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Apple needs to do better than this for desk top performance. I am a little scared now.

EDIT: I retract this statement due to all the negative reactions. But, Apple still needs to do better than this for desk top performance. I am not scared though.
Check the scores for an i5 Macbook Pro.

Remember, this is under emulation. If it already performs as good as an i5 under emulation, native speed will be fine.
 
Apple is intentionally underplaying their hand here. They're giving developers a pathway to translate applications over to Apple Silicon, but are intentionally giving out underperforming chipsets as to withhold the true processing power that they have in their pipeline of Apple Silicon. Considering the A12Z is just an A12X with an extra GPU core enabled, and the A12X is from two years ago, they absolutely have something like an A14Z internally that does laps around this 12Z.

Keeping in mind even an A12Z is still technically and iPad Pro chip, I'm sure we will see additional "branches" of their A chipsets too in the future, similar to how we got the "X" chips in the iPads a few years ago. We would probably see something like the A12Y (just making this up as an example) for usage in the iMac or Mac Pro.
 
Apple likes to keep everything discrete and won’t put their name on something unless they are confident that it is ready for the market. Once they are officially released in consumer grade hardware is when we will see Apple Silicons true potential
 
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1) down-clocked slower than iPad Pro!
2) Running benchmark in rosetta
3) Only using 4 out of 8 cores for some reason
4) not the chip that will be used in macs

These benchmarks mean absolutely nothing.

It does tell us that roughly 30% goes to emulation overhead for Geekbench compared to iOS scores... Not sure if they are weighted the same way though.

"3) Only using 4 out of 8 cores for some reason"

Isn't that just big.LITTLE ? Does the iPad actually utilize all cores when running Geekbench? Wouldn't even be worth it (from scheduling / emulation) perspective to split tasks between those cores on the fly?

EDIT: toned down arrogance, made it more conversational.
 
I don't get the negative reactions here. First, the only thing interesting is the single core performance (because they will put a lot more cores in the real deal later this year, if it's just because they can).
And then keep in mind that this is Geekbench running on x86 emulation (Rosetta), on an old CPU design that is not optimized, on pre-production hardware, on a first beta of the OS. And given all that, the numbers are stunning. We're talking mid tier Intel Core i3 preformance here y'all. Woah.
 
Wow, this is seriously impressive. Essentially, Apple's 2018-era compute can run translated x86-64 instructions at quad-core, mobile-class Haswell (e.g. i7-4770HQ) speeds. And this is with a beta translation layer, on a beta operating system, without all cores properly utilized. If they can get those numbers up to quad-core, desktop-class Skylake (e.g. i7-6700) levels for iMac 24" and MacBook Pro 13.3–14" launches this fall, I think that would be more than adequate. (And obviously, we should expect native ARM app performance to be a lot higher.)
 
The move away from Intel is a solution in search of a problem to solve.

Exactly, rather than simply putting competent thermals in their products, they’re doubling down on their own hubris.

The Mac lineup has been one misstep after another, I don’t believe in them to get this right.

This will create more problems than it solves, not the least of which being another pain-point with the incompatibility to run Windows natively.
 
It is depressing benchmarks where released and even more so that people seem unable to understand this CPU will never make it into a shipping Mac and that we are benchmarking an emulated application.
 
Also would like to see Cinebench scores. From what I have read, this is dumbed down chip. I am no fan of moving to ARM, but IF the performance is there and some way to continue to use bootcamp, then ok. I have W10 installed in BootCamp and use it sometimes for playing games. I get 60FPS in Gears 5 on Radeon Pro 580X. The iMac monitor only supports 60Hz, so no big deal there.

There's no way you can run Windows 10 in Bootcamp with this thing. Microsoft doesn't sell Windows on Arm to regular customers, only to OEM's, so your only option would be emulation which will be really slow.
 
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It does tell us that roughly 30% goes to emulation overhead for Geekbench compared to iOS scores... Not sure if they are weighted the same way though.

"3) Only using 4 out of 8 cores for some reason"

It's called big.LITTLE, the cores not in use are the energy-efficient so they won't give a gigantic boost (and likely using them would just make emulation overhead larger).
Some people don't understand the reason. I prefer 1 core for os, 1 core apps, burst when needed 2 more core.
 
It does tell us that roughly 30% goes to emulation overhead for Geekbench compared to iOS scores... Not sure if they are weighted the same way though.

"3) Only using 4 out of 8 cores for some reason"

It's called big.LITTLE, the cores not in use are the energy efficient so they won't give a gigantic boost (and likely using them would just make emulation overhead larger).

Just 30% is blowing my mind, usually you're in the range of 50 to 100% overhead for x86 emulation on ARM.
 
You are so right; if Apple does decide to launch a 2-year old design CPU, run it on just 4 of the 8 cores and under-clock it slightly and run everything through Rosetta then this benchmark will support your musings.

Many hold a view that Apple will not do any of the above. But you never know, you could be right.

You do realise 4 of the 8 cores are low-power, high-efficiency cores not meant for demanding tasks like a benchmark?

While not conclusive by any means, these results give an indication of the kind of performance hit you might encounter when running non-native apps through the Rosetta translation layer, which was to be expected.

I just hope Apple makes the process easy to port apps.
 
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So, these benchmarks are meaningless, being based upon old chips.

That said, 811 average is 73% of native performance for emulated (maybe a bit higher, if 2.4GHz vs 2.5GHz).

In single thread, it matches:

iMac (27-inch Late 2012) Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz (4 cores)

In multi-core, which is limited to the good cores, so 4 threads, it matches:

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012) Intel Core i7-3720QM @ 2.6 GHz (4 cores)
MacBook Air (Early 2020) Intel Core i5-1030NG7 @ 1.1 GHz (4 cores)

Although these will have had 8 threads.

So the A12Z, emulating x86, is already as fast as the most recent MacBookAir in multi-thread (although ST for this one is 1070).

Add 20% (A13) and 20% (A14) and the next MBA-ARM is going to be far far faster - and that might be 8C as well!
 
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It does tell us that roughly 30% goes to emulation overhead for Geekbench compared to iOS scores... Not sure if they are weighted the same way though.

"3) Only using 4 out of 8 cores for some reason"

Isn't that just big.LITTLE ? Does the iPad actually utilize all cores when running Geekbench? Wouldn't even be worth it (from scheduling / emulation) perspective to split tasks between those cores on the fly?

EDIT: toned down arrogance, made it more conversational.

On the ipad it uses all cores, including the low power.

Also it’s not big.little. Big.little is the Arm version of heterogenous cores, and it works quite differently in terms of how it decides to use powerful and efficient cores, which cores it can run simultaneously, etc.
 
Really underwhelming results,

Quite the contrary, numbers suggests that Rosetta gets >70% of native performance, quite impressive. But also understandable that this time, no endian-swapping is involved (compared to PPC on x86 back in the days).

As for the HW, 2 old chip not designed for the task at hand not even using it's full potential....
 
Way better than I expected. Already scoring broadly in line with the scores for a 2018 Mac mini with a 4 core i3 at 3.6 GHz, and as lots of other people have said, this isn't a desktop chip, it's drawing less power, runs at a much lower clock speed, has half it's cores turned off and is running emulated code.

What it doesn't tell us is how well Apple can repurpose their chips from a power-constrained portable environment to a heat constrained desktop one, or what effect the change to Apple silicon will have on end user prices. That last point worries me, as the change is going to be over 2 years. If own-brand CPUs blow away Intel on price and performance, how will Apple have half their range with them and half without?
 
You all thought amazing results were going to be seen, you all thought Apple wouldn't actually think people would try and benchmark. Lol at all of you wanting more and more benchmarks like they will tell you anything.



This is the kind of response that makes you appreciate how little knowledge so many members here actually have of what is happening. And there will be more of these comments to come in this thread, many more.

If you were to judge Intel Macs by the DTK at the time (a Pentium 4… not even a Pentium D dual-core, as I recall), they would've looked pretty poor. Rather inefficient and slow.
 
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