I hope everyone reading this realizes that score chart is misleading at best.
They failed to point out clearly in the posted image in OP that the scores are for burst compute.
Taken out of context, everything can be impressive. That title is really, really misleading.
They’re also comparing arm to x86. Both can do exceptionally well in specific category. I still remember how disappointed I was initially in M chips because of advertisement like “FASTEST CHIP THERE IS, BEATS ALL INTELS”, but then I try to play the only cross platform game I know (Minecraft) and it plays worse than on a decade+ older Intel CPU.
I had no idea. What makes that difference? On a quick read M chips don’t like OpenGL but I doubt that’s it.
The quick takeaway is ARM and x86 solvers eachothers problems and now are trying to catch up. ARM is much more power efficient than x86, and x86 handles powerful sustained workloads faster. So now Intel is trying to make x86 more efficient and Apple is trying to alike ARM more powerful.
It’s much easier to make efficient hardware powerful than it is to make powerful hardware efficient. So while both sides are improving, apples results are more dramatic and noticeable.
From what I’ve heard, the GPU in the M-series chips are just scaled-up PowerVR derived GPU, with some of the greatest limitations being carried over.
Also the CPU is more optimized for parallel-processing, and many games are still seldom optimized for that.
Instructions something something. I’m not a chip expert, but last I heard ARM excels in media and efficiency, but lacks in gaming that does quite advanced (large?) operations.
Well if Hitler made universal healthcare for all I’d be very wary as well
If Jack’s beanstalk went sideways we could all have grapefruit with our steak
Sir I think you’re lost this is a Wendy’s.
Wtf
ARM64 cucks X86_64???
Even as someone who despises Apple for their product philosophy, I gotta admit their new chips are baller… Lots of undeserved hate in this thread
I have had a similar mentality for a long time. I don’t like the company or the philosophy, but the HW they make is pretty sick. That’s why when I was finishing university, I bought an iPad for note taking and such. It was just a well made device. However I stopped using it after grad, so sold it to a friend.
No iCrap gets the hate well deserved. They torpedo their own products.
The chips are good but the company can go fuck itself
They probably optimize for the benchmark… It’s not uncommon
The benchmark itself measures burst compute.
For any sort of sustained workload it’s nowhere near laptops, let alone near desktops.
The whole post, and especially the title and image, are misleading.
It generally is with Apple
I used to sell their gear, and there was always a lot of shitty comparisons and even boasting about things that existed on the competition, but they just didn’t advertise it (because they had it so long)
I don’t really like geekbench. It always feels like it favors apple devices.
Sometimes companies build product to get high scores, rather than to work well in real settings.
Apple has done a remarkable job with their silicon though.
I got an used M1 2020 MacBook Air (base model, no upgrades) back in 2023 and that thing is still going strong. Doesn’t feel slow at all. Not even slightly.
I got a used 2010 thinkpad and it doesn’t feel slow at all (I play solitaire and browse the web on it on Linux Mint)
I think I need not explain the parallel here, right?
I bought an M1 MacBook Air as my first Apple Silicon Mac when they hit the market (longtime Mac user, so direct comparison to Intel Macs). It blew me away. Still have it, despite replacing it with a MBP. At this point, it’s the extra screen off to the side playing videos while I nerd out in my office, though it can do much more.
My kid made a 5 minute short in Blender over the summer on an M1 2020 Air. He only used basic textures but was able to render the thing, create the “score”, and then packaged it all together in iMovie all on that little machine. Blew me away given I was only using it to stream shows and surf the ‘net (as we used to say in the older days). Best little laptop ever. Just waiting on that Linux distro….
And can do that for two seconds before throttling.
I’m not familiar with GeekBench, but I assume that, as with benchmarking software that Ilve used in the past, its benchmark runs for more than two seconds to help make numbers reproducible.
Don’t worry guys, we’ll get a RISC-V device that blows Apple ARM out of the water any second now.
Annnnyyy second now…
They always do this comparison and it is always misleading. They are the first to get a processor on the new TSMC node, so of course the processor will be faster.
Okay, but that Intel CPU was part of the first family of CPUs on Intel’s equivalent node (18A) too. If nothing else, it serves as an interesting Intel vs TSMC lithography comparison. Which one would expect TSMC to win anyway, but at least now we have numbers.
They’re the first to get the fastest chips, so saying their chips are the fastest is… misleading? But also “of course” it’s true?
I’m confused.
I don’t think anybody was misled into thinking it meant this chip would always be the fastest on the market.
Saying the first new CPU on a new node is fastest is uninteresting from a technical standpoint, as there isn’t any competition yet, even if it is not inaccurate.
The average consumer doesn’t care why it’s the fastest. For a time, they’ll have a faster chip than their peers. Only people on Lemmy would say “yeah but that’s only because new nm process, so it doesn’t count!”
If the conversation is between chip manufacturers talking shop, that matters. For everyone else, it’s irrelevant.
For even a semi-informed user, it matters. E.g. you can buy the fastest processor (in this single benchmark, which might be or not be important to you) in a Macbook Pro from Apple for $3000. But knowing that this is only because of the 2nm TSMC node that Apple got first, but Qualcomm, AMD, etc. will also get very soon (a few months), means that you probably will be able to buy an even faster chip in a laptop with Windows or Linux for $2000. Which, depending on what you plan to use the PC, might be just as viable to you.
So I would say it IS important to users to know the facts of the situation in order to make an informed decision on their next purchase.
Wouldn’t that always be the case though? If you wait until next year you will always be able to buy a faster and better computer. It will likely cost more as well. Seem like if you want the ‘fastest’ now, you’d buy something with the A20 pro, but hey tomorrow someone else may come out with something faster.
but can it run linux and real software? what would I want more powerful cpu for if not linux server?
Apple silicon still only supports Apple’s proprietary operating systems but you can run Linux in a virtual machine or use Asahi which is still not recommended for daily use.
I like my iPhone but damn it’s locked down.
I bought it, I should be able to go to GitHub, grab a project, compile it and run it.
I’m surprised that so many technically-adept people find this acceptable.
Not necessarily the bit about compiling software directly on the phone; I can do that and I don’t, but the part where Apple has the last word on what apps can exist (yes, I know there are some very narrow escape hatches).
As a developer I routinely compile projects that Apple has never seen and run them on my iOS devices. It’s not locked down in the sense that it’s impossible, but that the barrier is too high for normal users (who also don’t have a developer program membership).
Im Europe we have alternative app stores on iOS too.
But at the end of the day, even as a technically adept person, I don’t care that much about what my phone can do beyond the actual phone things, and just want it to be a reasonable smartphone that doesn’t need me to be technically adept just to be useable.
Are beowolf clusters still a thing? If yes, imagine one made out of those.
Yes, using the Mac Mini.
All of this performance is wasted on Apple’s closed hardware and OS. What a shame.
It’s also unfortunate timing. The most valued chips these days are the ones with high parallelism, for AI performance. If Apple turned its eye to GPUs, maybe they could challenge Nvidia.
Their iGPUs have serious performance, but it doesn’t matter because they insist on stupid proprietary APIs that no real developer bothers to write software for.
If we’re talking about AI performance the software is there, and models often get ported to MLX.
On the iPhone, sure, but it would be equally wasted on Android phones because who needs this much performance in a phone anyway. However, I expect them to also use it in next year’s Macbook Neo, which is a surprisingly capable laptop for its price with even the A18 Pro chip. It also bodes well for the next generation of their M series chips if the A20 Pro is this fast… and there are TONS of people using Macs for real work. Code compilation in particular got super fast with the M1 Pro and I believe it’s great for creative applications too, though I haven’t really used those much myself. Creatives types gravitated towards MacOS even before Apple Silicon, especially video editors because of Final Cut Pro.
The more performant the chips, the more you can downclock them (or the faster they finish their tasks), the less battery they use
It should in theory be good for battery life
Theyre wasted on ipads with iPadOS too, maybe even more so than on iOS
I believe the power can be used with Android’s Desktop Mode, or even Android’s current multitasking capabilities like multi-window and pop-up window.
More cats in my dwarf fortress are never wasted.
Honestly, DF was the last time i thought about single core performance.
Cats are the best source of soap in DF :)
I think Minecraft is single-threaded
Hasn’t really been for years, and minecraft isn’t a terribly hard game to run anymore anyway.
With the new vibrant visuals and ray tracing features on bedrock, midrange devices cannot keep up.
Those are both GPU-dependent, and certainly not single-threaded.
Not sure, if it is a GPU problem only then it will just be FPS drops. But for my case, the game freezes at specific intervals and doesn’t do any thing even if I tap anywhere on the screen. It may sometimes be even playing (the graphics) but I can’t change items, probably because the CPU cannot handle something somewhere.
I don´t know what that total freeze is about, but I suspect it’s something other than being behind on processing instructions. Does it only happen in wide open areas where you can see to the horizon? That’s the only time Minecraft used to get laggy for me and I´d lower the draw distance and it would be better.
I’m over here on a 15 year old computer.
it could be an apples-to-oranges comparison. not sure if that intel core can be inside apple phones.
IIRC an A20 is an SOC rather than a CPU too.
Intel cpus are SOCs too.
Soc is almost a meaningless term these days. It used to mean “a mobile CPU”. But for power reasons laptop CPUs have all become SOCs too.
Technically these are all System in Package (SiP) rather than systems on a chip (SoCs). It’s not cost effective to waste silicon area on things like memory and storage in the latest and greatest TSMC nodes, so they have several different silicon dies that they connect together using advanced packaging techniques, but where each silicon die in that package might come from a different foundry/process.
