing its own. They will no control everything and that will be a gamechanger in the future. We are witnessing something special here.
You must get frustrated with a lot of Apple products in that case!
I rarely agree with you, but acknowledge that was a good quip back and made me laugh. TBH, I agree Apple often chooses thin over function but I am okay with that. I like something that is designed to weighs less. I dont need 20 hour batteries in my phone for example. And I do like their push to simplify as much as possible. Apple is not perfect. But like getting older, beats the alternative.
For me if they released the exact same iMac they showed a few weeks ago but made it 27 inches or even 32 I'd buy it on the spot..Im still hoping that WWDC will show off the macbook pro 14 inch that is what Im upgrading my 2018 macbook pro for
Except the M1 is Apple’s entry level chip and the i7 11700 is Intel’s high-end chip. That’s what makes this impressive.
Like all Intel Macs being sold until now they're there because of demand and to fulfill any remaining contractual obligations to Intel and other Intel part-related 3rd party parts.
There is still a market, although shrinking, for Intel Macs.
The Chin on my 2017 27” has always been ideal for my Post-It Notes. 😉
It’s very sad that you would be happy to see 110,600 people lose their jobs for no reason whatsoever.
Yes, how dare they make fast CPU's that are compatible with almost every major software package in existence today. FOR SHAME! Until the M-series can significantly top my high end CTO 27 inch iMac it's a non starter for me.
Did you bash Apple when they stopped innovating? The Mac line hardly changed for 10 years. Some Macs where not updated at all for 3 or 4 years.
Competitive in 2021 means not only benchmarking against Intel. At approximately the same CPU package price point. AMD Ryzen 7 5800X :
1677 ( just 52 'points' ( ~ 3% ) off of iMac M1)
Single core score.
10432 ( so 2973 'points' ( ~ 40 ) faster than iMac M1 )
[ even Ryzen 5 5600X is in completitve range 1620 single but still over on multiple-cores at 8197 . And would have cost savings on money to put toward a dGPU. ]
The 21.5" iMac wouldn't be much , much thinner. But wouldn't be sacrificing much, if anything substantive, in performance. ( also AMD 5900 and 5950 options on top of that at higher price points with about the same TDP . )
Costs would be a bit higher as there is no iGPU there. But again a reasonable dGPU would be in a different performance class also.
Geekbench is also a bit unidimensional here because the top end 21.5 iMac also had Pro Vega 20 option ( standard 560X 4GB config) . Which is also a constraint on making the system thinner, but is a performance "problem". Same issue. Take 560X-Vega20 TDP and cost budget and appply it to a 2021 era mobile GPU.
Last edited:
The 11700k scores even higher, roughly 1800 single core, and 11000 multicore, especially if you clock the chip to 5.0 Ghz. Over 48% better than m1 in terms of multicore. But that's not to take away from m1 prowess.
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z590 VISION D - Geekbench
Benchmark results for a Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z590 VISION D with a 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11700K processor.
browser.geekbench.com
Intel chips allowed Apple to survive and thrive for 15 years, and that should be celebrated. Intel lost its way unfortunately with 10nm, and Apple has moved on and has gone its own way, innovating the m1 SOC, and that's fine.
But Intel appears to be coming back. We'll see what Intel does with Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake. Also, tiger-lake-H just dropped yesterday with up to 8 willow-cove cores with 20 lanes of pcie4.0 and up to 24 of pcie3.0, so let's see how it stacks up against M1. 20 lanes of pcie4.0 allows for much better connectivity than the m1 soc, and PC manufacturers use standard nvme drives, unlike apple...
Competition amongst these manufacturers is great for us consumers. We win in the end.
Last edited:
To be fair it’s impossible to miss it. I don’t know about you but I sit and look at my computer screen all day every day so it matters to me what I’m looking at.
I don’t mind the white border, it’s starting to grow on me, but yes, the chin has to go.
The M1 chip seems to be great for what it is, but Apple really needs to demonstrate that they have more than one chip in their repertoire. As it is, Apple is starting to simply make copies of the same computer in different-looking cases. The MBA, 13" MBP, Mac Mini, iPad Pro, and now M1 iMac are almost identical apart from their form factor.
A real chip manufacturer has multiple products that explore the price/clock speed/cores/feature set/power consumption landscape and can be matched to use case. The M1 kills it for an ultrabook, but is only okay for a business desktop and fails for anything that needs significant graphical power.
I was really hoping that the new iMac would have started expanding the landscape that Apple covers, but no such luck. Because of this, I see no reason to get one over a Mac Mini, because it literally offers nothing else of value -- same performance, same IO, same memory and SSD limitations. At least with a Mac Mini you're not required to throw away a pricey monitor when you want to upgrade the computer, which will become obsolete much more quickly than the monitor will.
The pessimistic side of me says that this one-size-fits-all approach is typical for the Apple of the last decade. But I still want to hope that the higher end MBPs and iMacs will start to change this.
A real chip manufacturer has multiple products that explore the price/clock speed/cores/feature set/power consumption landscape and can be matched to use case. The M1 kills it for an ultrabook, but is only okay for a business desktop and fails for anything that needs significant graphical power.
I was really hoping that the new iMac would have started expanding the landscape that Apple covers, but no such luck. Because of this, I see no reason to get one over a Mac Mini, because it literally offers nothing else of value -- same performance, same IO, same memory and SSD limitations. At least with a Mac Mini you're not required to throw away a pricey monitor when you want to upgrade the computer, which will become obsolete much more quickly than the monitor will.
The pessimistic side of me says that this one-size-fits-all approach is typical for the Apple of the last decade. But I still want to hope that the higher end MBPs and iMacs will start to change this.
My thoughts exactly. This 24" iMac is a MacBook in a different form factor and offers no performance gains that a desktop typically offers over a laptop.
I do have hope that the 27" "iMac Pro" will start to offer something more but so far we're not seeing anything particularly exciting in terms of hardware. Mini LED on a Mac will be a nice advancement or 120Hz or some additional ports (rumored for the new MacBook Pro). I think there is something interesting in the roadmap, but these lower-end devices are essentially rehashes of each other in different form factors.
Actually the iMac as a package is great value. Don’t overlook the 4.5k retina monitor (which cannot be matched unless you spend £1.1k on the 27” 5K), the webcam with ISP, the speakers, the TouchID keyboard and an included mouse.
I understand that if you need the extra power you should really wait for something better to come out. Think also about how the whole system behaves. I don't know about your experience with your iMac, but with mine I often hear the fans, even for tasks that shouldn't cause it to go off. With the M1 the whole system runs perfect. If you need i9 performance levels though, then yes, you should wait.
For my needs the 2019 6 core i5 is perfectly fast. The M1 is around 50% faster than what I currently have..Having said that I think I will wait to see what Apple will do with the big iMac. If they give us an Apple silicon based 27" iMac, then I will get it. If they go with 30" or even higher, then I will go for the 24" iMac.