Meaningless question when they don't sell the M2 chip separately
> Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument
I guess "for each" would be better ? But OPs point still stands, if you put me on a race car you are not breaking any records no matter how good the car is
Simply, that you can’t compare laptops solely on a cost basis easily.
Does the Ryzen system come with a full aluminum enclosure?
Does it come with a screen with P3 color, 400 nits peak brightness, and HDR support?
What is the battery size on both machines, and how long do each last?
How thin is it? How light it it? How fast does it charge? How much does this affect you daily?
If it was only about CPU performance, I could grab the cheapest Clevo with a Core i9 and it would beat every other manufacturer in the “bang-buck” spec as you are defining it, but it would be an awful experience.
> Simply, that you can’t compare laptops solely on a cost basis easily.
But they aren't doing that!*
They're specifically comparing performance between two similarly-priced laptops[1]. That's what "benchmark" means.
If this was a review between the two laptops I'd agree with you, but it isn't a review, it's a benchmark suite.
> Does the Ryzen system come with a full aluminum enclosure?
> Does it come with a screen with P3 color, 400 nits peak brightness, and HDR support?
> What is the battery size on both machines, and how long do each last?
> How thin is it? How light it it? How fast does it charge? How much does this affect you daily?
All of these are valid questions, just not for a benchmark. The benchmark is one set of inputs a potential purchaser would take into account, with the other inputs being all those things you mentioned.
[1] I assume that they're similarly priced - I skipped the introduction and went straight to the benchmarks.
> Does the Ryzen system come with a full aluminum enclosure?
If you really want one you can get one.
But if you are buying a laptop on the basis of how shiny it is does the CPU performance really matter?
When I bought a car for my wife she picked it out on the basis of how cute it is. She isn't going to run around being upset that it doesn't have 0-60 time of a Subaru WRX. To her the Subaru is ugly.
> Simply, that you can’t compare laptops solely on a cost basis easily.
Yes, people might be searching for the best performance, and cost comparison here is fair.
> If it was only about CPU performance, I could grab the cheapest Clevo with a Core i9 and it would beat every other manufacturer in the “bang-buck” spec as you are defining it, but it would be an awful experience.
Evey user has his/her requirements and things he/she is okay to comprmise on.
It’s still pretty silly because the price is the easiest thing to compare. Just show the prices of 2 systems as closely specced as possible and list power, thermal envelop blah blah. As it is, this doesn’t change my mind about if I’m making the right trade offs by getting the M2
Final laptop price isn't that important when this is a CPU comparison, "Apple M2 vs. AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U"
> Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument.
What I meant is that they don't use the OS which is most stable and most mature on each platform independently (i.e. some flavour of linux, or even windows, for the Ryzen and macOS for the M2). Either choice will introduce OS differences, but I believe that using the most optimized OS is the better choice as it allows each CPU to show off its best performance.
Hypothetically - a diesel BMW m3 may cost the same as a Camaro with a V8 engine, but what's the point of talking what engines they have... if you are purchasing these items for other reasons.
I agree, but this is a CPU benchmark. They don't benchmark the screen, or the ram speed, or the battery life, or anything else in the laptops. All they compare is the CPU
Linux has supported AMD CPUs for decades and AMD has engineers creating kernel patches to ensure their CPUs work correctly on Linux.
Linux support for Apple chips is in its infancy and what little support it does have has been provided by a ragtag team of volunteers that have reversed engineered the M-series chips.
It's reasonable to assume that the AMD chip might be at a slight advantage on Linux.
You've posted this a few times. But now the devices are actually available and X13 starts at $1097... That's $103 less than cheapest MacBook. What a difference 5 days makes, right?
For those not familiar with Lenovo's pricing, basically the sticker prices are insane but routinely get ~50% discounts after the products have been available for a few weeks. Those are brand new models that do not yet get steep discounts.
It makes comparing them on prices almost impossible.
at work I got a m1 pro with 16GB of RAM just because they offered the 14" managed device with 16GB only, while they offered 32GB on the 16" devices. When I complained about this, the response was "but is 16GB unified memory" as if I was disputing the performance of the RAM and how it is handled within the M1 chip while my issue was filling the 16GB. I'm happy that at least in HN people seem to be more aware on RAM sizing
More ram = more performance if there's a cost in going across a bridge to keep the pipeline full. 16gb of _unified_ RAM that can be accessed by the CPU and GPU without a performance hit in going to the motherboard is a factor in some workloads. Whether you agree or not, it's an effective test comparing two architectures.
So the question is: are you spec benchmarking, or are you interested in the performance of the workload, because it's the actual work that matters, not how the bits are stored under the keyboard.
Only if your datasets, in aggregate, extend beyond what can be compressed into 16Gb...an what's the performance of the device you're swapping to? There's a GREAT BIG DIFFERENCE between an RLL 80 Gb drive and What you're swapping to on the motherboard today...
(In fact, you could consider the on-die RAM to be a really big Cache and the Flash storage to be REALLY REALLY big Non volatile addressable RAM.)
> as long as both systems have their memory channels filled out and the workload fits in memory.
Those are big ifs. We don't know how much of those 8GBs were used, and how much swapping the OS was forced to do. But either way, it's a silly thing to have different.
I am sure Michael Larabel knows what he is doing, given how long he has been benchmarking. I think both devices have soldered memory though, so the amount of installed RAM isn’t flexible.
Not to mention the usual problems with Phoronix benchmarks: it doesn't say how many benchmark runs were done, where are the error bars, was the software actually compiled properly etc. Phoronix folks don't understand what they are measuring; they also don't really care - I remember one of their benchmarks measured the execution time of a command that was erroring out.
Phoronix Test Suite isn't a benchmark, it's a marketing tool.
Every result graph there has the error indicated. If there are any significant errors then bars are shown. You can see this on the very first result page for LeelaChessZero.
It also shows you the number of runs. It also shows you the compile options used. All this info is included in every graph.
The complete system setups are described. The test suite is also open source.
I remember a recent "gaming on linux" article from them where they were computing "summary" geomeans including benchmarks across different resolutions... from the same game. So you might have:
* SOTTR 1080p
* SOTTR 1440p
* SOTTR 4K
* F1 1080p
...
And this wasn't like they had a 1080p geomean and then a 1440p geomean and a 4K geomean... they just had one geomean with a bunch of different resolutions thrown into it, including duplicates of the same game at different resolutions. And sometimes different combinations of resolutions for different games (they might skip 4K for a particular game, etc).
That's pleb-tier benchmarking, pick a random redditor and they know not to make that kind of mistake, it's obviously and facially incorrect.
It just goes to show the power of community goodwill... UserBenchmark's actual sub-scores are reasonably accurate, but because the owner is a massive fucking twat they're persona-non-grata in the internet community (I'm sure I'm going to be regaled with NO THEIR BENCHMARKS ARE TRASH AND HE CHANGES THINGS TO MAKE INTEL but nope, the subscores are accurate, topline "summary" score weights are what he fucks with). Michael Larabel is a very nice guy and frankly doesn't seem to understand the first thing about benchmarking, or score weighting, or mathematics, and constantly puts out trash-tier results with obvious defects, and he's revered in the community, basically a saint.
I know, nobody else is really benchmarking Linux and he's what we've got, if you don't like it then be the change, etcc. But, his results are given incredibly disproportionate weight to the quality there, he's no anandtech. And sadly anandtech is no anandtech anymore.
Games are benchmarked at different resolutions for the same game because that shifts the CPU/GPU burden. It's a great thing to do and many benchmarks do it too, and yes in the same average.
If you don't include a game at those resolutions for no good reason that's one thing, but varying the resolution in the same mean is a good idea.
The macbook ram is on the same package as the processor...there's an additional latency cost for the Ryzen...I don't think it invalidates the tests if they're not tied to memory latency for swapping in and out of RAM.
You'll get no argument from me on the OS...that's an interesting test decision.
1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB
2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both