Apple finally proved the rumor right last year when it launched its custom M1 processor on the new MacBooks and Mac Mini. The first benchmarks showed the Apple M1 beating the competition in most ways that matter, but now Intel has regrouped and launched a slide show (because of course it did) that compares the M1 to Intel’s latest Core processor.
The Apple M1 takes advantage of all the experience that Apple had in making ARM chips for smartphones and tablets, but performance has greatly increased. There are eight CPU cores in the M1, four high-performance Firestorm and four low-power Icestorm cores. These designs are all fully customized – no brand new ARM Cortex reference designs like Qualcomm. There is also an 8-core GPU designed by Apple. The M1 is said to have excellent overall performance and uses about a third of the power of Intel CPUs.
Intel gave up ARM years ago, and may be regretting it. Despite this, the company has released benchmarks that aim to show that its i7-1185G7 chip has more gross power than the M1. Some of the numbers look good for Intel. Most numbers from Chrome, Office, Photoshop and other tests show Intel in the lead, but it is important to note that several of these benchmarks use Intel hardware acceleration technology.
Intel also provided a summary of the game’s performance, but here the numbers were kinder to Apple. M1 won victories with games like Hitman and Borderlands 3, but this slide is only here to show how many games don’t run on M1. There is an equally suspicious battery life test – while all previous tests used a MacBook Pro M1, the battery life test changes to a MacBook Air M1, which only surpassed the Intel laptop for a few minutes. The MacBook Pro M1 is widely known for overtaking Intel-based computers in hours.
The slide show also includes some debate about form factors and variety, which is more valid than the benchmark argument, in my opinion. The MacBook is limited by Apple’s vision, but there are PCs in all different shapes and sizes, and some of them have touch screens. Apple still refuses to add this feature to its laptops.
Intel still has a few reasons to be proud, but that list may shrink as Apple releases enhanced M1 chips. This was just the first scam on ARM-based computers, and it seems to be doing pretty well. Intel may be facing much tougher competition in the coming years.
Now read: