Apple M2 Posts Single-Thread CPU-Z Bench Score Comparable to Intel Alder Lake

[btarunr]

Apple's M-series chips frighten Intel, AMD, and Microsoft like nothing else can, as they have the potential to power MacBooks to grab a sizable share of the notebook market share. This is based squarely on the phenomenal performance/Watt on offer with Apple's chips. A user installed Windows 11 Arm on a virtual machine running on an M2-powered MacBook, opened up CPU-Z (which of course doesn't detect the chip since it's on a VM). They then ran a CPU-Z Bench session for a surprising result—a single-threaded score of 749.5 points, with a multithreaded score of 3822.3 points.

The single-thread score in particular is comparable to Intel's 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" chips (their "Golden Cove" P-cores); maybe not on the fastest Core i9-12900K, but of the mid-range Core i5 chips, such as the i5-12600. It's able to do this at a fraction of the power and heat output. It is on the backs of this kind of IPC that Apple is building bigger chips such as the M3 Pro and M3 Max, which are able to provide HEDT or workstation-class performance, again, at a fraction of the power.



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[ChingDim]

But x64 chips have a higher boost clock. They also have SIMD extensions.

Although I do agree that the consumer market doesn't really leverage these extensions

 

[Onasi]

But x64 chips have a higher boost clock. They also have SIMD extensions.

ARM also has extensions, like Neon. They are just different from x86 stuff, obviously, since the use cases are different. Not like it matters much, Apples way of handling things is by including specific accelerators on the SOC for whatever they need rather than relying on the CPU cores themselves.

 

[mtosev]

Really impressive results by apple's Arm chip.

 

[AnotherReader]

Apple's cores are very impressive, but CPU-Z is a rather inadequate benchmark. Even Geekbench is better than CPU-Z.

 

[Soul_]

And this is while emulating x86 instructions for CPUz, or is CPUz running native ARM? If it is emulating, this is quite a result indeed.

 

[Beermotor]

But x64 chips have a higher boost clock. They also have SIMD extensions.

Although I do agree that the consumer market doesn't really leverage these extensions

As mentioned by a colleague of ours, they do have NEON for SIMD.

Also the text rendered on your screen right now was rendered with the help of SIMD instructions.

There's coursework in most reputable computer science programs on how to leverage SIMD. Ironically one of the motivations for tuning for SIMD is because it saves power.

Apple's cores are very impressive, but CPU-Z is a rather inadequate benchmark. Even Geekbench is better than CPU-Z.

I'd also add this is being executed in a VM under Parallels which I'm pretty sure is a type 2 hypervisor; there's going to be some inherent overhead even though it's technicaly running native ARM binaries without (much) translation.

This is kind of a ham-fisted comparison though. We need a cross-platform benchmark result like SPEC CPU and/or SPECviewperf running under native MacOS to accurately compare it to x86/Power/RISC-V/et al.

And this is while emulating x86 instructions, or running native ARM? If it is emulating, this is quite a result indeed.

They're running the ARM port of CPU-Z so it's not being translated. Still impressive.

 

[Soul_]

They're running the ARM port of CPU-Z so it's not being translated. Still impressive.

Thank you. See that would have been a good info in the article, unless I missed it.

 

[Onasi]

There's coursework in most reputable computer science programs on how to leverage SIMD. Ironically one of the motivations for tuning for SIMD is because it saves power.

From what I understand, the motivation here is quicker execution of the workload to allow the chip to go back to idle/sleep. Even if the peak power consumption in the moment is higher, it’s over a significantly shorter amount of time, so overall more efficient. Same reasoning as for modern AMD boost behavior. Race-to-idle/race-to-sleep.

 

[rv8000]

Too bad IPC is useless when you cant use a lot of the software available to the computer industry and your pricing is a joke and not competitive in any way.

 

[Noyand]

Too bad IPC is useless when you cant use a lot of the software available to the computer industry and your pricing is a joke and not competitive in any way.

Not really an issue for the people buying their computers, from what I've seen and heard, the entertainment and advertising industry love their product, (and can afford them) and they've never been pressured to get into a dogfight with cheap PCs. I don't like the insane margin that they are getting on Ram and Nand memory, but people would rather pay that price than having to deal with windows, or trying to make sense of the clusterfuck of the prebuilt industry.

 

[Redwoodz]

Too bad IPC is useless when you cant use a lot of the software available to the computer industry and your pricing is a joke and not competitive in any way.

That's why there are other ARM designs with similar performance that will do what Apple won't.

And this is while emulating x86 instructions for CPUz, or is CPUz running native ARM? If it is emulating, this is quite a result indeed.

ARM on Windows

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

If that’s for the M2, then there is even more performance uplift with M3. A peculiar thing about AS is that, regardless of if you go with base, Pro, Max, or Ultra, the single core performance is basically the same. It’s the multicore and gpu performance that improves with each tier. Even the Neural Engine is the same until you get to ultra, where it doubles in EUs.

The Neural Engine is another plus to the Mac platform, as developers are confident that such hardware is available on every AS Mac. I use a RAW denoising app by DXO, and on macOS, it uses the NE if it detects AS. If it’s x86, it uses the GPU. The NE handles this task faster than my 5600XT, regardless of if it is on Windows or x86 macOS, all while using a fanless MacBook Air. So in a case like that, the power of the CPU or GPU doesn’t really matter the most, and the power consumption is just a fraction. Apple is more able to push specialized hardware because the offer fewer hardware options. I know that’s not always a plus, but in this case the user does see a benefit.

 

[Onasi]

A peculiar thing about AS is that, regardless of if you go with base, Pro, Max, or Ultra, the single core performance is basically the same. It’s the multicore and gpu performance that improves with each tier. Even the Neural Engine is the same until you get to ultra, where it doubles in EUs.

Thats because the Pro and Ultra are, quite literally, two or four of the base M3 fused together. Sorta a pseudo-chiplet approach. So the single core perf being identical makes sense, that’s the case also with Zen where, if locked to the same freq, the SC score will be identical from the 6-core model all the way to TR.

 

[rv8000]

Not really an issue for the people buying their computers, from what I've seen and heard, the entertainment and advertising industry love their product, (and can afford them) and they've never been pressured to get into a dogfight with cheap PCs. I don't like the insane margin that they are getting on Ram and Nand memory, but people would rather pay that price than having to deal with windows, or trying to make sense of the clusterfuck of the prebuilt industry.

View attachment 336032View attachment 336034

Except for the universal fact you can build a faster, better, and more high end machine for the same or less when it comes to a rig actually used for making money.

I see no reason to limit what can be done by an end user by restricting themselves to the mac ecosystem. Entrenchment is another bad thing in industries; both of my brothers work in the graphic design field and some of the complaints they have about fellow employees who exclusively work on the mac side have some serious comedic value, which nearly always boils down to more easily done on the PC side or far cheaper and faster.

Either way I digress. People are free to pay extra for limitations and a less robust product/eco system.

 

[apoklyps3]

Not impressed.
Very limited os, can't compare it to Linux, letalone windows

 

[Bee9]

Except for the universal fact you can build a faster, better, and more high end machine for the same or less when it comes to a rig actually used for making money.

I see no reason to limit what can be done by an end user by restricting themselves to the mac ecosystem. Entrenchment is another bad thing in industries; both of my brothers work in the graphic design field and some of the complaints they have about fellow employees who exclusively work on the mac side have some serious comedic value, which nearly always boils down to more easily done on the PC side or far cheaper and faster.

Either way I digress. People are free to pay extra for limitations and a less robust product/eco system.

Uhh except for the fact that some of the softwares people use are on Mac and they work really well. The end user can use whatever they want, it's their choice. I don't see Macintosh system as a limitation at all.

 

[Daven]

Uhh except for the fact that some of the softwares people use are on Mac and they work really well. The end user can use whatever they want, it's their choice. I don't see Macintosh system as a limitation at all.

It still surprises me that there is still Apple hate. Its just a company. Everyone should have moved on from the MS v. Apple wars of the 90s and 00s by now. There never was any reason to care about any of these companies. You just use what you need for work and play. Different solutions for different environments.

 

[cvaldes]

It still surprises me that there is still Apple hate. Its just a company. Everyone should have moved on from the MS v. Apple wars of the 90s and 00s by now.

Well, the wise woman Taylor Swift did remind us that "haters gonna hate."

Nothing really changes.

I think some people are butt hurt because Microsoft spectacularly failed in the handheld world and the easiest people to blame are smug Apple users when it was really just Microsoft senior management that repeatedly shot themselves in their feet with bazookas, shotguns, whatever.

And there's nothing preventing anyone from using both. I'm typing this reply on the computer listed in my System Specs, a Mac mini M2 Pro. Sometimes I type these responses on a Windoze box. When you're in a web browser, it's hard to tell sometimes which computer you're using. It's okay to own more than one computer (an alien concept for many TPU commenters) and they don't have to all run the same operating system (crazy, huh?).

One thing for sure, my Mac destroys everything in the performance-per-watt metric. Even more absurd when I include my handheld devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.); those have even better performance-per-watt than the Mac. That said, there are some recent improvements in the Wintel world. My daily driver PC is a Beelink Mini S Pro, with Intel N100 SoC (Alder Lake N with integrated Xe graphics).

For me, I use my PC for Office applications (the Windows ones are better than the macOS ones) and gaming. Everything else gets done on the Mac at a fraction of the electricity. And yes, there's better vertical integration between my Mac, iPhone and iPad. I don't even own a Watch or Apple TV but those are two other additional platforms that also benefit from Apple's seamless integration.

Computer ownership for Joe Consumer isn't just a spec sheet or benchmark. It's a holistic experience. There are people here who fixate on web browser benchmarks or how fast a computer boots. Crazy.

 

[apoklyps3]

Osx reminds me of windows 3.1

 

[cvaldes]

Osx reminds me of windows 3.1

That's great. Not sure why that would be. OS X was a 64-bit operating system and Windows 3.1 was decidedly not. Visually the Mac operating system has undergone several facelifts since its 2001 debut.

In any case, Apple discontinued using the OS X name in 2016 in favor of macOS (while still continue to use the 10.x major number). They rolled the major version number to 11 with macOS Big Sur in 2020.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Thats because the Pro and Ultra are, quite literally, two or four of the base M3 fused together. Sorta a pseudo-chiplet approach. So the single core perf being identical makes sense, that’s the case also with Zen where, if locked to the same freq, the SC score will be identical from the 6-core model all the way to TR.

Sorta. They do indeed have the same core design across an entire generation, and there appears to be no physical difference from a performance core in the M2 all the way up to the performance cores in the M2 Ultra. It's so close that one can only assume that frequency, cache, and bandwidth are the same for SC tasks. The level-up chips have more bandwidth, but it appears that doesn't really advance CPU performance in a significant way (though it surely helps the GPU). It's certainly a different approach versus AMD and Intel, where chips are differentiated not just by core counts, but also by frequency and cache. If you don't need lots of cores or a bigger GPU, then there's really no reason to go with AS Pro, Max or Ultra. Just get more RAM and storage, and then wait 2-3 generations to upgrade.

As for bagging on Apple/macOS, that's purely subjective. I have no trouble being productive on a Mac, and I rather like the fact that it's incrementally updated, especially visually. How many substantial GUI overhauls has Windows seen? I can count at least 6, maybe 7 instances since Win 3.1 where the GUI changed significantly, and we won't even get started on how many times the control panel has changed. I mean, if that sort of thing excites you, great, but these changes hardly ever seem to be made in an effort to improve productivity. I want to like Windows, but man, it's just such a mess of tracking and advertising. New Outlook having 700+ trackers? That tells me what the priorities are. My complaint with Apple is the highway robbery RAM/Storage upgrade pricing. Ugh.

 

[apoklyps3]

That's great. Not sure why that would be. OS X was a 64-bit operating system and Windows 3.1 was decidedly not. Visually the Mac operating system has undergone several facelifts since its 2001 debut.

In any case, Apple discontinued using the OS X name in 2016 in favor of macOS (while still continue to use the 10.x major number). They rolled the major version number to 11 with macOS Big Sur in 2020.

That's great. Not sure why that would be. OS X was a 64-bit operating system and Windows 3.1 was decidedly not. Visually the Mac operating system has undergone several facelifts since its 2001 debut.

In any case, Apple discontinued using the OS X name in 2016 in favor of macOS (while still continue to use the 10.x major number). They rolled the major version number to 11 with macOS Big Sur in 2020.

Graphically, osx might be eye candy, just like kids like it, but it's as intuitive to use especially in window based navigation and features as win 3.1. I'm risking about windows about the snap, holding and dragging a file on a background window to activate it and do much more.

 

[cvaldes]

Graphically, osx might be eye candy, just like kids like it, but it's as intuitive to use especially in window based navigation and features as win 3.1.

Gee, I would hope so. Remember that Windows debuted in 1985 a year after Mac's famous debut in 1984. Windows was Microsoft response to the Macintosh Operating System.

I'm risking about windows about the snap, holding and dragging a file on a background window to activate it and do much more.

I'll look for this in Windows 11 someday. But "risking" does risky. Dare I try it?

Anyhow as I mentioned, there are both Macs and Windows PCs under my roof as well as Linux devices. I get to see firsthand the pros and cons of all three.

But the M2 Mac crushes my Windows PCs in performance-per-watt. It crushes the performance-per-watt of my older Mac mini 2018 (Intel i7) too. So it's not just the operating system, it has to do with their silicon architecture. The Macs aren't ideal for gaming but I have a PC for that. Horses for courses as they say.

 

[apoklyps3]

The time you are wasting in getting the same operation on a mac equals you more power used.
Also because gaming is a nono on maca, you are using more power in total .
Arm isn't ready for prime time yet, no matter how appleish its silicon might be