[tyleo]

These processors are good all around. The P cores kick butt too.

I ran a performance test back in October comparing M4 laptops against high-end Windows desktops, and the results showed the M-series chips coming out on top.

https://www.tyleo.com/blog/compiler-performance-on-2025-devi...

[murderfs]

This is likely more of a Windows filesystem benchmark than anything else: there are fundamental restrictions on how fast file access can be on Windows due to filesystem filter drivers. I would bet that if you tried again with Linux (or even in WSL2, as long as you stay in the WSL filesystem image), you'd see significantly improved results.

[philistine]

Which still wouldn’t beat the Apple Silicon chips. Apple rules the roost.

[etrvic]

From your article it seems like you benchmark compile times. I am not an expert on the subject, but I don't see the point in comparing ARM compilation times with Intel. There are probably different tricks involved in compilation and the instructions set are not the same.

[tom_]

I've often been suspicious of this too, having noticed that building one of my projects on Apple Silicon is way quicker than I'd expect relative to x64, given relative test suite run times and relative PassMark numbers.

I don't know how to set up a proper cross compile setup on Apple Silicon, so I tried compiling the same code on 2 macOS systems and 1 Linux system, running the corresponding test suite, and getting some numbers. It's not exactly conclusive, and if I was doing this properly properly then I'd try a bit harder to make everything match up, but it does indeed look like using clang to build x64 code is more expensive - for whatever reason - than using it to build ARM code.

Systems, including clang version and single-core PassMark:

    M4 Max Mac Studio, clang-1700.6.3.2 (PassMark: 5000)
    x64 i7-5557U Macbook Pro, clang-1500.1.0.2.5 (PassMark: 2290)
    x64 AMD 2990WX Linux desktop, clang-20 (PassMark: 2431)

Single thread build times (in seconds). Code is a bunch of C++, plus some FOSS dependencies that are C, everything built with optimisation enabled:

    Mac Studio: 365
    x64 Macbook Pro: 1705
    x64 Linux: 1422

(Linux time excludes build times for some of the FOSS dependencies, which on Linux come prebuilt via the package manager.)

Single thread test suite times (in seconds), an approximate indication of relative single thread performance:

    Mac Studio: 120
    x64 Macbook Pro: 350
    x64 Linux: 309

Build time/test time makes it look like ARM clang is an outlier:

    Mac Studio: 3.04
    x64 Macbook Pro: 4.87
    x64 Linux: 4.60

(The Linux value is flattered here, as it excludes dependency build times, as above. The C dependencies don't add much when building in parallel, but, looking at the above numbers, I wonder if they'd add up to enough when built in series to make the x64 figures the same.)

[tyleo]

Most of my targets aren’t machine code. Typescript emits JavaScript and C# emits IL. I didn’t check the exact output, but these are hardware independent and should be more or less the same.

[wpm]

My M4 mini is probably the fastest computer/watt in my home. And it was the cheapest.

Not even a bad little gaming machine on the rare occasion

[cubefox]

Here is a more recent comparison with Intel's new Panther Lake chips: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/cpus/panther-lake-is-int...

[dagmx]

Which still come out behind other than multi core, while using substantially more power.

Those panther lake comparisons are from the top end PTL to the base M series. If they were compared to their comparative SKUs they’d be even further behind.

[sys_64738]

Are the Intel systems plugged in when running those tests? Usually when Apple machines do the tests then the difference between battery/plugged in is small if any.