• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Apple A17 Pro SoC Within Reach of Intel i9-13900K in Single-Core Performance

Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
3,607 (2.49/day)
Location
Slovenia
Processor i5-6600K
Motherboard Asus Z170A
Cooling some cheap Cooler Master Hyper 103 or similar
Memory 16GB DDR4-2400
Video Card(s) IGP
Storage Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Display(s) 2x Oldell 24" 1920x1200
Case Bitfenix Nova white windowless non-mesh
Audio Device(s) E-mu 1212m PCI
Power Supply Seasonic G-360
Mouse Logitech Marble trackball, never had a mouse
Keyboard Key Tronic KT2000, no Win key because 1994
Software Oldwin
I remember when Anandtech did the deep dive on the A14 in 2020, it had an eight wide decode block vs intel and AMD having 4 max.
At least Intel is now at 6 in both P and E cores. How do Snapdragons and other Arm designs compare?
 
Joined
Nov 28, 2012
Messages
427 (0.10/day)
All this discussion about the advantages of soldered RAM makes me wonder how desktop CPUs will evolve in the future.
We're already in a time where basically 2 sizes of RAM makes sense for DDR5 (32 or 64 GB), at least for consumer desktops.
Now imagine if intel and AMD moved to an "embedded" CPU design where you buy the whole CPU+RAM block to be slotted into the motherboard, kinda like GPUs are made where you have a reference design and board partners make their own version with the chips sourced by AMD/intel.
The RAM slots could be replaced by SSDs, secondary expansion memory or other similar stuff.
 
Joined
Nov 18, 2010
Messages
7,596 (1.48/day)
Location
Rīga, Latvia
System Name HELLSTAR
Processor AMD RYZEN 9 5950X
Motherboard ASUS Strix X570-E
Cooling 2x 360 + 280 rads. 3x Gentle Typhoons, 3x Phanteks T30, 2x TT T140 . EK-Quantum Momentum Monoblock.
Memory 4x8GB G.SKILL Trident Z RGB F4-4133C19D-16GTZR 14-16-12-30-44
Video Card(s) Sapphire Pulse RX 7900XTX. Water block. Crossflashed.
Storage Optane 900P[Fedora] + WD BLACK SN850X 4TB + 750 EVO 500GB + 1TB 980PRO+SN560 1TB(W11)
Display(s) Philips PHL BDM3270 + Acer XV242Y
Case Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO
Audio Device(s) SMSL RAW-MDA1 DAC
Power Supply Fractal Design Newton R3 1000W
Mouse Razer Basilisk
Keyboard Razer BlackWidow V3 - Yellow Switch
Software FEDORA 41
The only question is why... I don't really give a crap about computational photography and AI/ML in my pocket. Running compute-intensive apps on the phone as-is is also stupid(from usability perspective). Having full-blown AAA games on the go, running natively, isn't that impressive these days either. All it needs is a proper dock with a proper desktop mode, at minimum like DEX. Then we'll talk.

Their camera is basically full of it... also the denoise engine relies on it. They have build their all API around it. Imagine an instagram wh*r5 that actually is a large user base for those flagship iphones, and allow them to be worse than the Android competition? They have to hold the bar high and make is as dumb proof as they can. AI is the only method to evolve phone camera quality further. Nothing else can be done due to basic physics. The size is just too small.

Same applies to the workstation CPU's they have. All productivity related software incorporate some sort of computing these days... let it be AI denoise etc... they don't have AMD or NVIDA cards to have compute cores now... they predicted it right to incorporate into the CPU clusters and actually the Neural Engines ain't that bad.

Imagine that backlash that your new shiny macs could do properly Adobe tasks that use compute in timid fashion? It would be a disaster.
 
Joined
Mar 7, 2010
Messages
993 (0.18/day)
Location
Michigan
System Name Daves
Processor AMD Ryzen 3900x
Motherboard AsRock X570 Taichi
Cooling Enermax LIQMAX III 360
Memory 32 GiG Team Group B Die 3600
Video Card(s) Powercolor 5700 xt Red Devil
Storage Crucial MX 500 SSD and Intel P660 NVME 2TB for games
Display(s) Acer 144htz 27in. 2560x1440
Case Phanteks P600S
Audio Device(s) N/A
Power Supply Corsair RM 750
Mouse EVGA
Keyboard Corsair Strafe
Software Windows 10 Pro
Joined
Mar 6, 2017
Messages
3,358 (1.18/day)
Location
North East Ohio, USA
System Name My Ryzen 7 7700X Super Computer
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
Motherboard Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX
Cooling DeepCool AK620 with Arctic Silver 5
Memory 2x16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 EXPO (CL30)
Video Card(s) XFX AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Storage Samsung 980 EVO 1 TB NVMe SSD (System Drive), Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB NVMe SSD (Game Drive)
Display(s) Acer Nitro XV272U (DisplayPort) and Acer Nitro XV270U (DisplayPort)
Case Lian Li LANCOOL II MESH C
Audio Device(s) On-Board Sound / Sony WH-XB910N Bluetooth Headphones
Power Supply MSI A850GF
Mouse Logitech M705
Keyboard Steelseries
Software Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
Benchmark Scores https://valid.x86.fr/liwjs3
What people are failing to understand here is that if the mobile chip, the A17 Pro, can achieve these kinds of results, imagine what the performance numbers would be if Apple took the A17 Pro chip and took the gloves off by making it a future M3 chip. I have a feeling that the M3 chip would wipe the floor with a 13900K.

I'm by no means an Apple fanatic, I will always buy a PC. However, you have to hand it to their engineers... they're world class.
 
Joined
Dec 30, 2010
Messages
2,200 (0.43/day)
All this discussion about the advantages of soldered RAM makes me wonder how desktop CPUs will evolve in the future.
We're already in a time where basically 2 sizes of RAM makes sense for DDR5 (32 or 64 GB), at least for consumer desktops.
Now imagine if intel and AMD moved to an "embedded" CPU design where you buy the whole CPU+RAM block to be slotted into the motherboard, kinda like GPUs are made where you have a reference design and board partners make their own version with the chips sourced by AMD/intel.
The RAM slots could be replaced by SSDs, secondary expansion memory or other similar stuff.

Because of this, hardware would be half more expensive then it already is.

You forget that apple charge a certain tax - and if you buy a phone, it's usually a 100$ more for just 64GB / 128GB of storage extra.

There's equipment already having memory on the same chip, such as the PS3 GPU.

Apple makes CPU's quite efficient - and to be honest, i really was suprised after having to replace the Macbook 13 inch battery - to find a board the size of a shoe:



That is packing everything - from CPU to Memory and Graphics. And fits in between the screen and battery.

It was a tough job to actually accomplish since it was my first mac's battery replacement. But geezus the super tiny screws at the size of avg flees n stuff.

Apple has some very skilled engineers.
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2021
Messages
1,605 (1.37/day)
It's very interesting, just before Apple launches a new Soc, this benchmark receives an update that boosts the numbers a little compared to the old one.

Anyway, I would say that this software is at least inadequate... :rolleyes:
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2020
Messages
252 (0.14/day)
In that case, the A17 would win by a landslide in single threaded performance. Still, the clock speed is a part of the design and equalizing clocks doesn't make sense for two very different designs.

Comparing power consumption would make a lot of sense.
 
Joined
Sep 19, 2010
Messages
64 (0.01/day)
Location
U.A.E Dubai
Processor I9 13900k
Motherboard Asus z690 hero
Cooling Next Kraken X72
Memory 32GB gskill 6000
Video Card(s) xfx 7900xtx black
Storage Intel P5800X 800GB / sabrent rocket 4 plus 4tb
Display(s) Asus PA32DC
Case ASUS TUF GT502
Audio Device(s) Sony TA-ZH1ES & Sony Z1R
Power Supply Corsair 1500i
waw 3nn chip is more efficient then 10nn who could have known
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2015
Messages
1,746 (0.48/day)
System Name Legion
Processor i7-12700KF
Motherboard Asus Z690-Plus TUF Gaming WiFi D5
Cooling Arctic Liquid Freezer 2 240mm AIO
Memory PNY MAKO DDR5-6000 C36-36-36-76
Video Card(s) PowerColor Hellhound 6700 XT 12GB
Storage WD SN770 512GB m.2, Samsung 980 Pro m.2 2TB
Display(s) Acer K272HUL 1440p / 34" MSI MAG341CQ 3440x1440
Case Montech Air X
Power Supply Corsair CX750M
Mouse Logitech MX Anywhere 25
Keyboard Logitech MX Keys
Software Lots
The big thing that everyone seems to be forgetting is the additional width in the decode block the A17 likely has for throughput vs Intel and AMD. I remember when Anandtech did the deep dive on the A14 in 2020, it had an eight wide decode block vs intel and AMD having 4 max. Even if the x86 chips can't change, I fully expect that apple has made their CPU design have a 12 or 16 wide decode block now to keep going with their big and wide over max frequency strategy.

What people are failing to understand here is that if the mobile chip, the A17 Pro, can achieve these kinds of results, imagine what the performance numbers would be if Apple took the A17 Pro chip and took the gloves off by making it a future M3 chip. I have a feeling that the M3 chip would wipe the floor with a 13900K.

I'm by no means an Apple fanatic, I will always buy a PC. However, you have to hand it to their engineers... they're world class.

Nuckles answered that question.

Broadly speaking, chip pipelines are either wide and shallow or narrow and deep. Within the same transistor budget, a wider decode with shorter pipelines means lower clocks while a narrower decode with longer pipelines means higher clocks.

Both AMD and Intel and x86 in general use narrow and deep.

AMD and Intel design for higher clocks, they are 4 (Zen) and 1+3 (Intel) wide decode pipelines. Apple was at 7 wide with the A11/A12 and 8 wide back with the A14, not sure where they are now. Samsung was at 6 a couple of years ago and generic ARM Cortex was 6.

This is why clock-for-clock comparisons are meaningless. These are high level design choices the engineers made for their use cases. Apple is designing for lower clocks and higher efficiency, AMD and Intel are mostly going for raw performance hence higher clocks.
 
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
22,673 (6.05/day)
Location
The Washing Machine
System Name Tiny the White Yeti
Processor 7800X3D
Motherboard MSI MAG Mortar b650m wifi
Cooling CPU: Thermalright Peerless Assassin / Case: Phanteks T30-120 x3
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance 30CL6000
Video Card(s) ASRock RX7900XT Phantom Gaming
Storage Lexar NM790 4TB + Samsung 850 EVO 1TB + Samsung 980 1TB + Crucial BX100 250GB
Display(s) Gigabyte G34QWC (3440x1440)
Case Lian Li A3 mATX White
Audio Device(s) Harman Kardon AVR137 + 2.1
Power Supply EVGA Supernova G2 750W
Mouse Steelseries Aerox 5
Keyboard Lenovo Thinkpad Trackpoint II
VR HMD HD 420 - Green Edition ;)
Software W11 IoT Enterprise LTSC
Benchmark Scores Over 9000
Pretty pathetic that tech sites still refer to the utterly useless Geekbench which has virtually zero relevance to real world applications.
But here Apple wins! So this is what matters, we need to keep the Apple does it all better fairy tale alive right
 
Joined
Mar 6, 2018
Messages
136 (0.05/day)
Apple paid double transistor count per "performance" core. Are you really willing to pay double price for that?
 
Joined
Sep 8, 2020
Messages
219 (0.14/day)
System Name Home
Processor 5950x
Motherboard Asrock Taichi x370
Cooling Thermalright True Spirit 140
Memory Patriot 32gb DDR4 3200mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire Radeon RX 6700 10gb
Storage Too many to count
Display(s) U2518D+u2417h
Case Chieftec
Audio Device(s) onboard
Power Supply seasonic prime 1000W
Mouse Razer Viper
Keyboard Logitech
Software Windows 10
OMG, i can finally ditch my middle tower PC and edit/work in Adobe on the apple A17 BIONIC, at even has RAY-TRACING, oh wait, i cannot, it's all benchmarks and numbers, i still need that ugly, big and huge middle tower.
 
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
2,140 (1.04/day)
System Name BigRed
Processor I7 12700k
Motherboard Asus Rog Strix z690-A WiFi D4
Cooling Noctua D15S chromax black/MX6
Memory TEAM GROUP 32GB DDR4 4000C16 B die
Video Card(s) MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Trio X 10GB
Storage M.2 drives WD SN850X 1TB 4x4 BOOT/WD SN850X 4TB 4x4 STEAM/USB3 4TB OTHER
Display(s) Dell s3422dwg 34" 3440x1440p 144hz ultrawide
Case Corsair 7000D
Audio Device(s) Logitech Z5450/KEF uniQ speakers/Bowers and Wilkins P7 Headphones
Power Supply Corsair RM850x 80% gold
Mouse Logitech G604 lightspeed wireless
Keyboard Logitech G915 TKL lightspeed wireless
Software Windows 10 Pro X64
Benchmark Scores Who cares
OMG, i can finally ditch my middle tower PC and edit/work in Adobe on the apple A17 BIONIC, at even has RAY-TRACING, oh wait, i cannot, it's all benchmarks and numbers, i still need that ugly, big and huge middle tower.

The phone needs the power. imagine all the time you save when the phone or msg apps open 0.34 seconds quicker than the previous model.
 
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
2,140 (1.04/day)
System Name BigRed
Processor I7 12700k
Motherboard Asus Rog Strix z690-A WiFi D4
Cooling Noctua D15S chromax black/MX6
Memory TEAM GROUP 32GB DDR4 4000C16 B die
Video Card(s) MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Trio X 10GB
Storage M.2 drives WD SN850X 1TB 4x4 BOOT/WD SN850X 4TB 4x4 STEAM/USB3 4TB OTHER
Display(s) Dell s3422dwg 34" 3440x1440p 144hz ultrawide
Case Corsair 7000D
Audio Device(s) Logitech Z5450/KEF uniQ speakers/Bowers and Wilkins P7 Headphones
Power Supply Corsair RM850x 80% gold
Mouse Logitech G604 lightspeed wireless
Keyboard Logitech G915 TKL lightspeed wireless
Software Windows 10 Pro X64
Benchmark Scores Who cares
Joined
Aug 14, 2013
Messages
2,373 (0.57/day)
System Name boomer--->zoomer not your typical millenial build
Processor i5-760 @ 3.8ghz + turbo ~goes wayyyyyyyyy fast cuz turboooooz~
Motherboard P55-GD80 ~best motherboard ever designed~
Cooling NH-D15 ~double stack thot twerk all day~
Memory 16GB Crucial Ballistix LP ~memory gone AWOL~
Video Card(s) MSI GTX 970 ~*~GOLDEN EDITION~*~ RAWRRRRRR
Storage 500GB Samsung 850 Evo (OS X, *nix), 128GB Samsung 840 Pro (W10 Pro), 1TB SpinPoint F3 ~best in class
Display(s) ASUS VW246H ~best 24" you've seen *FULL HD* *1O80PP* *SLAPS*~
Case FT02-W ~the W stands for white but it's brushed aluminum except for the disgusting ODD bays; *cries*
Audio Device(s) A LOT
Power Supply 850W EVGA SuperNova G2 ~hot fire like champagne~
Mouse CM Spawn ~cmcz R c00l seth mcfarlane darawss~
Keyboard CM QF Rapid - Browns ~fastrrr kees for fstr teens~
Software integrated into the chassis
Benchmark Scores 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
OMG, i can finally ditch my middle tower PC and edit/work in Adobe on the apple A17 BIONIC, at even has RAY-TRACING, oh wait, i cannot, it's all benchmarks and numbers, i still need that ugly, big and huge middle tower.
I mean, if adobe is your workload, you can buy an iPad or a Studio and get better performance
 

Aquinus

Resident Wat-man
Joined
Jan 28, 2012
Messages
13,171 (2.79/day)
Location
Concord, NH, USA
System Name Apollo
Processor Intel Core i9 9880H
Motherboard Some proprietary Apple thing.
Memory 64GB DDR4-2667
Video Card(s) AMD Radeon Pro 5600M, 8GB HBM2
Storage 1TB Apple NVMe, 4TB External
Display(s) Laptop @ 3072x1920 + 2x LG 5k Ultrafine TB3 displays
Case MacBook Pro (16", 2019)
Audio Device(s) AirPods Pro, Sennheiser HD 380s w/ FIIO Alpen 2, or Logitech 2.1 Speakers
Power Supply 96w Power Adapter
Mouse Logitech MX Master 3
Keyboard Logitech G915, GL Clicky
Software MacOS 12.1
I mean, if adobe is your workload, you can buy an iPad or a Studio and get better performance
Adobe's acceleration on most Macs is pretty good. The 5600M in my MBP accelerates workloads in Photoshop and Lightroom pretty well to be completely honest.
 
Joined
Aug 22, 2007
Messages
3,593 (0.57/day)
Location
Terra
System Name :)
Processor Intel 13700k
Motherboard Gigabyte z790 UD AC
Cooling Noctua NH-D15
Memory 64GB GSKILL DDR5
Video Card(s) Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC
Storage 960GB Optane 905P U.2 SSD + 4TB PCIe4 U.2 SSD
Display(s) Alienware AW3423DW 175Hz QD-OLED + AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD2 240Hz QD-OLED
Case Fractal Design Torrent
Audio Device(s) MOTU M4 - JBL 305P MKII w/2x JL Audio 10 Sealed --- X-Fi Titanium HD - Presonus Eris E5 - JBL 4412
Power Supply Silverstone 1000W
Mouse Roccat Kain 122 AIMO
Keyboard KBD67 Lite / Mammoth75
VR HMD Reverb G2 V2
Software Win 11 Pro
Apple makes CPU's quite efficient - and to be honest, i really was suprised after having to replace the Macbook 13 inch battery - to find a board the size of a shoe:

That is packing everything - from CPU to Memory and Graphics. And fits in between the screen and battery.

It was a tough job to actually accomplish since it was my first mac's battery replacement. But geezus the super tiny screws at the size of avg flees n stuff.

Apple has some very skilled engineers.
I guess you need to take apart more ultrabooks :laugh: small boards like that are pretty common.
Also, since we're talking ARM... your cellphone also packs the CPU, memory and graphics in a much smaller board. ;) :D
 

varase

New Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2023
Messages
1 (0.00/day)
Location
Chicago Suburbs
The big thing that everyone seems to be forgetting is the additional width in the decode block the A17 likely has for throughput vs Intel and AMD. I remember when Anandtech did the deep dive on the A14 in 2020, it had an eight wide decode block vs intel and AMD having 4 max. Even if the x86 chips can't change, I fully expect that apple has made their CPU design have a 12 or 16 wide decode block now to keep going with their big and wide over max frequency strategy.
CPU width has diminishing returns - I'll bet the Apple Silicon team did a shot whenever they got the out of order execution unit to execute eight instructions simultaneously.

Maybe they've added more arithmetic units so the pipeline is more symmetrical, but I can't see how going much wider will trigger that much of performance improvement.
 
Top