> This is a very misleading statement. They primarily only used the 5950X in single-core tests, and in those tests it doesn't come remotely close to 105W. In fact per Anandtech's own results[1] the 5950X CPU core in a single-core load draws around 20w.

It would seem that the switching of AMD chips in the various graphs have caused some confusion. I was referring to the "Geekbench 5 Multi-Thread" graph on page 2. This shows a score of 15,726 for the 5950x vs 7715 for the M1. This is about 2x. I do not see any notes that the benchmark is using less cores than the chip has available.

I don't follow your argument for why it is misleading to characterize the 5950x as a 105W TDP in this benchmark. Could you expand a little on why you believe this is misleading? The article that you have linked to shows over 105W of power consumption from 4 cores - 16.

Edit: I put in the wrong page number in the clarification :) Also, I see later in the linked article that the 15726 score is from 16C/32T.

If you're referring to the single time the 5950X's multi-threaded performance was compared then sure, the 105W TDP is fair. But you should also be calling that out, or you're being misleading, as the majority of the 5950X numbers in the article were single-threaded results, and it did not appear in most of the multi-threaded comparisons at all.

But in multi-threaded workloads it also absolutely obliterates the M1. Making that comparison fairly moot (hence why Anandtech didn't really do it). It's pretty expected that the higher-power part is faster, that's not particularly interesting.

It's really not clear what you are trying to argue here. The number of single-threaded benchmarks are irrelevant to this point: when the M1 was compared to the 5950X in a multithreaded comparison:

* The 5950X was 2x faster * The 5950X was using 4x the power (28W system vs 105W+ for the processor). * The M1 only has 4 performance cores, the 5950X has 16.

Even counting the high-efficiency cores as full cores in the comparison has the M1 with 8-cores providing 1/2 the performance of the 5950X with 16-cores, i.e. it implies that the lower performance cores are providing as much as the 5950X cores.

That is certainly not the 5950X obliterating the M1, as the article stated (and was the quote that started this thread) the M1 is giving the 5950X a good run for its money. If you think otherwise could you provide some kind of argument for why you think so?

The 2x number you're claiming was only for geekbench multithreaded, which was the only multithreaded comparison between those two in the Anandtech article. You're trying to make broad sweeping claims from that one data point. That doesn't work.

Take for example the CineBench R23 numbers. The M1 at 7.8k lost to the 15W 4800U in that test (talk about the dangers of a single datapoint!). The 5950X meanwhile puts up numbers in the 25-30k range. That's a hell of a lot more than 2x faster. Similarly in SPECint2017 the M1 @ 8 cores put up a 28.85, whereas the 5950X scores 82.98. Again, a lot more than 2X.

This is all ignoring that 2x faster for 4x the performance is also actually a pretty good return anyway. Pay attention to the power curves on a modern CPU or what for example TSMC states about a node improvement. For 7nm to 5nm for example it was either 30% more efficient or 15% faster. Getting the M1 to be >2x faster is going to be a lot harder than cutting the 5950X's power consumption in half (a mild underclock will do that easy - which is how AMD crams 64 of these into 200W for the Epyc CPUs, after all). But nobody cares about a 65w highly multithreaded CPU, either, that's not a market. Whatever Apple comes up with for the Mac Pro would be the relevant comparison for a 5950X.

You're being obtuse. The only test you're using is Geekbench, which just isn't useful for these kinds of comparisons.

In other multicore benchmarks, the M1 gets beaten by parts with lower TDPs by AMD, and the 5950X has something like 3 to 4+ times more performance.

Calling me obtuse doesn't add anything of value to the discussion. I was pointing out the multithreaded benchmark in response to the claim that there were none. Read kllrnohj's response that is the sibling to your comment to see how to make a point effectively.

That's not the obtuse part. The obtuse part is ignoring all the other multicore tests in the same uArch and then saying that the 5950X is comparing unfavorably and ignoring the fact that single core perf on Geekbench for the 5950X doesn't scale like any of the other tests and is much lower relatively to the other tests, then taking this one test were a 105W TDP is actually used as significant to all the other comparisons, then saying that their are comparing it to a chip with a 105W TDP, when in all multicore tests except two it gets compared to the 4800S (which beats it with half the power consumption).

It's not getting compared, at the scale of the article, to the 5950X in anything but single core performance except for one expection, and the claim that it's being compared generally to a 105W TDP part is also false because in multicore comparisons, where the total TDP makes sense, it's getting compared to parts with half or 150% the TDP and losing.

In reality, it's getting compared to a 6-7w core, and to 15-45w chips.

Yeah I think it is incredibly tiring how everyone said "it's both faster and more energy efficient" when the benchmarks have shown something far more obvious and boring. You can make ARM chips that are just as fast as x86 chips and they will end up consuming roughly the same amount of power during heavy calculations but much less in idle. The fact that ARM is king in idle power consumption isn't a surprise. It's ARM's bread and butter.

All the wishful thinking was wrong but that doesn't mean ARM is doing badly.

You would be better at conveying your point if you could manage it without insults.

An author who deliberately switches which chip to test in different versions of the same test in order to paint the desired picture isn't much different than one who literally makes up the numbers. The whole article ought to be flagged and deleted.

M1 has a lot of great things about it and I'm excited to see the what it can bring. Intel needs to be humiliated by something great, to remind that they have been crap for a long time.

But... Other than ST performance, the multi-core CPU isn't linear at scaling. At 16cores - core-to-core communications take a hit, that is not as bad as for 4 cores.

> This is a very misleading statement. They primarily only used the 5950X in single-core tests, and in those tests it doesn't come remotely close to 105W.

That’s true but keep in mind this is the power going into the AMD CPU only. The power number measured for the mini was the entire system power pulled from the wall, so that 28W included memory, conversion inefficiencies and everything. That’s crazy.

Actually a significant power, maybe around 20 W, is consumed by the I/O chip, which consumes a lot because it is made in an old process.

In 2021, when the laptop Zen 3 will be introduced, that will have a much better power efficiency, being made all in 7 nm.

Of course, it will still not match the power efficiency of M1, which is due both to its newer 5-nm process and to its lower clock frequency at the same performance.

> which consumes a lot because it is made in an old process.

And also because it's doing a lot. Infinity fabric for the chiplet design isn't cheap, for example. A single-die monolithic design avoids that (which is why that's what AMD did for the Zen2 mobile CPUs).

When we get to the detailed comparisons - it's almost impossible to compare without deconstructing the chips.

In the end it'll be a question of - can Apple scale it without incurring massive costs?