The first M1 Macs have been in the wild for nearly three full months, and the fear starts with Intel. The company shared a detailed slideshow with benchmark results this week Tom’s Hardware (through Six colors), to show that there are multiple ways it still has an edge over Apple Silicon … depending on how you look at things.
One of the focuses of Intel is on what it calls ‘productivity’. The company compares its 11th generation “Tiger Lake” processors to Apple’s M1 for things like browsing the web and using Microsoft Office. Intel says:
Comparison of Microsoft Office 365, which runs natively on both Intel and Apple processors: 11th Gen system performs some functions such as PDF export up to 2.3X faster (vs Apple M1)
Comparison of the most popular web browser (Chrome), with native versions on both Intel and Apple processors: the 11th generation system is over 30% faster overall and almost 3x faster in the online photo enhancement subtest (vs Apple M1)
Other Intel benchmarks also focus on things like content creation, with software from Adobe and Topaz Labs, and gaming.
Intel also compared the M1 to Intel Evo, “the second-generation upgrade to Project Athena to make the best portable devices.”
There are some bizarre results of testing between the M1 and Evo, with Intel claiming that the M1 in the MacBook Pro failed on things like using Zoom and PowerPoint. Tom’s Hardware explains:
Intel claims the M1 in the MacBook Pro it tested failed eight of the 25 tests it uses, including “Switch to Calendar” in Outlook, “Start Video Conference” in Zoom, and “Select Picture Menu” in PowerPoint. . Intel’s workloads don’t explain how these are performed, but they’re also simple tasks that work pretty well on just about any modern processor, so they’re strange choices. (I had many Zoom conferences while testing the MacBook Pro with no issues.)
There are several things to consider in these tests. These tests were primarily conducted by Intel and should therefore be viewed with skepticism; Of course, the company will pick and choose the specific tasks where Intel chips still outperform Apple’s M1.
For example, Tom’s Hardware points to some suspicious choices Intel made when testing battery life:
In terms of battery life, Intel switched to an Intel Core i7-1165G7 notebook, the Acer Swift 5, instead of sticking to the Core i7-1185G7 in the whitebook it used for performance testing. It also tested a MacBook Air. They ran Netflix streams and tabs and found that the MacBook Air had a six-minute difference.
Intel has not listed battery life for the MacBook Pro. In our tests, that beat Intel PCs by hours.
Intel’s timing in releasing this counter-argument against Apple Silicon is also intriguing. Jason Snell at Six colors points out that the M1 is a low-end chip for a low-end system, and Intel “has only a small window” left to find favorable comparisons:
Inconsistent test platforms, varying arguments, omitted data and the not so faint scent of despair. Today’s M1 processor is a low-end chip for low-end systems, so Intel only has a small window to compare itself favorably with these systems before shipping the more expensive Apple Silicon Macs and making its job that much more difficult.
If you’re interested, you can find Intel’s full slideshow at Tom’s Hardware.
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