# Apple's M1-Based MacBook Air Benchmarked



## AleksandarK (Nov 12, 2020)

When Apple announced that they are going to switch their Mac lineup from Intel-based x86 processors to the custom "Apple Silicon," everyone was wondering how the new processors will look and perform. To everyone's luck, Apple has just a few days ago announced its first Apple Silicon custom processor for MacBook. The M1, as the company calls it, is their first processor designed for higher-power and performance tasks The M1 features eight CPU cores (four high-performance and four-high efficiency) paired with eight cores dedicated to the graphics. On the die, there is also a 16-core neural engine made to accelerate machine learning tasks found in the new applications.

Today, we are getting the first GeekBench 5 CPU benchmarks that showcase just how far Apple has come with its custom design. What we have is the M1 processor found in MacBook Air. This Mac model features a passive cooling system, cooling a CPU with a base frequency of 3.2 GHz. The system scored 1719 points in the single-core result, and 6967 points in the multi-core result. The single-threaded results measure itself with some of the highest-end offerings from Intel and AMD, while the multi-threaded results are very good given the mix and match of small and big cores.


 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


----------



## Sandbo (Nov 12, 2020)

These are actually very good numbers for a laptop: 
My AMD Ryzen 3600X desktop is ST 1251 and MT 6973.
A laptop with AMD 4900HS is ST 1091 and MT 7075.
More: https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks/

I guess at the beginning the software support might be limited, but this suddenly makes Apple's laptop a high performance option, especially at $999.
I had been discouraged by the fact that paying a premium for mac is giving me overpriced, outdated spec, guess this has changed now.


----------



## Metroid (Nov 12, 2020)

Incredible st performance.


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 12, 2020)

Geekbench is worthless for comparing between different architectures.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

Here is why Geekbench is dogshit :








Every time other SoCs inch closer to Apple's the app gets updated and a chasm appears again between their chips and everyone else's.

In 4.4 there was less than 10% difference between A13 and Exynos 990, in 5 that somehow became a colossal 50%. This happens every single time a new version appears, without exception. Only an idiot would take these numbers for granted and not realize that this benchmark is always optimized specifically for Apple's chips.


----------



## sweetsuicide (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> Geekbench is worthless for comparing between different architectures.


I totally agree with you. This is AArch64, not the day-to-day application performance.


----------



## dyonoctis (Nov 12, 2020)

Let's just wait  for some leaks of that new R23 cinbench . Or just next week even.


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 12, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> Here is why Geekbench is dogshit :
> 
> View attachment 175372View attachment 175373
> 
> ...


That's starting to look like another Userbenchmark


----------



## Fourstaff (Nov 12, 2020)

Wonder if there are any other cross platform benchmarks we can use with high degree of confidence. A lot of people seem to dislike Geekbench.


----------



## thevoiceofreason (Nov 12, 2020)

Fourstaff said:


> Wonder if there are any other cross platform benchmarks we can use with high degree of confidence. A lot of people seem to dislike Geekbench.



You mean like for example SPECint, here showing Apple's previous A14 chip powering Iphone 12?






I'm very curious about Cinebench R23 results of the M1.


----------



## Fourstaff (Nov 12, 2020)

thevoiceofreason said:


> You mean like for example SPECint, here showing Apple's previous A14 chip powering Iphone 12?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



There are also people who like to say SPECint is not representative of real world usage.


----------



## lemonadesoda (Nov 12, 2020)

Real-world figures needed.  Without a doubt Apple is using whatever PR and benchmarking tricks they can in order to make M1 look good. The question is: todays application software, how does it perform? And I don't mean having the whole CPU and memory space dedicated to one application, but making it work with multitasking or memory constrained typical use situation: e.g. Right now I have 50 tabs open in Chrome instance 1, another 50 or so tabs in Chrome instance 2, Chromium with another 30 tabs there, skype, MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, and then some.  How the OS handles memory once it has so shoe-horn into virtual, and how even simple applications can get bogged down with multiple instances, is what is of interest to me.  Then, battery life on that.

I'm hopeful M1 will deliver. But a synthetic benchmark optimised for strange workloads where there are different codepaths depending on what CPU registers/functions are available, isn't going to cut it with me.


----------



## Blueberries (Nov 12, 2020)

I've never used Geekbench myself but that ST performance


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Fourstaff said:


> There are also people who like to say SPECint is not representative of real world usage.


And what are the usual reasons to say so? 
The different subscores come from very relevant performance metrics, like compression/decompression, h264, code compiling etc.


----------



## Fourstaff (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> And what are the usual reasons to say so?
> The different subscores come from very relevant performance metrics, like compression/decompression, h264, code compiling etc.



Real life benchmarks uses a mixture of workloads etc etc. Everyone have their preferred reason to disregard a certain benchmark, but once you have enough of them there is really not much left but to accept.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> And what are the usual reasons to say so?
> The different subscores come from very relevant performance metrics, like compression/decompression, h264, code compiling etc.



Is code compilation relevant to most people ?


----------



## Imsochobo (Nov 12, 2020)

Fourstaff said:


> There are also people who like to say SPECint is not representative of real world usage.



Yes, It's not.
It's a integer benchmark.

"designed to test exclusively the integer performance of the system. "

AVX, AVX2, AVX512 is not included at all.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

Imsochobo said:


> Yes, It's not.
> It's a integer benchmark.
> 
> "designed to test exclusively the integer performance of the system. "
> ...



Incidentally or not Apple's cores are known for featuring a very wide integer pipeline unlike most other CPUs out which usually have wider floating point pipelines. What's also interesting is that SPECint is Apple's darling for a very long time, they used to make comparisons based on it since PowerPC days.


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Fourstaff said:


> Real life benchmarks uses a mixture of workloads etc etc. Everyone have their preferred reason to disregard a certain benchmark, but once you have enough of them there is really not much left but to accept.





Vya Domus said:


> Is code compilation relevant to most people ?


You can just dismiss the sub-benchmarks that you don’t find relevant and see who comes on top (it’s apple). 


Imsochobo said:


> Yes, It's not.
> It's a integer benchmark.
> 
> "designed to test exclusively the integer performance of the system. "
> ...


Then look at other benchmarks from the SPEC suite, like SPECfp, which can be compiled with whatever AVX support you wish.


----------



## pat-roner (Nov 12, 2020)

Say what you want about Geekbench, but I found this quote from Andrei interesting;

_There’s been a lot of criticism about more common benchmark suites such as GeekBench, but frankly I've found these concerns or arguments to be quite unfounded. The only factual differences between workloads in SPEC and workloads in GB5 is that the latter has less outlier tests which are memory-heavy, meaning it’s more of a CPU benchmark whereas SPEC has more tendency towards CPU+DRAM. _

I can only say that I'm really excited about the new M1 chips. As a lover of technology I'm all for new technology, and seeing people hate on a product they will never buy is beyond me. 

PCMasterrace amirite?/s


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> You can just dismiss the sub-benchmarks that you don’t find relevant



That has to be ironic, SPECint has absolutely nothing to do with the real world, it is purely a synthetic benchmark :


00.perlbenchCPerl Programming LanguageDerived from Perl V5.8.7. The workload includes SpamAssassin, MHonArc (an email indexer), and specdiff (SPEC's tool that checks benchmark outputs).401.bzip2CCompressionJulian Seward's bzip2 version 1.0.3, modified to do most work in memory, rather than doing I/O.403.gccCC CompilerBased on gcc Version 3.2, generates code for Opteron.429.mcfCCombinatorial OptimizationVehicle scheduling. Uses a network simplex algorithm (which is also used in commercial products) to schedule public transport.445.gobmkCArtificial Intelligence: go playingPlays the game of Go, a simply described but deeply complex game.456.hmmerCSearch Gene SequenceProtein sequence analysis using profile hidden Markov models (profile HMMs)458.sjengCArtificial Intelligence: chess playingA highly-ranked chess program that also plays several chess variants.462.libquantumCPhysics: Quantum ComputingSimulates a quantum computer, running Shor's polynomial-time factorization algorithm.464.h264refCVideo CompressionA reference implementation of H.264/AVC, encodes a videostream using 2 parameter sets. The H.264/AVC standard is expected to replace MPEG2471.omnetppC++Discrete Event SimulationUses the OMNet++ discrete event simulator to model a large Ethernet campus network.473.astarC++Path-finding AlgorithmsPathfinding library for 2D maps, including the well known A* algorithm.483.xalancbmkC++XML Processing

Nearly all of those are completely irrelevant to real world workloads performed by your average user. Even for me, someone who knows what all of those tests entail it still means nothing.



pat-roner said:


> and seeing people hate on a product they will never buy is beyond me.



Huh ? Wouldn't it be strange if I were to hate on something that I will buy ?


----------



## pat-roner (Nov 12, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> Huh ? Wouldn't it be strange if I were to hate on something that I will buy ?



You are hating on something brand new. Never before has something like this been released with so tight integration of SW and HW with ARM. 
For all we know hating on this, might be like hating on the iPhone when it was released.


----------



## Flanker (Nov 12, 2020)

I guess the only benchmark to trust is the one that actually does something we use our computers for. e.g. something we does a lot of video encoding will want to see how quickly this CPU encodes a 1 hr long video


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

pat-roner said:


> You are hating on something brand new. Never before has something like this been released with so tight integration of SW and HW with ARM.



I don't know why you feel the need to defend Apple when I actually said nothing about them. I only spoke against Geekbench and offered a pretty clear example on why it should be disregarded completely since it generates discrepancies from version to version than can only be explained by tailoring the code for specific uarchs. And I don't need to say why that's a big no no if you want to pretended that a certain benchmark is a reliable way to compare processors.


----------



## Punkenjoy (Nov 12, 2020)

Well still, Apple would received way less hate if they were either sellings these chips whitout the full package and had a way better policy on "right to repair"

i don't hate device itself, altought i am neither a fan of IOS and Mac OS, but i really hate Apple as a company. Their reps are a bunch of arroguant pricks that think you don't need what you think you need...

These chips are certainly impressive, but real world usage test will be needed. How much it consume? does it throttle ? etc..


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> That has to be ironic, SPECint has absolutely nothing to do with the real world, it is purely a synthetic benchmark :
> 
> 
> 00.perlbenchCPerl Programming LanguageDerived from Perl V5.8.7. The workload includes SpamAssassin, MHonArc (an email indexer), and specdiff (SPEC's tool that checks benchmark outputs).401.bzip2CCompressionJulian Seward's bzip2 version 1.0.3, modified to do most work in memory, rather than doing I/O.403.gccCC CompilerBased on gcc Version 3.2, generates code for Opteron.429.mcfCCombinatorial OptimizationVehicle scheduling. Uses a network simplex algorithm (which is also used in commercial products) to schedule public transport.445.gobmkCArtificial Intelligence: go playingPlays the game of Go, a simply described but deeply complex game.456.hmmerCSearch Gene SequenceProtein sequence analysis using profile hidden Markov models (profile HMMs)458.sjengCArtificial Intelligence: chess playingA highly-ranked chess program that also plays several chess variants.462.libquantumCPhysics: Quantum ComputingSimulates a quantum computer, running Shor's polynomial-time factorization algorithm.464.h264refCVideo CompressionA reference implementation of H.264/AVC, encodes a videostream using 2 parameter sets. The H.264/AVC standard is expected to replace MPEG2471.omnetppC++Discrete Event SimulationUses the OMNet++ discrete event simulator to model a large Ethernet campus network.473.astarC++Path-finding AlgorithmsPathfinding library for 2D maps, including the well known A* algorithm.483.xalancbmkC++XML Processing
> ...


Uh, ok. What would you deem relevant? Boot up time? How long does it take to launch candy crush?

Please elaborate.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> How long does it take to launch candy crush?



Even that'd be more relevant, although it would test storage more than CPU performance.


----------



## Blueberries (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> Uh, ok. What would you deem relevant? Boot up time? How long does it take to launch candy crush?
> 
> Please elaborate.



Those are Dual / Single-Threaded processes so the GB5 ST benchmark is probably a pretty accurate representation for both of those operations.


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> Even that'd be more relevant, although it would test storage more than CPU performance.


So you couldn’t figure out any relevant metric. Nice. Bootup and app launch are just a combination of IO performance and decompression.


----------



## z1n0x (Nov 12, 2020)

What's with the compiler differences between platforms?

Linux and Windows version use LLVM/CLANG 9.0, while on Apple LLVM/CLANG compiler used is v12, that's yet to be released.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> So you couldn’t figure out any relevant metric. Nice.



Lol okay dude, you know what, you're right SPECint is totally relevant. On my way to run some schur decompositions, I can't get enough of them.


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 12, 2020)

Fourstaff said:


> Real life benchmarks uses a mixture of workloads etc etc. Everyone have their preferred reason to disregard a certain benchmark, but once you have enough of them there is really not much left but to accept.



At this point, I'd say Blender or any other type of application where you can test a workload in a systematic way would be best. But that also means waiting for those tools to be compiled and optimized for Apple Silicon.


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> Lol okay dude, you know what, you're right SPECint is totally relevant. On my way to run some schur decompositions, I can't get enough of them.


They are a great indication of how the chip performs in various algorithms, and all software is just some IO and algorithms. If you can’t spot the ones relevant to your use case from SPECint and SPECfp it’s your problem. At anand they saw around 19% difference in spec between zen2 and zen3 and the same difference persisted in the ””real world”” tests.

SPEC is an industry standard for a reason.



windwhirl said:


> At this point, I'd say Blender or any other type of application where you can test a workload in a systematic way would be best. But that also means waiting for those tools to be compiled and optimized for Apple Silicon.


There is a raytracing subtest in SPECfp (povray). Should correlate well with blender.


----------



## Ashtr1x (Nov 12, 2020)

Look at AT, same bs. GB and SPEC results x86 is dead all random trash talk. There is no overlap at all with Apple SoC and Intel/AMD business, the world wide marketshare of Macs and how much revenue does it contribute to the Apple is clear. Both are under 10%, and Apple has to pay a ton of money for Adobe to make software on their platform and optimize it. They also pay Intel a ton of cash, imagine paying that much while their whole R&D is being spent on 23% share of Services and the CPU for the iPhone sitting at 56% of their revenue cut, a simple cut of money to Intel nets them a ton of billions saved add those pesky lawsuits for the VRM throttling on Macs and heatup, when their userbase don't even run heavy loads... That's the reason Apple switched which many fail to get.

Then on top the x86 to ARM 32 bit is going to be axed soon, Apple hates backwards compatibility a lot. And no more Virtualization, the CPU is not having VM at all, and no eGPU as well, which brings even more haziness to the equation. Add heavily soldered platform, no more repairs at all, mega BGA garbage. Apple cleverly moved away from x86 by gating the Software behind their walled garden. No Phoronix tests, no real world tests are possible at all, some crappy browser benchmark.

All that SPEC scores are useless to measure the real world performance, AT benches the 5950X top of the line CPU with that tool and gets 50W power consumption on a single thread. There are no benches for rest of the CPU threads and cores at all, same for Apple chip only 1 big Firestorm core, rest are not at all benched how can we when the tool itself is only for that purpose. And if we look at A13 benchmarks the old articles also show same "reaching desktop territory" yet there was no software to show it nor the HW top rank in the Android vs Apple pricing (more on this pricing below). Now the Cinebench came with R23 for M1 support, will show some proper synthetic bench than these useless SPEC and GB. Still I'd like to see how the CPU performs with RPCS3 emulation can it even handle ? And how the Blender like workload behaves on the same CPU, add more benchmarks like high FPS gaming too, & other software productivity tools like MATLAB.

I will even add the more stupid tests here, consider watching those Youtube tests of iPhone vs Samsungs and Onepluses etc.. how much of the SPEC graph differs in the AT benches and then the real world performance where Application response times, execution windows for multiple apps and in game FPS benchmarks, Apple always lost. All in all this SPEC is like zooming in one part of the picture and then deciding it's the best, Plus I will even mention if the Apple iPhone CPU is very fast vs Android's Qualcomm QSDs and Exynos, Kirins why the phones pricing is similar ? On Desktop side I saw Intel getting shredded in the X299 market and Mainstream market where they slashed the prices significantly due to lack of performance vs competition, best example is Nvidia's Turing vs Ampere pricing, the performance dictates the market in consumer side, this whole fiasco of world's fastest bs claims is very stupid imho.


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Ashtr1x said:


> All that SPEC scores are useless to measure the real world performance


Compression is useless? Decompression is useless? Raytracing is useless? Physics algorithms are useless? Sure..


----------



## Ashtr1x (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> Compression is useless? Decompression is useless? Raytracing is useless? Physics algorithms are useless? Sure..



Show me *where* the *work is done*, I want to see the work not some silly synthetic score and determine. Show me a graph that Gamers Nexus and TPU showcases while Decompression and Compression with 7-Zip software, for Raytracing, I would like to see DXR new 3DMark benchmark or any game, SOTTR has a pure Vulkan based release, not sure if it has Vulkan based Raytracing or not, but it is out now,  for gaming, BioShock 2 Remastered is also available on mac OS, Physics Algorithms ? what is that, MATLAB simulation ? well I don't see them either.

Guess what ? All of them have to be recompiled and updated with ARM from x86 code plus if the executable is 32bit then say goodbye in the future unless the developer updates it, also this M1 chip doesn't have eGPU output as well, meaning it won't even meet min spec for the SOTTR and BioShock 2 on Mac. Not even Adobe has software ready, it's due in 2021. And also Raytracing ? You sure, running some SPEC load on a CPU for Raytracing of all, Nvidia has 3 years of AI advancement (on the side note, Apples Siri is utter trash vs Google Assistant, Apple is lacking severely in that dept.) and still they couldn't nail the RT, AMD barely started and suddenly Apple is going to takeover them ? It's not even funny anymore.


----------



## Fouquin (Nov 12, 2020)

pat-roner said:


> Say what you want about Geekbench, but I found this quote from Andrei interesting;
> 
> _There’s been a lot of criticism about more common benchmark suites such as GeekBench, but frankly I've found these concerns or arguments to be quite unfounded. The only factual differences between workloads in SPEC and workloads in GB5 is that the latter has less outlier tests which are memory-heavy, meaning it’s more of a CPU benchmark whereas SPEC has more tendency towards CPU+DRAM. _
> 
> ...



GeekBench is also an OS benchmark, and macOS is the fastest OS on GeekBench. There are some options hidden in macOS for GB5 for example that improve performance on any architecture, even Ryzen.


----------



## Chrispy_ (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> Geekbench is worthless for comparing between different architectures.


QFT.
We need actual application performance for apples-to-apples comparisons - and even then, the recompiled-for-ARM version of AfterEffects for example still won't be apples-to-apples as the x86_64 variants will be the lowest-common-denominator version that'll run on a huge range of different OSes and architectures. Still, it'll be interesting to see the Native ARM version on apple vs the Windows in like-for-like application testing.


----------



## okbuddy (Nov 12, 2020)

smash 5900x? cinebench r23


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Ashtr1x said:


> Show me *where* the *work is done*, I want to see the work not some silly synthetic score and determine. Show me a graph that Gamers Nexus and TPU showcases while Decompression and Compression with 7-Zip software, for Raytracing, I would like to see DXR new 3DMark benchmark or any game, SOTTR has a pure Vulkan based release, not sure if it has Vulkan based Raytracing or not, but it is out now,  for gaming, BioShock 2 Remastered is also available on mac OS, Physics Algorithms ? what is that, MATLAB simulation ? well I don't see them either.
> 
> Guess what ? All of them have to be recompiled and updated with ARM from x86 code plus if the executable is 32bit then say goodbye in the future unless the developer updates it, also this M1 chip doesn't have eGPU output as well, meaning it won't even meet min spec for the SOTTR and BioShock 2 on Mac. Not even Adobe has software ready, it's due in 2021. And also Raytracing ? You sure, running some SPEC load on a CPU for Raytracing of all, Nvidia has 3 years of AI advancement (on the side note, Apples Siri is utter trash vs Google Assistant, Apple is lacking severely in that dept.) and still they couldn't nail the RT, AMD barely started and suddenly Apple is going to takeover them ? It's not even funny anymore.


I think you are mixing raytracing as a cpu benchmark with computer games. The spec test is more like blender.

7z performace correlates almost 1:1 with the ””syntethic”” spec compression/decompression tests. Could you be more specific on why you think that spec does not translate to real world performance? It does take some time for SW to be compiled to work natively on the new platform, but you wouldn’t buy it for productive work anyway before the SW support is there.


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 12, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> QFT.
> We need actual application performance for apples-to-apples comparisons - and even then, the recompiled-for-ARM version of AfterEffects for example still won't be apples-to-apples as the x86_64 variants will be the lowest-common-denominator version that'll run on a huge range of different OSes and architectures. Still, it'll be interesting to see the Native ARM version on apple vs the Windows in like-for-like application testing.



I would be cool if you could install Windows 10 (ARM) or Linux on these new machines to properly test, but I doubt Apple will make that possible. I'm sure the walls are even higher in this new garden.


----------



## bummpr (Nov 12, 2020)

And the IRONY Champion of the World (drumroll please)..."imho"



Ashtr1x said:


> Look at AT, same bs. GB and SPEC results x86 is dead all random trash talk. There is no overlap at all with Apple SoC and Intel/AMD business, the world wide marketshare of Macs and how much revenue does it contribute to the Apple is clear. Both are under 10%, and Apple has to pay a ton of money for Adobe to make software on their platform and optimize it. They also pay Intel a ton of cash, imagine paying that much while their whole R&D is being spent on 23% share of Services and the CPU for the iPhone sitting at 56% of their revenue cut, a simple cut of money to Intel nets them a ton of billions saved add those pesky lawsuits for the VRM throttling on Macs and heatup, when their userbase don't even run heavy loads... That's the reason Apple switched which many fail to get.
> 
> Then on top the x86 to ARM 32 bit is going to be axed soon, Apple hates backwards compatibility a lot. And no more Virtualization, the CPU is not having VM at all, and no eGPU as well, which brings even more haziness to the equation. Add heavily soldered platform, no more repairs at all, mega BGA garbage. Apple cleverly moved away from x86 by gating the Software behind their walled garden. No Phoronix tests, no real world tests are possible at all, some crappy browser benchmark.
> 
> ...


----------



## Chrispy_ (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> I would be cool if you could install Windows 10 (ARM) or Linux on these new machines to properly test, but I doubt Apple will make that possible. I'm sure the walls are even higher in this new garden.


I have faith that the Hackintosh crowd will be trying hard to break those walls. They do it for funzies.


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> I would be cool if you could install Windows 10 (ARM) or Linux on these new machines to properly test


Why the hell would you need windows to test these? I’m sure there will be more than enough multi platform apps to make good conclusions about the performance differences.


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 12, 2020)

Chrispy_ said:


> I have faith that the Hackintosh crowd will be trying hard to break those walls. They do it for funzies.


They're already trying lol






						Booting a macOS Apple Silicon kernel in QEMU
					

I booted the arm64e kernel of macOS 11.0.1 beta 1 kernel in QEMU up to launchd. It’s completely useless, but may be interesting if you’re wondering how an Apple Silicon Mac will boot.



					worthdoingbadly.com


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 12, 2020)

Dredi said:


> Why the hell would you need windows to test these? I’m sure there will be more than enough multi platform apps to make good conclusions about the performance differences.


You don't _need _it, obviously. But it would put the machines on more of an equal ground. If Apple ever released drivers for the M1, of course. Which they won't.

Mac OS will be optimized for this SOC in a way Windows/Linux can't really ever come close to and that alone already gives it a leg up.


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> You don't _need _it, obviously. But it would put the machines on more of an equal ground. If Apple ever released drivers for the M1, of course. Which they won't.
> 
> Mac OS will be optimized for this SOC in a way Windows/Linux can't really ever come close to and that alone already gives it a leg up.


Indeed. Apple only worries about their software running on their hardware and screw everything else. We should see even tighter integration in the future.

Windows/Linux on the other hand have to work on nearly all hardware launched in the last 10 to 20 years.


----------



## Dredi (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> You don't _need _it, obviously. But it would put the machines on more of an equal ground. If Apple ever released drivers for the M1, of course. Which they won't.
> 
> Mac OS will be optimized for this SOC in a way Windows/Linux can't really ever come close to and that alone already gives it a leg up.


Would it not make more sense to bench the systems with the operating systems their users use 99% of the time? No one will buy these new machines to run windows. Installing windows would just make the test more synthetic in nature.


----------



## Searing (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> Geekbench is worthless for comparing between different architectures.



wrong, go back to 2010 where you come from

Geekbench is great for different OS and ISA comparisons, and is also not memory dependent anymore

next week there will be a lot of surprised people who have had their heads in the sand for the last 5 years

trends matter, Apple has been improving more than Intel every year for 5 years, that is why they are ahead now


----------



## illli (Nov 12, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> I had been discouraged by the fact that paying a premium for mac is giving me overpriced, outdated spec, guess this has changed now.



No, they are still overpriced.  The $699 mac mini only comes with 8Gb ram (lol) and 256Gb ssd (lol again).
Oh, you might think you can upgrade this yourself? NOPE. Everything is soldered onto the mobo.
The $899 mini is STILL the same 8Gb ram (pathetic) and 512b ssd (so basically +$200 for 256Gb upgrade)


----------



## Vayra86 (Nov 12, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> Here is why Geekbench is dogshit :
> 
> View attachment 175372View attachment 175373
> 
> ...



Can we get a community effort going to just straight up shitlist this bench from any news on TPU? Or alternatively, demand a neutral bench is run alongside it...


----------



## Valent117 (Nov 12, 2020)

windwhirl said:


> That's starting to look like another Userbenchmark



just like cinebench R15 to R20, geekbench 4 was not scaling well in the high performance range


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 12, 2020)

Searing said:


> wrong, go back to 2010 where you come from
> 
> Geekbench is great for different OS and ISA comparisons, and is also not memory dependent anymore
> 
> ...



So you're telling me you believe the upcoming fanless, likely single digit TDP Macbook Air completely trashes your 10900 in single threaded use?

I'm not saying it's a bad chip, it seems very promising and Apple made some very bold claims. But c'mon.


----------



## londiste (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> So you're telling me you believe the upcoming fanless, likely single digit TDP Macbook Air completely trashes your 10900 in single threaded use?


Why not? Single thread power usage is 10-15W for Intel/AMD CPUs. M1 seems to have 10W TDP as tested, at full node smaller manufacturing process (2 full nodes when comparing Intel and 10900).


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Nov 12, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> So you're telling me you believe the upcoming fanless, likely single digit TDP Macbook Air completely trashes your 10900 in single threaded use?
> 
> I'm not saying it's a bad chip, it seems very promising and Apple made some very bold claims. But c'mon.


It has more special purpose hardware than any ,I think other processor outside of FPGAs, in some workloads it is a very good and capable chip, possibly enough for most, never enough for some still.


----------



## xorbe (Nov 12, 2020)

SPECint is half compiler benchmark where they spend big man hours with specific flags for each test.  Geekbench is useless.  We have to wait.


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 12, 2020)

londiste said:


> Why not? Single thread power usage is 10-15W for Intel/AMD CPUs. M1 seems to have 10W TDP as tested, at full node smaller manufacturing process (2 full nodes when comparing Intel and 10900).



I just find that very hard to believe, is all. I'll know soon enough, I guess. In the event that they do I think both Intel and AMD can just close up shop and go home.



theoneandonlymrk said:


> It has more special purpose hardware than any ,I think other processor outside of FPGAs, in some workloads it is a very good and capable chip, possibly enough for most, never enough for some still.



For sure, but I mean for general purpose, across the board. This chip will shine in some specific tasks that Apple really optimizes for. Web browsing for instance, is something that the A family of chips are particularly good at, because it's one of their main uses, so I'm expecting the M1 to beat x86 chips in web benchmarks.


----------



## seth1911 (Nov 12, 2020)

Geekbench is a pice of sh*t, sometimes i got MP 1k Points different with the same device (Geekbench 4.4).

But i like it, that Apple makes now a real golden cage.


----------



## Minus Infinity (Nov 13, 2020)

Can I get one woth a Quadro GPU, they do have Pro in the title afterall.

Give us some benchmarks worth shit, I couldn't care less how fast it is for opening browser I actually do real work. If this thing can run Matlab, Mathematica, Comsol, Ansys etc faster than any x86 or close at  such low power and sustain that performance when getting hammered all day, then sign me up. But unless I can have a discrete GPU for CUDA it won't happen. How many years before we get discrete GPU's and drivers for ARM architecture in any new age Apple computer. It will only be a matter of time before the desktops also dump x86.


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 13, 2020)

Minus Infinity said:


> Can I get one woth a Quadro GPU, they do have Pro in the title afterall.
> 
> Give us some benchmarks worth shit, I couldn't care less how fast it is for opening browser I actually do real work. If this thing can run Matlab, Mathematica, Comsol, Ansys etc faster than any x86 or close at  such low power and sustain that performance when getting hammered all day, then sign me up. But unless I can have a discrete GPU for CUDA it won't happen. How many years before we get discrete GPU's and drivers for ARM architecture in any new age Apple computer. It will only be a matter of time before the desktops also dump x86.


Considering that Apple is promoting their own GPU and Neural stuff, they probably don't care?


----------



## Searing (Nov 13, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> So you're telling me you believe the upcoming fanless, likely single digit TDP Macbook Air completely trashes your 10900 in single threaded use?
> 
> I'm not saying it's a bad chip, it seems very promising and Apple made some very bold claims. But c'mon.



At the same frequency? You bet. 15 billion transistors matters.



Vayra86 said:


> Can we get a community effort going to just straight up shitlist this bench from any news on TPU? Or alternatively, demand a neutral bench is run alongside it...



Maybe you should actually understand why? Geekbench 5 is much more intensive and is 64 bit only. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Geekbench 5, the old ones were too dependent on memory scores etc. and didn't give the CPUs a workout.


----------



## Flanker (Nov 13, 2020)

Minus Infinity said:


> Can I get one woth a Quadro GPU, they do have Pro in the title afterall.
> 
> Give us some benchmarks worth shit, I couldn't care less how fast it is for opening browser I actually do real work. If this thing can run Matlab, Mathematica, Comsol, Ansys etc faster than any x86 or close at  such low power and sustain that performance when getting hammered all day, then sign me up. But unless I can have a discrete GPU for CUDA it won't happen. How many years before we get discrete GPU's and drivers for ARM architecture in any new age Apple computer. It will only be a matter of time before the desktops also dump x86.





windwhirl said:


> Considering that Apple is promoting their own GPU and Neural stuff, they probably don't care?


I think Apple wants to make all their users use Metal for GPGPU apps as well as rendering.


----------



## timta2 (Nov 13, 2020)

illli said:


> No, they are still overpriced.  The $699 mac mini only comes with 8Gb ram (lol) and 256Gb ssd (lol again).
> Oh, you might think you can upgrade this yourself? NOPE. Everything is soldered onto the mobo.
> The $899 mini is STILL the same 8Gb ram (pathetic) and 512b ssd (so basically +$200 for 256Gb upgrade)



It's more than what most normal people need and when the day comes that they need more, they can just buy a new one.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 13, 2020)

Searing said:


> There is absolutely nothing wrong with Geekbench 5, the old ones were too dependent on memory scores etc. and didn't give the CPUs a workout.



Lol what a joke, I've heard the same excuse every time, "the old one was just bad but the new one is better". Of course it has to be better, it gives Apple's chips higher scores after all, obviously. How come that never happens for other SoCs or chips, must be a coincidence.



Searing said:


> 15 billion transistors matters.



15 billion transistors for everything, not for just for the processors.


----------



## Vayra86 (Nov 13, 2020)

Searing said:


> At the same frequency? You bet. 15 billion transistors matters.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe you should actually understand why? Geekbench 5 is much more intensive and is 64 bit only. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Geekbench 5, the old ones were too dependent on memory scores etc. and didn't give the CPUs a workout.



You realize this disqualifies it to begin with? If a new version is so radically different in how it scores, it immediately invalidates everything that came before it..... until Geekbench 6.


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 13, 2020)

Searing said:


> At the same frequency? You bet. 15 billion transistors matters.



Nonono. Not at the same frequency. At stock. The fanless machine beats your desktop 10900 at single threaded use as is. That's the narrative you're signing under.

The image shows the M1 in the air at 3.2Ghz scores 1739.
The best score I could find for the 10900 (max boost single thread is 5.2Ghz) is 1535.


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 13, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> Nonono. Not at the same frequency. At stock. The fanless machine beats your desktop 10900 at single threaded use as is. That's the narrative you're signing under.
> 
> The image shows the M1 in the air at 3.2Ghz scores 1739.
> The best score I could find for the 10900 (max boost single thread is 5.2Ghz) is 1535.



A wider core at lower frequencies will be more power efficient than a narrower core at higher frequency even if they generate similar performance, that's all. The problem Apple will face going forward is that their cores will scale horrendously with frequency. We can already see that, 3.2 Ghz is dismal, let's just say we wont be seeing one of their chips hit 4.5+ Ghz anytime soon and the problem is that clock speed does matter. There is code that simply cannot benefit from OoO execution and wide front/back ends. 

In other words the performance gains are mostly over for them, they wont be able to make much wider designs or higher frequency. I guess that's why they decided to make the jump now, otherwise in the future their chips are going to look less and less impressive.


----------



## JalleR (Nov 13, 2020)

But can it run Crysis ?


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 13, 2020)

JalleR said:


> But can it run Crysis ?


How about "NO"?


----------



## dyonoctis (Nov 13, 2020)

It's for the A12z, but unless the m1is at least x 2 times faster in multithread, the multicore score of the m1 in geekbench won't be representative for every workloads.  The m1 is supposed to be as faster than the 9880h in mt...


----------



## dedo (Nov 13, 2020)

On top of that, it also uses less power! This! MacBook M1


----------



## foedecide (Nov 13, 2020)

Why? I appreciate your sentiment, lol, but if we are idiots, what is your counter argument. I mean you'd need to be an idiot not to provide one? 



Vya Domus said:


> Here is why Geekbench is dogshit :
> 
> View attachment 175372View attachment 175373
> 
> ...



Unyet most people would look at day to day performance in their hands, majority of people arent benchmark wankers? 


sweetsuicide said:


> I totally agree with you. This is AArch64, not the day-to-day application performance.



Wow, progess is all I have to say, see you on the otherside when other benchmarks confirm the obvious....



thevoiceofreason said:


> You mean like for example SPECint, here showing Apple's previous A14 chip powering Iphone 12?
> 
> 
> 
> ...





timta2 said:


> It's more than what most normal people need and when the day comes that they need more, they can just buy a new one.



Research yourself, OP clearly dosent understand the differences or I'd argue the argument.



Rahnak said:


> Nonono. Not at the same frequency. At stock. The fanless machine beats your desktop 10900 at single threaded use as is. That's the narrative you're signing under.
> 
> The image shows the M1 in the air at 3.2Ghz scores 1739.
> The best score I could find for the 10900 (max boost single thread is 5.2Ghz) is 1535.



These people has a vested interest in years of anti-Apple sentiment, you cant expect facts to dissuaded that. This is the equivalent of Trump supporters backing Trump stance on Covid-19.



Vya Domus said:


> let's just say we wont be seeing one of their chips hit 4.5+ Ghz anytime soon and the problem is that clock speed does matter



OK, so where is your proof on that q



Vya Domus said:


> The problem Apple will face going forward is that their cores will scale horrendously with frequency. We can already see that, 3.2 Ghz is dismal, let's just say we wont be seeing one of their chips hit 4.5+ Ghz anytime soon and the problem is that clock speed does matter.



OK, so whats your authority on that statement? Care to expand with factual evidence? Anything other than what is clearly your own personal opinion?



Vayra86 said:


> Can we get a community effort going to just straight up shitlist this bench from any news on TPU? Or alternatively, demand a neutral bench is run alongside it...



Never considered Apple consistently, i.e. yearly unlike Intel improve hardware and performance noticeably. I'm guessing not as you seem to prefer some sort of conspiracy theory as to why .....


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 13, 2020)

foedecide said:


> Why? I appreciate your sentiment, lol, but if we are idiots, what is your counter argument. I mean you'd need to be an idiot not to provide one?



I'd be the third time I would explain it, I can't do this forever, if someone still thinks I haven't provided an argument or if this didn't at least rise some eyebrows then they deserve the label of an idiot as far as I'm concerned. Look, don't let me spoil your enjoyment of marveling at those pretty charts, I don't have any interest in convincing anyone. 



foedecide said:


> OK, so where is your proof on that



The proof is in the power characteristics of integrated circuits and microarchitecture design. Everyone well versed in those can see that. Narrow cores = highly scalable , wide cores = not so much. 



foedecide said:


> OK, so whats your authority on that statement?



The hell you on about. Want me to call Jim Keller or what ? Clearly I had enough authority to annoy you with my ideas, I am fine with that.


----------



## foedecide (Nov 13, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> I'd be the third time I would explain it, I can't do this forever, if someone still thinks I haven't provided an argument or if this didn't at least rise some eyebrows then they deserve the label of an idiot as far as I'm concerned. Look, don't let me spoil your enjoyment of marveling at those pretty charts, I don't have any interest in convincing anyone.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Honestly, you made me laugh with your idiotic personal opinion, so obviously you cant back your claims?



foedecide said:


> Honestly, you made me laugh with your idiotic personal opinion, so obviously you cant back your claims?



I mean the reality (which you obviously wont admit too) is - in the real world, i.e. users - the M1 provides better performance verbatim, you then have to add, I may add, lol, completely separately better performance / battery life than any other laptop out there - not just comparable.



Vya Domus said:


> Everyone well versed in those can see that. Narrow cores = highly scalable , wide cores = not so much.



Nice quote, but where actually is your proof on that? Clearly you are missing the point and making a whole host of presumptions both on me and Apple silicon?


----------



## Vya Domus (Nov 13, 2020)

foedecide said:


> Honestly, you made me laugh with your idiotic personal opinion



I gave many detailed explanations on a whole bunch of things throughout this thread.

You ? Fuck all, at the moment, you just keep repeating "back up your claims" and nothing else like an actual idiot. I already wasted enough time with you, off to the ignore list you go.


----------



## foedecide (Nov 13, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> I guess that's why they



Oh wait, you guess, so you are basing this on your own personal opinion and no real knowledge???



Vya Domus said:


> I gave many detailed explanations on a whole bunch of things throughout this thread.
> 
> You ? Fuck all, at the moment, you just keep repeating "back up your claims" and nothing else like an actual idiot. I already wasted enough time with you, off to the ignore list you go.



Sorry for asking you to provide actually evidence to your personal claims, I have learned not to challenge people who claim to know better, thank you.


----------



## Initialised (Nov 13, 2020)

Apple M1 Benchmark, Test and specs
					

Apple M1 benchmark results and review of this cpu with specs including the number of cores, threads, memory bandwidth, pcie lanes and power consumption. Benchmarks in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5




					www.cpu-monkey.com
				




Shows the M1 as the fastest Single threaded CPU in Geek Bench.


----------



## hurakura (Nov 14, 2020)

This shitty benchmark means absolutely nothing.


----------



## ypsylon (Nov 14, 2020)

Geekbench is worth less than bag of sand. However slowly real life performance is trickling down. In Affinity Photo it looks impressive.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1326866126635143169


----------



## Endeavour (Nov 14, 2020)

Initialised said:


> Apple M1 Benchmark, Test and specs
> 
> 
> Apple M1 benchmark results and review of this cpu with specs including the number of cores, threads, memory bandwidth, pcie lanes and power consumption. Benchmarks in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5
> ...


Actually the new Ryzen 5xxx processors are reporting single core scores over 2000 in MacOS


			Geekbench 5 Results  - Geekbench Browser
		


Which means the results are heavily influenced by the OS. Compared to those, the 1700 result from the M1 also in MacOS is way less impressive.

But in the end it is still a great processor with really good performance* and amazing low power consumption. It’s indeed a formidable opponent for both Intel and AMD, at least on this segment. They still have to show how well it scales, but I’m confident they will also be competitive there in a couple of years.

*my prediction for cinebench r23 is 1300-1400 single core and 6000-6500 multi core. Graphics will probably be on par with the new Intel Xe.


----------



## Just Some Noise (Nov 14, 2020)

Apple is so extremely big. And they know, if they f.... up this launch, they lose marketshare. I bet you the M1+ or however the bigger ones are called, will be real performer. I also ordered a MacBook Pro 13 with an M1 chip, so i can try Logic Pro X with it. Oh, and a heads up for the audio folk, Image Line also announced that FL Studio is in the works for the M1 ARM Mac here. This one is gonna be interesting. So happy to see the computer as a whole transform and change in its fundamentals again after a long long time!


----------



## londiste (Nov 14, 2020)

Just Some Noise said:


> This one is gonna be interesting. So happy to see the computer as a whole transform and change in its fundamentals again after a long long time!


Academically and technically M1 is awesomely interesting.
Unfortunately in the real world it is very likely that this simply means increasingly walled walled garden of Apple.

I do hope machines have enough access that custom OS can be easily booted and SoC along with each part of it are well documented and supported - for example in Linux or FreeBSD. This hope probably means I am a fool...


----------



## Mescalamba (Nov 14, 2020)

Vya Domus said:


> That has to be ironic, SPECint has absolutely nothing to do with the real world, it is purely a synthetic benchmark :
> 
> 
> 00.perlbenchCPerl Programming LanguageDerived from Perl V5.8.7. The workload includes SpamAssassin, MHonArc (an email indexer), and specdiff (SPEC's tool that checks benchmark outputs).401.bzip2CCompressionJulian Seward's bzip2 version 1.0.3, modified to do most work in memory, rather than doing I/O.403.gccCC CompilerBased on gcc Version 3.2, generates code for Opteron.429.mcfCCombinatorial OptimizationVehicle scheduling. Uses a network simplex algorithm (which is also used in commercial products) to schedule public transport.445.gobmkCArtificial Intelligence: go playingPlays the game of Go, a simply described but deeply complex game.456.hmmerCSearch Gene SequenceProtein sequence analysis using profile hidden Markov models (profile HMMs)458.sjengCArtificial Intelligence: chess playingA highly-ranked chess program that also plays several chess variants.462.libquantumCPhysics: Quantum ComputingSimulates a quantum computer, running Shor's polynomial-time factorization algorithm.464.h264refCVideo CompressionA reference implementation of H.264/AVC, encodes a videostream using 2 parameter sets. The H.264/AVC standard is expected to replace MPEG2471.omnetppC++Discrete Event SimulationUses the OMNet++ discrete event simulator to model a large Ethernet campus network.473.astarC++Path-finding AlgorithmsPathfinding library for 2D maps, including the well known A* algorithm.483.xalancbmkC++XML Processing
> ...



Well, I find pretty much all of it relevant. Guess different target audience.


----------



## Caring1 (Nov 15, 2020)

Nobody else think there should be a comma in the title?
How do you air benchmark a laptop?


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 15, 2020)

Caring1 said:


> How do you air benchmark a laptop?


Install it in a wind tunnel, and ta-da! There you have your air benchmark.


----------



## Vayra86 (Nov 15, 2020)

foedecide said:


> Oh wait, you guess, so you are basing this on your own personal opinion and no real knowledge???
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry for asking you to provide actually evidence to your personal claims, I have learned not to challenge people who claim to know better, thank you.



Benchmarks have always been misunderstood and misrepresented as overall performance progress. In the case of Geekbench that is made worse by the change logs between versions. Its no good when CPUs get placed on different tiers between different versions. And this happens every single time while geekbench itself is not even indicative of ANY performance level.

Simple questions Geekbench can never answer or shine light on: " how capable is thr device at X or Y" in terms of real use cases.

That alone makes it pure synthetic... but then why does every version effectively invalidate all scores before it?

Some benchmarks just exist as industry marketing machines and geekbench is a sorry attempt at such a thing. It suits the mobile progress crowd, stuck in more or less walled gardens and stuck in an online reality by design. The moment ARM cpus start becoming real CPUs for multitasking on varied stuff, they dangle along the bottom end of laptop CPUs in most real scenarios. They lose their efficiency edge or run into power limits. Benches dont show that.


----------



## Initialised (Nov 15, 2020)

Just Some Noise said:


> So happy to see the computer as a whole transform and change in its fundamentals again after a long long time!


Those Archimedes RISC enthusiasts weren't, it just wasnt time for a RISC based architecture for desktop class workloads untill now. My guess is that Apples projections on where to get pwoer efficiency from was to ditch CISC based x86 in favor of RISC based Arm.

For me the main limitation that remains is the lack of eGPU and the 16GB memory limit as for a lot of tasks faster, lower latency, higher bandwidth RAM is no substitue for more RAM.


----------



## r9 (Nov 15, 2020)

Using SoC, pack CPU, GPU, Chipset, modems and even the memory and it supposed to compete with the best AMD and Intel can offer .... haha what a joke. 
Their new series will be bunch of glorified tablets. 
It will do great for Apple for one they will able to distance themselves from apple to apple comparisons to the PCs as they are lower spec'd but higher priced, and they will get away from that by building a whole line of products that will be even lower spec'd. Pure Genius! 
None of this matters as the Apple users don't care about any of that they just want the glitter.


----------



## mechtech (Nov 15, 2020)

Will is run steam/games?

Will it run autocad?


----------



## Gungar (Nov 16, 2020)

Rahnak said:


> Geekbench is worthless for comparing between different architectures.



Yeah well look at all those people still comparing them... I get SO angry when i see that


----------



## Searing (Nov 16, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> You realize this disqualifies it to begin with? If a new version is so radically different in how it scores, it immediately invalidates everything that came before it..... until Geekbench 6.



... that is a silly argument if I've ever seen one, technology changes, benchmarks must change also


----------



## dyonoctis (Nov 16, 2020)

Well, looks like the m1 isn't all mighty in every case, but those numbers  aren't bad for such low clocks and power :





So while it looks great for photo editing and hardware video encoding, it's not the "king" for brute force 3D rendering. I wonder just how much more performance a desktop m1 could tap into to get on the same level as zen 3 ?


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 16, 2020)

dyonoctis said:


> Well, looks like the m1 isn't all mighty in every case, but those numbers  aren't bad for such low clocks and power :
> View attachment 175903
> 
> So while it looks great for photo editing and hardware video encoding, it's not the "king" for brute force 3D rendering. I wonder just how much more performance a desktop m1 could tap into to get on the same level as zen 3 ?


The single thread is kinda expected, I guess. MT, though, is Cinebench using all 8 cores or only the high-performance ones?


----------



## dyonoctis (Nov 16, 2020)

dyonoctis said:


> Well, looks like the m1 isn't all mighty in every case, but those numbers  aren't bad for such low clocks and power :
> View attachment 175903
> 
> So while it looks great for photo editing and hardware video encoding, it's not the "king" for brute force 3D rendering. I wonder just how much more performance a desktop m1 could tap into to get on the same level as zen 3 ?


Wait nevermind, those results are the same as the A12Z, hexus.net made a mistake , well tomorow is the day where people are supposed to receive their first machines, so we'll finally know.


dyonoctis said:


> It's for the A12z, but unless the m1is at least x 2 times faster in multithread, the multicore score of the m1 in geekbench won't be representative for every workloads.  The m1 is supposed to be as faster than the 9880h in mt...
> 
> View attachment 175536View attachment 175537


----------



## Vayra86 (Nov 16, 2020)

Searing said:


> ... that is a silly argument if I've ever seen one, technology changes, benchmarks must change also



Change? They're supposed to present an increased load so they can best show the performance gaps between CPUs in a stack. Not change in terms of favoring specific architectures.

Good benchmarks 'change' neutrally, and if they don't, they are a new sort of benchmark.

3DMark versions present different loads and are up front about it. They test against an API and they present new tests to stress different parts of it. Unigine gives us a new benchmark for every different type of stress test. You see version changes, that add options. But the bench itself remains the same.

Geekbench is nothing like that, especially not in how it is handled. Compare it to how we handle Cinebench results. Versions are noted with each one because there are some differences. Geekbench scores are one big clusterfuck in that sense. Geekbench is just one big score that is supposed to tell us... ehm... what exactly? And it won't even have value in relative score comparisons because new versions completely change them across the board. So what's the actual use of a Geekbench score in practice?


----------



## Searing (Nov 16, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> Change? They're supposed to present an increased load so they can best show the performance gaps between CPUs in a stack. Not change in terms of favoring specific architectures.
> 
> Good benchmarks 'change' neutrally, and if they don't, they are a new sort of benchmark.
> 
> ...



It isn't about changing to favor Apple, it was about removing the memory dependency, that made it a better benchmark (better than Spec that way). You can view all the sub scores in the test.


----------



## Endeavour (Nov 16, 2020)

Results are out... and it's really good, a bit better than expected!


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 16, 2020)

Endeavour said:


> View attachment 175920
> 
> Results are out... and it's really good, a bit better than expected!



Now that's interesting! Considering how high the ST score is, I'd bet that's the high-performance core speaking. It also would indicate that the low-performance cores are really low performance. The MT score is somewhere between the 3300X / i5 8400 and the 3600.

What's the source of this, by the way?


----------



## Endeavour (Nov 16, 2020)

windwhirl said:


> Now that's interesting! Considering how high the ST score is, I'd bet that's the high-performance core speaking. It also would indicate that the low-performance cores are really low performance. The MT score is somewhere between the 3300X / i5 8400 and the 3600.
> 
> What's the source of this, by the way?


Source is this twitter thread. 



__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1328453127209504771


----------



## Sandbo (Nov 16, 2020)

dyonoctis said:


> Well, looks like the m1 isn't all mighty in every case, but those numbers  aren't bad for such low clocks and power :
> View attachment 175903
> 
> So while it looks great for photo editing and hardware video encoding, it's not the "king" for brute force 3D rendering. I wonder just how much more performance a desktop m1 could tap into to get on the same level as zen 3 ?





Endeavour said:


> View attachment 175920
> 
> Results are out... and it's really good, a bit better than expected!



Why do these two look so different?
Are they referring to different processors?


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 16, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> Why do these two look so different?
> Are they referring to different processors?


The first one was wrong, it was from an A12, apparently.


----------



## Sandbo (Nov 16, 2020)

windwhirl said:


> The first one was wrong, it was from an A12, apparently.


I see, that makes more sense.
While not a performance king, the raw performance is indeed great for the price (assuming MacAir can give this score), let alone the superior battery life.
Now we just need to see how apps transition fairs.


----------



## Vayra86 (Nov 17, 2020)

Searing said:


> It isn't about changing to favor Apple, it was about removing the memory dependency, that made it a better benchmark (better than Spec that way). You can view all the sub scores in the test.



Ergo, previous versions were a shit bench. But let's hope this one is good now... for how long?

That was the initial point regarding Geekbench


----------



## dyonoctis (Nov 17, 2020)

Now people are starting to get their macs. The more I see, the more I start to think : considering what those machines are being used for, this is brilliant. CPU wise The 4800u (15w)  is the only thing that come close to be as interesting. Gpu wise it's time for vega to die and for rdna2 to replace it in the zen 3 apu. If you need a light machine with a great battery life and a good screen for photo editing graphic design, and a bit of video editing those machine are nice while not being that expensive compared to equivalent Pcs. (a cheap fast, small windows laptop with a 400-500 nits screen and at least 100% sRGB, doesn't exist, trust me, I've looked. Pc manufacturers like to cheap out on the screen a lot)

It will be interesting to see what AMD will do with the 5800u.


----------



## londiste (Nov 17, 2020)

16B transistors at 5nm. 
Architecturally it does not seem too exciting. They went wide and slow to get the efficiency where they wanted it. Manufacturing costs of M1 are probably way above what competition is currently doing.
It would be cool to know what the die size of M1 is but there has been no official data as far as I can find and I cannot estimate from the SIP image because no idea what the memory chips and their sizes are.

For some idea how large of a chip we are talking about - this is more than Radeon VII (13.6B) and almost the same size as GA104 powering RTX3070 (17.4B).
Renoir (4800U) is reported to have ~9.8B transistors.

Granted, M1 has additional stuff like Neural Engine, ISP, AES encryption, encoder(s)/decoder(s), Thunderbolt controller. On the other hand, some or most of that also exists for example in Renoir.
There are tradeoffs, amount of USB ports seems to be limited, it does not seem to have PCIe, max 16GB RAM and there is probably a reason it only runs up to 10W (if nothing else then marketing, definitely).

2.6TFLOPS for iGPU is impressive for the power envelope but again I am quite sure they went wide and slow to keep the power usage down. 
For comparison, 2.5TFLOPs is something like RX560 can do with 3B transistors. Renoir does 2.1TFLOPs in desktop SKUs (8CU running fast). Both obviously use a hell of a lot more power.


----------



## Darmok N Jalad (Nov 17, 2020)

It's not too complicated when you look at the lineup where Apple launched its silicon. The M1 replaced the CPUs in the Air and base MBP, but not the high-end MBP. It is extremely rare that Apple takes a performance hit with a refresh (ahem, 2014 mini), so the implication was strong that the M1 will be overall better than the outgoing Intel CPUs, but not as strong as the Intel CPUs that remained, like the i9 option in the MBP. Apple gets to build both the OS and the chip, so one would hope they would be well optimized for each other. I expect the M1 to be a very solid result, and if nothing else, you're going to get insane battery life. It won't be long now though, since the first units are arriving in people's hands.


----------



## thevoiceofreason (Nov 17, 2020)

Anandtech did some testing with the new mac mini, I think Cinebench R23 single thread is notable as you can easily compare it to x64 results:


----------



## Darmok N Jalad (Nov 17, 2020)

thevoiceofreason said:


> Anandtech did some testing with the new mac mini, I think Cinebench R23 single thread is notable as you can easily compare it to x64 results:


Yeah, even when emulating x86, it doesn't do too badly--still faster than the base i3 mini, while being cheaper. I had always assumed Apple had a good plan for this transition, but it's even better than I expected if these preliminary results hold true. They even emulated ROTR, and it did pretty well for a low-TDP chip with an iGPU. There's just not that many native-Apple games to really test the limits, and I don't believe any of the Arcade games have benchmarks.


----------



## Ravenas (Nov 19, 2020)

Nvidia realizes Windows is moving in the ARM direction as well. The ARM purchase doesn’t seem so bad after all. We will see how much Intel gets hurt from this.


----------



## windwhirl (Nov 19, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> Nvidia realizes Windows is moving in the ARM direction as well. The ARM purchase doesn’t seem so bad after all. We will see how much Intel gets hurt from this.


Definitely will take a while. But it's an interesting possibility.


----------



## Rahnak (Nov 19, 2020)

Welp, so that M1 chip performs way better than I expected. I expected it to handily beat the Intel version in optimized apps but struggle a little with emulated apps. It turns out it handily beats the Intel version in emulated apps and crushes in optimized.

If you're in the market for an ultrabook, unless you use some app that isn't available on the Mac side, it's pretty hard to recommend a Windows laptop now.

Spam that F for Intel and AMD in mobile.

Can't wait to see where they take the 2nd gen version.


----------



## TheinsanegamerN (Nov 20, 2020)

Dredi said:


> You can just dismiss the sub-benchmarks that you don’t find relevant and see who comes on top (it’s apple).


That's rediculous. That would be like someone using Intel Burn test to show how much stronger intel CPUs totally are over AMD. There are benchmarks that are known to be total garbage for consistency and for comparing between platforms.


----------



## Stewen1967 (Nov 21, 2020)

Modern landscape times,
Endless pastures,
Winner sheeps,
Master lambs.

It's all scrollable bleat.


----------



## rvalencia (Nov 24, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> These are actually very good numbers for a laptop:
> My AMD Ryzen 3600X desktop is ST 1251 and MT 6973.
> A laptop with AMD 4900HS is ST 1091 and MT 7075.
> More: https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks/
> ...


For Geekbench, OS plays a significant role in benchmark scores.



dyonoctis said:


> View attachment 175959
> 
> Now people are starting to get their macs. The more I see, the more I start to think : considering what those machines are being used for, this is brilliant. CPU wise The 4800u (15w)  is the only thing that come close to be as interesting. Gpu wise it's time for vega to die and for rdna2 to replace it in the zen 3 apu. If you need a light machine with a great battery life and a good screen for photo editing graphic design, and a bit of video editing those machine are nice while not being that expensive compared to equivalent Pcs. (a cheap fast, small windows laptop with a 400-500 nits screen and at least 100% sRGB, doesn't exist, trust me, I've looked. Pc manufacturers like to cheap out on the screen a lot)
> 
> It will be interesting to see what AMD will do with the 5800u.


Pointless benchmarks.  Where's the Fortnite benchmarks?


----------



## Sandbo (Nov 24, 2020)

rvalencia said:


> For Geekbench, OS plays a significant role in benchmark scores.
> 
> 
> Pointless benchmarks.  Where's the Fortnite benchmarks?


I agree that Geekbench is not a good reference, given how it "evolves" over time and bias towards Apple.
But there are other bench such as those performing video encoding does look amazing, plus those Javascript tests with native Chrome/Safari.
M1 at least perform well when there is an optimized version of software, and isn't really limited to a small scope of task like creation.


----------



## dyonoctis (Nov 24, 2020)

rvalencia said:


> For Geekbench, OS plays a significant role in benchmark scores.
> 
> 
> Pointless benchmarks.  Where's the Fortnite benchmarks?


Wow will soon be ported for "apple silicon", but well get a real measurement soon. I don't think that there's any native games yet


----------



## rvalencia (Nov 28, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> I agree that Geekbench is not a good reference, given how it "evolves" over time and bias towards Apple.
> But there are other bench such as those performing video encoding does look amazing, plus those Javascript tests with native Chrome/Safari.
> M1 at least perform well when there is an optimized version of software, and isn't really limited to a small scope of task like creation.


This is why some Zen 3 Geekbench scores are using Hackintosh MacOS X.


----------



## r9 (Dec 5, 2020)

After watching few Youtube videos I must admit that it definitely surpassed my expectations.
It's not there yet but so much potential very impressive for such a new tech.
That SoC is mighty impressive all that CPU, GPU, AI and RAM at 10W.
I want to see 65w version.


----------

