Beating the integrated graphics in an i7 is nothing, especially on the older chips. Intel integrated has never been about performance. It really isn't saying much when comparing to the 10th gen chips. They use the old Iris graphics. Apple didn't adopt the 11th gen which are actually contemporary to the M1 and use an entirely new integrated gpu.
Those chips will probably not be out until later this year and will take another couple months to show up in laptops. By then we will see the midrange versions of the M1. In Macbook pros.
I agree wholeheartedly, but a small correction: those chips are available now if you're very very lucky. For example, the latest ROG Zephyrus is available from my neighborhood Best Buy. The M1 has been readily available for months, and we'll probably see Apple's new pro chips by the time AMD's supply chain issues are sorted.
My bet is Ryzen will be slightly competitive this time around (at maybe double the power usage), but Apple will increase performance by 10-20% per year and eventually AMD will start lagging behind.
Not only is your post an example of the Moving goalposts fallacy [0].
Is also an apples to orange comparison.
The M1 was being compared to an i7, and that was I was responding to.
It will also not "be interesting", since if we part from "M1 does not beat current discrete GPUs" as per grandparent comment, it will obviously not beat an upcoming one, whatever the wattage will be.
4th generation Ryzen parts are expected to replace their Vega-based integrated GPU with an RDNA2 integrated GPU. That comment was not about discrete GPUs.
It is an entry level chip. And it’s a fantastic one.
But a comparison is a comparison even if lopsided, and when people are pushing this as “As fast as high end Intel”, it’s going to be squared against high end intel setups with discrete GPUs.
The M1 is absolutely fantastic. But it does absolutely fall short in some (arguably small) ways. Pointing those out isn’t unfair.
I think they might be referring to the power used by the chip, which is indeed comparable to entry-level chips.
The thought is that if it runs this fast right now, imagine what it’ll be like when you put a big heat sink and fan on it and let it use 100w or something, on a Mac Pro. And more - this is a first generation product. Imagine what the second generation will be like.
I think people are just excited for the possibilities. We’ll see how it all turns out, but it really does seem promising.
Actually, I agree with the sibling commenter that power consumption is not a good predictor of whether a chip is entry level.
Estimate of TDP for the M1 silicon are about 20-24W [0].
The i7-1185G7E can be offered at anywhere within 12-28W TDP [1].
This 12-28W figure is exactly the same for the i3-1115G4E [2].
Yes, there's some trickery in Intel's TDP numbers, but based on Anandtech's results for that i7 [3], it looks like lower TDP means that you can't burst for as long.
The i3-530 is a 10-year old desktop CPU, so of course it uses more power. The M1 can go up to 39w, which is comparable to the Ryzen you mentioned. I didn’t know either, and looked it up before commenting to make sure I didn’t make any wildly incorrect claims.
The M1 is an incredible achievement, but let’s try to remain honest about the numbers.
The i3 desktop CPU is an entry level CPU because it can still handle entry level workloads, consuming a lot more energy than the state of the art because providing high end performances while consuming less energy than the competitors is not worth the entry level segment money.
Entry level means (IMO) good enough for as little money as possible in a non pro field (as in: your salary do not depend on the performances of the device)
M1 Macs are not in that segment.
> The M1 is an incredible achievement, but let’s try to remain honest about the numbers.
> 1) macs are not entry level, entry level is a 350$ laptop mounting an i3
It depends on how you see it:
The M1 is the entry level chip for the whole upcoming M-series, this is a logical FACT.
It's hard to estimate how much an M1 costs but I would say it's closer to an i5 than to an i3 simply because the price tags can afford it.
Apple could make a profitable $350 plastic laptop with some kind of watered down m1 chip, they just don't want to.
> 2) it doesn't matter unless you work with the laptop sitting on the bare skin of your legs
It's in the name.... "LAP" "TOP", regardless this is not about temperate, this is about efficiency. The 18 hours battery life works both on and off your laps ;).
They're similar, but it is not "basically the a14". This is like saying that an Intel Core i9 is basically the same as a Core i5. Sure it has a lot of similarities, but they have very different thermal and performance characteristics.
>My high end Dell XPS was $2600, and the M1 Air blows it away for half the price.
Isn't "blowing it away" a little hyperbole? An XPS with 1185G7 has around ~10% worse single core and ~25% worse multi-core CPU performance than the M1. An improvement sure, but not the leap some people make it out to be.
I don't notice a 10% worse single core performance, but what I do notice is going OOM because the Air is limited to 16GB RAM (base model 8GB is personally unusable in 2021). Or being limited to 1 external display due to the design of the M1.
Apple silicon needs to support at least 2 external displays before I can consider one and I'm honestly surprised they currently do not. The next generation of Apple chips might be useful, particularly if linux kernel support improves too. A 2023 Macbook Pro has a lot of potential.
The XPS 13 is also limited to 16 GB of RAM, and it's actually more expensive than a M1 Macbook Air, so I'm not sure why you're using that as a comparison. Even if you bump the Air to 16gb of RAM and 512GB SSD it's still $50 cheaper than the comparable XPS 13 which is $1499, which btw has a worse 1920x1200 screen vs the 2560x1600 one on the Air.
I'm not sure what source you're using for performance. But at least with Geekbench 5 results it's not as close as you're saying. The M1 Macbook Air scores 1699 in single core, and 7362 in multi-core[1]. The Intel Core i7-1185G7 scores 1446 in single core and 4924 in multi-core[2]. That's about 18% better single-core and 50% better multi-core performance, for me that's a pretty big difference.
This isn't true, I have an XPS 13 (9310) with 32 GB of RAM. You can also get the XPS 13 with a 4k screen, although I do not understand why you would. 1920x1200 is already much higher DPI than I care for, 2560x1600 and 4k are just a battery drain.
I'm going off my own benchmarks using Geekbench 5, where the M1 scored 1700 single core and 7500 multi core, and the 1185G7 scored 1550/6000 multi core. (There are people with better results than this on Geekbench as well.)
I wasn't making an argument about the price by the way, I do understand the Air is cheaper, but in my opinion it is cheaper because it is a lesser quality device with key functionality missing. Of course, for some people the Macbook Air is the best value because they don't need or care about these things. Which is totally OK, but having used both devices both the Air and the MBP are non-starters for me.
As I said, I hope future revisions can improve things and be more competitive.
Yes, it isn't only about pure performance numbers. Better performance with much lower heat, much better battery life. "Blows it away." Every laptop seems to have a drawback or two however.
Which just has a bigger storage, but the performance is the same as in the cheapest one. There’s no point taking the most expensive option and try to invalidate the results because of it.
And yes, for development sub $1000 laptops are entry level.
MacBook Air costs 3x the price of a Dell Inspiron. The Mac laptops seem to be great (I've never owned one, have ordered one though), but they're not entry level. It might be Apple's entry level, but it's not the markets entry level.
For someone who is using Photoshop as a professional, $999 really is not far off from entry-level. People easily spend $2500+ on computers for professional work that requires high performance. Sure you can use a $350 Dell Inspiron for Photoshop work, but it's not going to be very practical. Performance, battery life, and even the actual screen will be pretty poor at that price point.
1) Is an entry level chip matching a high-end's performance.
2) it does so in around a 5th of 6th of the thermal workload.