> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency.
> The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067.
> Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the MacBook Air , it has a 3.2GHz base frequency.
So single core we have: Air 1687, Mini 1682, Pro 1714
And multi core we have: Air 7433, Mini 7067, Pro 6802
I’m not sure what to make of these scores, but it seems wrong that the Mini and Pro significantly underperform the Air in multi core. I find it hard to imagine this benchmark is going to be representative of actual usage given the way the products are positioned, which makes it hard to know how seriously to take the comparisons to other products too.
> When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the MacBook Air outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.
This seems a bit odd too - the A14 iPad Air outperforms all iPad Pro devices?
AFAIK it's pretty common for new macs to spend a while creating an index of its hard drive. For that reason, if you want to run benchmarks, you should generally wait until it's done with that (e.g. an hour or probably less with these speedybois). It might be that the people running the Pro benchmarks didn't wait for that, in their rush to publish the first benchmark. This would be consistent with what we're seeing - the Pro has faster single core performance, but slightly lower multicore, because some of its "background" cores were busy creating the index, while the Air was done with that task.
It may be possible the variations are due to differences in the thermal environment when the tests were conducted. I would expect the pro and mini to beat the air as they should have better thermals, but that may only show up over longer term tests and environmental factors could win out in shorter tests. Just a theory.
The A14 Air just came out and has a brand new CPU. The Pros have much fancier displays, lower pen latency, etc. Subjectively, in most typical use, the Pros already feel like they have more available cycles than iOS apps have got around to soaking up.
Geekbench is a series of extremely short and bursty benchmarks. Because of this, it doesn't really test the steady state speed a system is capable of, it's more testing the peak performance for short periods.
In this view, it's entirely possible that the Air simply did not have time to throttle before the benchmark ran out.
I checked this geekbenchmark with our several different computers on hand, and I can confirm that it's total useless measurements for real world applications or performance.
it's probably <20s short tasks, if you run the CPU/GPU at full load for extended periods the thermals kick in and the M1 Macbook Air without fan will reduce clock speed.
iPad pro - the current 2020 gen iPad pro has A12Z (essentially the same chip as 2018 A12X with extra GPU cores) - significantly older chip than A14. I think there will be an A14 iPad Pro refresh with mini led display in early 2021.
One has to remember that Apple is still selling an Intel mac mini at the top of the range: it likely means something about the performance to expect from M1 vs Intel.
This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years.
For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and not to mention the fan noise.
Looking forward to a version from Apple that is made for actual professionals, but I imagine these introductory M1 based devices are going to be great for the vast majority of people.
Their line from the video about being the highest performance chip in single core appears to be true. This is of course a synthetic benchmark but the single core result is very promising. Note that the single core and multi core scores exceed the top-of-the-line 16” MacBook Pro (9th generation 8-core i9 2.4 ghz). I actually made the call to sell my 16” for the new Air yesterday. It’s looking like a good call. Glad I’m selling my 16” while it still has some value.
This is very interesting and in line with Apple's claims. I am looking forward to some real world numbers for different tasks in the next few weeks and months as native apps become available.
Jonathan Morrison posted a video [0] comparing a 10-core Intel i9 2020 5K iMac with 64GB RAM against an iPhone 12 Mini for 10-bit H.265 HDR video exporting and the iPhone destroyed the iMac exporting the same video, to allegedly the same quality, in ~14 seconds on the iPhone vs 2 minutes on the iMac! And the phone was at ~20% battery without an external power source. Like that is some voodoo and I want to see a lot of real world data but it is pretty damn exciting.
Now whether these extreme speed ups are limited to very specific tasks (such as H.265 acceleration) or are truly general purpose remains to be seen.
If they can be general purpose with some platform specific optimisations that is still freakin' amazing and could easily be a game changer for many types of work providing there is investment into optimising the tools to best utilise Apple Silicon.
Imagine an Apple Silicon specific version of Apple's LLVM/Clang that has 5x or 10x C++ compilation speed up over Intel if there is a way to optimise to similar gains they have been able to get for H.265.
Some very interesting things come to mind and that is before we even get to the supposed battery life benefits as well. Having a laptop that runs faster than my 200+W desktop while getting 15+ hours on battery sounds insane, and perhaps it is, but this is the most excited I have been for general purpose computer performance gains in about a decade.
A lot of people seem to just be picking up on my H.265 example which is fine but that was just an example for one type of work.
As this article shows the overall single-core and multi-core speeds are the real story, not just H.265 video encoding. If these numbers hold true in the real world and not just a screenshot of some benchmark numbers that is something special imho.
Your h265 example is due to the iPhone having a dedicated HW encoder while the iMac was rendering using the CPU. A hardware video encoder is almost always going to be faster and more power efficient than a CPU-based one by definition. However, a CPU encoder offers more flexibility and the possibility of being continually improved to offer better compression ratios.
Generally, HW encoders offer worse quality at smaller fie sizes and are used for real-time streaming, while CPU-based ones are used in offline compression in order to achieve the best possible compression ratios.
This really flips the argument that Mac hardware is overpriced and underpowered on its head. Now Apple computers are a premium product from a performance perspective, as well.
This is salient, and almost upsetting frankly as I (and others?) have been looking for a 'way off' the platform after years of grievance. This is might just be good enough to keep their core platform value in place. It's a shrewd move in their part, it's been a while since we've seen this level of core innovation on their non-iOS offers.
Not quite. You can't synthetically compare one chip to another and draw organic conclusions. Apple computers with M1 don't support the software that I use. That's why I bought a fully spec'd Intel MBP13 today. All this talk about battery life and benchmarks gets flipped on its head when I can't use the product in the real world.
Apple no longer sells computers. You can rent some shiny gizmo from them to run software of their choosing provided by people they deign to allow on their platform and in a manner they approve of¹. It's not really yours anymore.
¹ "But you can still do X". Well, and last year you could still do W, and the year before that V.
They have 5nm chips because they essentially outbid everyone else from doing so at this time and bought all of the production capacity from TSMC for themselves.
They could do that because they've been selling overpriced products.
anandtech has specint numbers for the A14, which should serve as the floor for M1 performance. M1 will (likely) clock higher, has more cores and sustain thermals longer.
I’m also interested in seeing what M1 can do once people get their hands on real hardware running on Mac OS where so many more details can’t be hidden like in iOS, but all signs point to it being an absolute monster.
> We've seen this before: cellphones tend to have simpler libraries that are statically linked, and at least iOS uses a page size that would not be relevant or realistic on a general purpose desktop setup.
This is an interesting thing to say considering that 1. most apps on iOS use large dynamic libraries and 2. Apple silicon Macs run on 16K pages, just like iOS.
This is a pretty good single thread number. It's essentially the same as Zen 3. On the other hand, it's using 5nm rather than 7nm to get there, so 5nm Ryzen is likely to pull ahead in the not too distant future.
The more interesting thing is the power efficiency, which doesn't have that much impact on single thread performance because higher power CPUs don't actually use their entire power budget for a single thread. But that's an impressive multi-threaded score for that TDP. It gets stomped by actual desktop CPUs for the obvious reason, but it has better multi-threaded performance than anything with the same TDP. Though that's also partially because the low-TDP Zen 3 CPUs aren't out yet.
What I'd really like to see is some benchmarks that aren't geekbench.
Geekbench is designed to test CPU's in short bursts to not get them into thermal throttling (this is by design, it is supposed to be CPU test, not cooling test), so I would be wary of Air's results - at least until other benchmarks results are available. MacBook Pro's results on the other hand should be more representative as it has active cooling and can sustain heavy load for longer.
If you still own any Intel stock it is probably good time to dump it. Not only can't they compete with AMD, Apple now started running circles around them all.
I wonder what the world is going to be like when companies own entire stack including all hardware (even things like cameras and displays) and applications (including app stores).
There is going to be no competition as any new player would have to first join an existing stack that keeps tight grip and ensures competition is killed off before gaining momentum.
So, basically, dystopian future with whole world divided into company territories.
I've been holding onto my late 2013 15" MacBook Pro for almost 7 years now and it's wild to see it get absolutely out-spec'd by the MacBook Air. It's been a long time, but I've always convinced myself that I'm not missing out on that big of a processor improvement. I do a lot of audio work with it, but even then it doesn't always feel like a slow experience.
Can somebody explain how is M1 going to work on larger GPU tasks (rendering, encoding etc) with it's memory bandwidth
M1 total memory bandwidth is 68.2 GB/s (128 bit LPDDR4x-4267)
AMD Radeon Pro 5600m memory bandwidth is 394.2 GB/s (2048 bit HBM2)
That said, I am definitely waiting for at least one generation to pass before I jump on the train.
I’ve been through this before. It will be great, but Apple is a master at smoke & mirrors. Things will not go as smoothly as the sizzle reels make it seem.
M1 is comparable to baseline Mac Pro on multicore performance and better on single core performance. And several thousand dollars cheaper (and smaller).
I'm curious for Windows users what can we hope for from Arm/AMD? It's kind of depressing seeing how well Apple and their ecosystem is coming along. Being able to run apps natively on your laptop sounds amazing. Android and Windows are far away from that level of cohesion. There's Phone Link, but running apps using that is clunky and slow.
I think there is also a moral angle that disturbs Windows fans to this as well: This is validation that Apple's heavy-handed walled-garden approach can, in fact, work and even sometimes beat an open ecosystem. That's freaky.
I think nobody commented this, but Apple has just made the Mac lineup unrepairable. They will need to have a really high, almost perfect quality control.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065026&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065026&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065026&p=4
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|5 years ago|reply
> The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067.
> Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the MacBook Air , it has a 3.2GHz base frequency.
So single core we have: Air 1687, Mini 1682, Pro 1714
And multi core we have: Air 7433, Mini 7067, Pro 6802
I’m not sure what to make of these scores, but it seems wrong that the Mini and Pro significantly underperform the Air in multi core. I find it hard to imagine this benchmark is going to be representative of actual usage given the way the products are positioned, which makes it hard to know how seriously to take the comparisons to other products too.
> When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the MacBook Air outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.
This seems a bit odd too - the A14 iPad Air outperforms all iPad Pro devices?
[+] [-] m12k|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tuna-Fish|5 years ago|reply
In this view, it's entirely possible that the Air simply did not have time to throttle before the benchmark ran out.
[+] [-] andy_threos_io|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|5 years ago|reply
Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?
[+] [-] dharma1|5 years ago|reply
iPad pro - the current 2020 gen iPad pro has A12Z (essentially the same chip as 2018 A12X with extra GPU cores) - significantly older chip than A14. I think there will be an A14 iPad Pro refresh with mini led display in early 2021.
[+] [-] Cabal|5 years ago|reply
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=Macmini9%2C1
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=MacBookPro17%2...
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...
it looks like they're all in the same ballpark (i.e. the Air is not leading others, just comparable).
[+] [-] gregoriol|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maz1b|5 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and not to mention the fan noise.
Looking forward to a version from Apple that is made for actual professionals, but I imagine these introductory M1 based devices are going to be great for the vast majority of people.
[+] [-] zdw|5 years ago|reply
As another datapoint Ian (of Anandtech) estimated that the M1 would need to be clocked at 3.25Ghz to match Zen 3, and these systems are showing a 3.2Ghz clock: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1326516048309460992
[+] [-] WoodenChair|5 years ago|reply
You can see all Air results so far here: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=MacBookAir10%2...
[+] [-] satysin|5 years ago|reply
Jonathan Morrison posted a video [0] comparing a 10-core Intel i9 2020 5K iMac with 64GB RAM against an iPhone 12 Mini for 10-bit H.265 HDR video exporting and the iPhone destroyed the iMac exporting the same video, to allegedly the same quality, in ~14 seconds on the iPhone vs 2 minutes on the iMac! And the phone was at ~20% battery without an external power source. Like that is some voodoo and I want to see a lot of real world data but it is pretty damn exciting.
Now whether these extreme speed ups are limited to very specific tasks (such as H.265 acceleration) or are truly general purpose remains to be seen.
If they can be general purpose with some platform specific optimisations that is still freakin' amazing and could easily be a game changer for many types of work providing there is investment into optimising the tools to best utilise Apple Silicon.
Imagine an Apple Silicon specific version of Apple's LLVM/Clang that has 5x or 10x C++ compilation speed up over Intel if there is a way to optimise to similar gains they have been able to get for H.265.
Some very interesting things come to mind and that is before we even get to the supposed battery life benefits as well. Having a laptop that runs faster than my 200+W desktop while getting 15+ hours on battery sounds insane, and perhaps it is, but this is the most excited I have been for general purpose computer performance gains in about a decade.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUkDku_Qt5c
Edit:
A lot of people seem to just be picking up on my H.265 example which is fine but that was just an example for one type of work.
As this article shows the overall single-core and multi-core speeds are the real story, not just H.265 video encoding. If these numbers hold true in the real world and not just a screenshot of some benchmark numbers that is something special imho.
[+] [-] joefourier|5 years ago|reply
Generally, HW encoders offer worse quality at smaller fie sizes and are used for real-time streaming, while CPU-based ones are used in offline compression in order to achieve the best possible compression ratios.
[+] [-] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
I think I would be excited if it were not built by Apple. That functionally means it’s only going to be in Apple products at a 300% markup.
[+] [-] faitswulff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmrose|5 years ago|reply
We could even compare some cross platform apps across both OS and cpu and see how the total package performs.
[+] [-] torbital|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] totalZero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrysoprace|5 years ago|reply
It's not really Apples to Apples (even if it is in name), so to speak.
[+] [-] silly-silly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gazelleeatslion|5 years ago|reply
Last thing I need is a MacBook Air equivalent with an unnecessarily loud and annoying fan.
[+] [-] Existenceblinks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrec|5 years ago|reply
Apple no longer sells computers. You can rent some shiny gizmo from them to run software of their choosing provided by people they deign to allow on their platform and in a manner they approve of¹. It's not really yours anymore.
¹ "But you can still do X". Well, and last year you could still do W, and the year before that V.
[+] [-] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wishysgb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AntiImperialist|5 years ago|reply
They could do that because they've been selling overpriced products.
[+] [-] ProAm|5 years ago|reply
This doesn't excuse years behavior not respecting their customers on (price + performance) divided by bugs.
[+] [-] userbinator|5 years ago|reply
https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curpost...
https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost...
Personally I'm not convinced, until I see something like SPECint/SPECfp results.
[+] [-] theluketaylor|5 years ago|reply
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
I’m also interested in seeing what M1 can do once people get their hands on real hardware running on Mac OS where so many more details can’t be hidden like in iOS, but all signs point to it being an absolute monster.
[+] [-] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
This is an interesting thing to say considering that 1. most apps on iOS use large dynamic libraries and 2. Apple silicon Macs run on 16K pages, just like iOS.
[+] [-] jeffbee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aphroz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|5 years ago|reply
The more interesting thing is the power efficiency, which doesn't have that much impact on single thread performance because higher power CPUs don't actually use their entire power budget for a single thread. But that's an impressive multi-threaded score for that TDP. It gets stomped by actual desktop CPUs for the obvious reason, but it has better multi-threaded performance than anything with the same TDP. Though that's also partially because the low-TDP Zen 3 CPUs aren't out yet.
What I'd really like to see is some benchmarks that aren't geekbench.
[+] [-] terramex|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|5 years ago|reply
Power/thermal management looks very good - low heat and long battery life without sacrificing performance.
Presumably the Air will have to throttle performance for some workloads, but not in this benchmark apparently.
[+] [-] lmilcin|5 years ago|reply
I wonder what the world is going to be like when companies own entire stack including all hardware (even things like cameras and displays) and applications (including app stores).
There is going to be no competition as any new player would have to first join an existing stack that keeps tight grip and ensures competition is killed off before gaining momentum.
So, basically, dystopian future with whole world divided into company territories.
[+] [-] bichiliad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andy_threos_io|5 years ago|reply
AMD Radeon Pro 5600m memory bandwidth is 394.2 GB/s (2048 bit HBM2)
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-pro-5600m.c3612
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
That said, I am definitely waiting for at least one generation to pass before I jump on the train.
I’ve been through this before. It will be great, but Apple is a master at smoke & mirrors. Things will not go as smoothly as the sizzle reels make it seem.
[+] [-] throwaway888abc|5 years ago|reply
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4654605?baselin...
Opinion: Pretty and impressive story
[+] [-] gaul|5 years ago|reply
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4306696?baselin...
Single core similar and multicore 50% better for MacBook.
[+] [-] nostromo|5 years ago|reply
https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/457
M1 is comparable to baseline Mac Pro on multicore performance and better on single core performance. And several thousand dollars cheaper (and smaller).
[+] [-] boromi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyrksoft|5 years ago|reply