PCs Offer 'Better Gaming Experience Than 100% of Mac Laptops,' Intel Claims in Ongoing Anti-Apple Campaign

[pasamio]

Um aren’t they just proving what Apple said. The chips Intel were making for Apple Mac’s were falling behind. Apple has been frustrated with them for years. Intel said that wasn’t true now they are saying it is.

What are they afraid of. Apple M1 really isn’t their competition.

Intel are worried that Apple is ringing the death knell of the x86 instruction set. M1 changes the narrative that ARM is only useful for low power devices and can’t compete with desktop class x86 machines. The M1 demonstrates an ability to do high performance and graphics that wasn’t expected of it. The current expectation is that Apple is only just starting and Intel is concerned because if Apple can keep up their performance increases then Intel’s likely going to struggle to compete.

Apple also provided an ARM laptop that can run Windows for ARM that doesn’t suck. Microsoft have been trying to get Windows on ARM up for a while but struggled and this shows Microsoft a path forward. There is plenty of content out there showing how to get the Windows on ARM running on the M1 via virtualisation with reasonable performance even for x86 apps.

ARM is an architecture Intel divested in and Apple is removing the moat around ARM compatibility against x86. Microsoft’s improved x86 emulation on ARM is removing the legacy support barrier there as well whilst M1 provides a more performant platform. Of course I’d be sand bagging Apple at any point because Apple has frequently been an industry trend setter and you want to FUD that as long as you can, even if it means releasing benchmarks comparing your own CPUs.

 

[wanha]

I agree about x86, but it will die in about 40-50 years. There is way too much of a dependency for that instruction set. And who knows...x86 could live virtually in the future as just another cpu environment.

Agreed, the x86 will probably live for a long time as a legacy architecture, similar to how LPs and CDs are still being manufactured today.

I guess my original point was simply that the heyday of x86 is long past and it's on a seemingly irreversible slide to irrelevance, certainly at least in terms of mindshare.

Appreciate the back and forth, brother!

 

[Velli]

Agreed, the x86 will probably live for a long time as a legacy architecture, similar to how LPs and CDs are still being manufactured today.

I guess my original point was simply that the heyday of x86 is long past and it's on a seemingly irreversible slide to irrelevance, certainly at least in terms of mindshare.

Appreciate the back and forth, brother!

I’m much more bullish than that. X86 software will be used in legacy use cases for 10-20 years after the mainstream transition. Then it will become more similar to 8-track than to LP’s. I would compare it to Dos transitioning to Windows. In the beginning you ran them side by side because running Dos programs from Windows was inefficient. But at some point all high performance programs were Windows native, and all computers were fast enough that the performance hit on older software didn’t matter. At some point in the relatively near future, if not on Macs then on Windows on Arm, emulating X86 Windows programs on Arm will be faster and cheaper than any native X86 computer. At that point X86 hardware will become itrelevant for all software that runs stable emulated, with only a need for actual X86 hardware for specific use cases. That will quickly eliminate the business case behind making them, forcing even more users to shift.

My timeline would be:
3-5 years: Arm runs X86 programs fast and cheap
5-10 years: Majority of software is Arm first
10-20 years: Noone makes X86 programs
That gives X86 another 10 years at best, with declining revenue starting now.

Bill Gates quote (paraphrased): People routinely overestimate the evolution that takes place in a year, yet at the same time underestimate the evolution in a decade.

In the Dos/Windows analogy, I would put right now comparable to the launch of Windows 95. Before that, Windows was more or less a Dos shell that you used in parallel with your Dos programs. By 2001 with the launch of Windows XP, Dos was essentially dead. I know the situation is different, but I think the timeline will be similar.

And, one of my key arguments when people talk about backwards compatibility: I own several Windows programs and various hardware from the XP days that won’t run on my Windows computer. Windows has never actually been fully backwards compatible, stuff gets outdated all the time. It just happens gradually. I have a perfectly functional laptop that I can’t use to run those programs, rendering auxillary hardware worth thousands of dollars, including a very expensive home theater remote control, useless because the software won’t run even emulated in newer Windows versions.

Sorry for going off on a rant Note that I am not saying Apple will take over all the X86 market, I don’t think so. But I do think that they will fuel the transition on the Windows side, Microsoft will have to react. And there’s nothing Intel can do about it (other than go to Arm as well, but they are likely not competitive there).

 

[wanha]

I’m much more bullish than that. X86 software will be used in legacy use cases for 10-20 years after the mainstream transition. Then it will become more similar to 8-track than to LP’s. I would compare it to Dos transitioning to Windows. In the beginning you ran them side by side because running Dos programs from Windows was inefficient. But at some point all high performance programs were Windows native, and all computers were fast enough that the performance hit on older software didn’t matter. At some point in the relatively near future, if not on Macs then on Windows on Arm, emulating X86 Windows programs on Arm will be faster and cheaper than any native X86 computer. At that point X86 hardware will become itrelevant for all software that runs stable emulated, with only a need for actual X86 hardware for specific use cases. That will quickly eliminate the business case behind making them, forcing even more users to shift.

My timeline would be:
3-5 years: Arm runs X86 programs fast and cheap
5-10 years: Majority of software is Arm first
10-20 years: Noone makes X86 programs
That gives X86 another 10 years at best, with declining revenue starting now.

Bill Gates quote (paraphrased): People routinely overestimate the evolution that takes place in a year, yet at the same time underestimate the evolution in a decade.

In the Dos/Windows analogy, I would put right now comparable to the launch of Windows 95. Before that, Windows was more or less a Dos shell that you used in parallel with your Dos programs. By 2001 with the launch of Windows XP, Dos was essentially dead. I know the situation is different, but I think the timeline will be similar.

And, one of my key arguments when people talk about backwards compatibility: I own several Windows programs and various hardware from the XP days that won’t run on my Windows computer. Windows has never actually been fully backwards compatible, stuff gets outdated all the time. It just happens gradually. I have a perfectly functional laptop that I can’t use to run those programs, rendering auxillary hardware worth thousands of dollars, including a very expensive home theater remote control, useless because the software won’t run even emulated in newer Windows versions.

Sorry for going off on a rant Note that I am not saying Apple will take over all the X86 market, I don’t think so. But I do think that they will fuel the transition on the Windows side, Microsoft will have to react. And there’s nothing Intel can do about it (other than go to Arm as well, but they are likely not competitive there).

Interesting.

IMO the future of Intel is as a foundry for other companies' chip designs. The x86 is the protypical cash cow that they will milk until... the cows come home lol

 

[Bug-Creator]

IMO the future of Intel is as a foundry for other companies' chip designs.

Nah, depending on how far out "a future" is:
- right now they are a foundry partner of last resort offering a process that has seen his best years long ago
- in the near future they will sell plenty x86 chips
- in the not so near future they may sell plenty non x86 chips

Intel stopping making their own chip is about as realistic as Apple stopping selling iPhones and just offering a iOS-skinned Android to OEMs.

 

[317342]

I feel like we're living through some sort of subtle re-enactment of the P4/NetBurst days.

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

Interesting.

IMO the future of Intel is as a foundry for other companies' chip designs. The x86 is the protypical cash cow that they will milk until... the cows come home lol

Yeah, I think that's their only option. Their success came with owning their own fabs, which they were able to afford by owning the dominant architecture. If ARM does take over, they can't pivot to it because without a monopoly (or duopoly) they don't have the volumes necessary to sustain their fabs (assuming they could even succeed in ARM designs). The only way to avoid what would eventually become a death spiral is to open the fabs to others in order to keep them running at 100%, regardless of x86's future.

 

[pasamio]

Some of Intel's recent woes also came from owning their own fabs and not being able to keep up with the process improvements that other fabs have been able to achieve. There are plenty of other fab options other than Intel so it'll be interesting to see how much of that existing market they can capture.

3-5 years: Arm runs X86 programs fast and cheap
5-10 years: Majority of software is Arm first

I don't think that's x86 running fast is 3-5 years out, Apple have x86-64 running fast already and Microsoft this year has full support for both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 code. In a sense we're already here with ARM being able to run x86 programs relatively effectively.

The bigger challenge is that Microsoft is really bad at migrating to new architectures, Visual Studio won't even be 64-bit until 2022 let alone adopting ARM support. Hopefully can move a little quicker for native ARM Visual Studio version than almost two decades after the first x86-64 CPU was made available.

 

[wanha]

Yeah, I think that's their only option. Their success came with owning their own fabs, which they were able to afford by owning the dominant architecture. If ARM does take over, they can't pivot to it because without a monopoly (or duopoly) they don't have the volumes necessary to sustain their fabs (assuming they could even succeed in ARM designs). The only way to avoid what would eventually become a death spiral is to open the fabs to others in order to keep them running at 100%, regardless of x86's future.

Well said - and that's exactly the new strategy Intel announced a couple of months back.

 

[GSWForever8]

While announcing its latest chips yesterday, Intel launched another aggressive public attack on Mac devices, focusing on the experience of gaming (via PC Gamer).

Intel yesterday announced two new 11th Generation H-series laptop processors, featuring clock speeds up to 5GHz, Intel Wi-Fi 6/6E, and 1080p gameplay on popular titles, in high-volume, thin designs. Following the announcement, the company took the opportunity to launch another broadside against Apple.

In a press call with Intel's chief performance strategist Ryan Shrout about the new chips, Intel outlined an argument claiming that it is the supposedly poor gaming experience on Mac devices that makes Intel-based Windows devices superior. Intel derided Apple's M1 chip and boasted that most popular video games do not run on macOS.

The company highlighted a poor gaming experience on the Mac when using an emulator or virtual machine, showing a video of the game "Valheim" running poorly in Parallels on a Mac.

Intel further evidenced its claims with a chart showing an Intel-based 16-inch MacBook Pro, using a Core i9 9980HK processor with a AMD Radeon Pro 5600M, compared to a PC with a Core i5 11400H processor with a GeForce RTX 3060. The Intel-branded PC did better in each of the company's selected tests. This led to the claim that Intel-based PCs offer a "better gaming experience than 100% of Mac laptops."

The company then argued that there is a significant overlap between creators and gamers, suggesting that a large proportion of the Mac user base is not sufficiently accommodated for due to limited gaming options on their system.

Intel now appears to be making gaming a key buttress in its argument to persuade customers that its chips in Windows machines present a much better option for consumers than Macs with Apple silicon.

PC Gamer's Alan Dexter asked Shrout during the call if Intel was "burning its bridges with Apple." Shrout responded that "Apple has been very public about moving to its own silicon" and that "it is now a competitor," justifying the company's aggressive marketing campaign.

Since the debut of Apple's M1 chip, Intel has launched an aggressive marketing campaign to disparage Apple's custom silicon and commend its own processors, including highly selective benchmarks, a range of video ads, and a heavily biased website.

Article Link: PCs Offer 'Better Gaming Experience Than 100% of Mac Laptops,' Intel Claims in Ongoing Anti-Apple Campaign

Wait a second. They're just comparing intel to intel. Does that mean that they just exposed how slow they are at innovation?

 

[IceStormNG]

Wait a second. They're just comparing intel to intel. Does that mean that they just exposed how slow they are at innovation?

No.. It's Intel Macs against Intel PCs.
While both are ran by Intel CPUs, no Intel component made the difference in terms of gaming.

They actually point out how much better Windows is for gaming and how much better GPUs non-apple PCs have available. Nothing about Intel. When it comes to gaming, CPU is rarely an issue. It's often the GPU that's limiting. And mostly: The OS. Games are simply not made for macOS except very few.

That's just pure marketing. Marketing rarely makes sense in terms of what they tell you.

 

[diamond.g]

No.. It's Intel Macs against Intel PCs.
While both are ran by Intel CPUs, no Intel component made the difference in terms of gaming.

They actually point out how much better Windows is for gaming and how much better GPUs non-apple PCs have available. Nothing about Intel. When it comes to gaming, CPU is rarely an issue. It's often the GPU that's limiting. And mostly: The OS. Games are simply not made for macOS except very few.

That's just pure marketing. Marketing rarely makes sense in terms of what they tell you.

CPU can matter. In Star wars Jedi Fallen Order my framerate improved by switching from a 1st Gen Threadripper to the 5000 Series Ryzen, using the same GPU.