Published in PC Hardware

Tame Apple Press claim benchmark proves M1 chip is faster than Intel’s old one

by on13 November 2020


Which was more than a year old

The Tame Apple Press has been releasing benchmarks for Apple’s new M1 chip to prove that their favourite company makes better chips than Intel.  Unfortunately there is something rotten in the figures.

According to the Tame Apple Press, its benchmark of Apple's M1 chip shows that the multi-core performance of the new MacBook Air with 8GB RAM beats out all of the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro models, including the 10th-generation high-end 2.4GHz Intel Core i9 model.

That high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 1096 and a multi-core score of 6870. The MacBook Air with M1 chip and 8GB RAM features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433.

However, it does not take much to see a devil in the details. While the M1 chip is outperforming the 16-inch MacBook Pro models when it comes to raw CPU benchmarks, the 16-inch MacBook Pro likely offers better performance in other areas such as the GPU as those models have high-power discrete GPUs.

There are likely to be some performance differences between the MacBook Pro and the "MacBook Air" even though they're using the same M1 chip because the "MacBook Air" has a fanless design and the MacBook Pro has a new Apple-designed cooling system.

There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the "MacBook Air", it has a 3.2GHz base frequency.

A few other "MacBook Air" benchmarks have surfaced too with similar scores, and the full list is available on Geekbench. When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the "MacBook Air" outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.

Finally, the Intel chip which Apple is comparing it self with is a 14nm version which is nearly a year old and was pretty dated when it shipped. The implication that Apple has somehow managed to overtake Intel with its debut PC chip is stretches credibility. Had Apple gone with Intel instead of its own chips, it would be on the 11th generation chip which would be much better than the 10th.

Last modified on 13 November 2020
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