From what did you upgrade? Apple had no competitive product with modern processors. Where is the Zen3 macbook with which you compared that? Did the laptop you compared with had an equivalent fast SSD?
Top-end Ryzen chips may be as fast or faster. Are they also as low power?
The impressive thing about the M1 isn't just raw performance but performance / watt. There are obviously faster high-end many-core x86 chips, but the power use difference is wider than the speed difference. The M1 destroys mid-range Intel and AMD offerings at a fraction of the power consumption.
The MacBook Air trounces the top-end Mac Pro on single core performance. No this is not the top-end Intel you can get, nor is it as fast as AMD, but it's a MacBook Air and consumes a small fraction of the power.
Again... the power efficiency is the thing that really blows me away. 5nm accounts for only some of that.
On multi-core the same MacBook Air is just below recent Mac Pro models on total computational throughput. To beat the MacBook Air you have to go up to newer-generation Xeon chips with 8 full-speed cores. The Xeon is branded as a server chip and uses as much power as probably eight to ten M1s.
It's just insane. If Apple puts, say, 16 full-speed core in one of these chips it's absolutely over for all other vendors. Speculation is that the 16" Pro will end up getting 8 performance cores and 4 low-power cores. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up beating the top-end Intel Mac Pro.
Just keep in mind that scaling things will change power efficiency. Like the Vega gpu architecture showed so clearly - which could be quite power efficient, but the Vega graphics card released were ridiculously power hungry, it seems because they missed their performance target and thus got overclocked out of their power efficiency range.
I'm not sure that they can easily add more cores to the M1. If they can, that would also raise the TDP. And adding more cores does not increase performance linearly, even if the architecture is made for it.
Also keep in mind that comparing it to 14nm Intel processors with an architecture from a decade ago is a fair comparison when comparing M1 vs prior Apple products, but is not a fair comparison when comparing it against what x86 can do in general. You would need a modern x86 processor targeting the same watt usage to have a completely valid comparison. As discussed in the thread above.
So yeah, it's a great processor for its target. And it likely will also be a very strong processor when scaled up - it bodes well for the future of ARM. But don't extrapolate the performance too linearly, that is likely to be misleading.
Sigh. I'm typing this on an Apple "prior" product which has a two year old microarchitecture and is built on Intel 10nm (roughly the same as TSMC 7nm) - it's absolutely a modern x86 processor and a valid comparison - and it's left in the dust by the M1.
I currently use a MacBook Air with the same 10th generation Intel chip in it and it's not bad. The only difference between the Air and the Pro with this chip is that the Pro can sustain high clocks longer and has a Touch Bar.
I expected the M1 to be like a much lower power and maybe a bit faster version of this chip, and was really blown away by it being far beyond that.
Hm, I'm surprised by that statement. The Ryzen 5000 mobile CPUs were a lot faster than the Intel competition and I am pretty sure Apple does not have them in any laptop. And the very fast SSD is a new addition, isn't it? Did I miss something?
You implied that they only saw a difference because Apple wasn't using "modern processors". You can't exclude everything but Zen 3 from any sensible definition of "modern processor".
The parent comment talked about the implications he thought this had about the architecture. Like half of the thread seemingly ignoring that a) there are x86 processors that are more than competitive and b) that the big leap he described is more likely coming from the faster storage and from comparing it with the very much older and weaker processors most people that bought an upgrade now had in their old laptops.
Heck, he might have used an old dual core with an HDD from all we know. Of course the new M1 models would make a big difference then. So would all other modern laptops.
But in that context of x86 and ARM Zen3 is absolutely the only sound comparison.
I know what you're trying to say is that you have to do a comparison of CPUs built on similar process nodes - and that maybe the parent has overstated the x86 vs Arm comparison.
I would have some sympathy with that - but that's not the same as discounting the parent's perspective because Apple somehow weren't using "modern processors" previously - because that simply isn't true.
Similar process nodes, or at least when making general statements of the architecture to compare the best modern candidates. Otherwise you just can't make statements about the architecture based on that. And Apple just does not have Zen 3 laptops (unsurprisingly), so there is that.
And I still think it's very valid to not forget how old hardware used for subjective comparisons will be. E.g. the old Macbook air sold very well all that time.
The processors that come closest are the Zen 3 processors. They beat the M1 in total performance, see https://www.pcworld.com/article/3604597/apple-m1-vs-ryzen-50..., but are made for a higher watt usage. There is no direct performance/watt comparison I am aware of.
It's likely the M1 is better in that category, but it does not look like a huge difference if you factor in the higher performance you get from the Ryzen 9 5980HS.
Single core Ryzen 7 5800U Geekbench scores are c20% lower than M1.
Multi core better but still lower but not too surprised as it's got 8 large cores vs big.LITTLE 4/4 for M1 - not clear when those cores will start throttling down.
Suspect single core performance is what drives apparent responsiveness so I'd say not too surprising that the M1 gets rave reviews from users.
