[LunarAurora]

If I understand correctly, CPU clock speed is really relevant only for bursts in CPU use. Any meaningful steadying of processing speed at that peak,or near it, seems to be a question of power efficiency and cooling in tandem.

So now if Apple is well ahead of the competition in power efficiency, and if, on top of that, the Aijet is really a revolution in (silent?) cooling, then we have here a maximization of the value of all those Ghz.

As an amateur computer musician, this is exactly what I need: a continuous silent performance at a "budget" price.

[toast0]

There's a couple wrinkles here. For one, power efficiency varies with temperature, keeping chips cool, increases their efficiency, although you'd need a lot of data to determine if watts spent on cooling were comparable to watts saved by being cool at a given performance level.

The other is Apple chips target a lower clock rate than Intel and AMD do for laptop chips, this is a tradeoff. You get better perf/watt at lower clock rates, and a lower targer design can be smaller[1] and lower power. OTOH, you miss out on the top end of performance for those willing to power and cool the beast. It's a good tradeoff for Apple, who never provided ample cooling for their Intel based laptops, but it's hard to market for Intel and AMD when PC laptop makers do want to sell some devices that can clock to the moon all day if users want it. AMD is expirementing with their compact cores as power efficient cores in some laptop skus, so we'll see something there; Intel is going with the BIG.little approach of less capable little cores, rather than just clock limited little cores.

[1] see AMD's Zen4c which is about half the size as a regular Zen4 for the core+L1+L2, L3 cache footprint remains the same for a given size

[jeroenhd]

On many laptops you can disable boosting speeds and lock down the frequency (thermals permitting). I don't know if Apple's devices allow for such measures, but close-to-constant performance without fan noise can be a matter of configuration.

You can try running these chips at their boost clock all the time by attaching coolers, but the hardware wasn't designed for that and neither was the software. It's easier (and more power efficient) to clock down if you care about maintaining a set speed. With a battery capacity designed for short bursts, you'll also lose out on battery life if you decide to crank the hardware.

The Macbook Air and its competition (MS Surface etc.) are completely silent because they are fanless, and I don't expect their performance to be inadequate for anything but the most CPU intensive tasks. The Airjet will add some airflow, so while the difference may be minjmal, it'll always end up louder than before.