[Hardware]Apple's M1 Chip Cinebench Results: Lots of Room for Improvement

[Revo]

 

Just a few days ago, Apple wowed the crowd with its all-new M1 ARM processor, promising better performance over laptops equipped with Intel or AMD equivalent x86 processors. However, it remains to be seen whether this statement will be true at all, as Apple was vague about the M1's performance results. Luckily we have some news which can shed some light on the matter: Bits And Chips tweeted out all-new results for Apple's M1 chip in Cinebench R23 and benched it against AMD's Ryzen 5 3600X Desktop CPU and Ryzen 7 4800HS mobile processor.

Average Joe: "Apple M1 is ultra fast, better than every x86 CPUs!"Cinebench R23M1 (ST - 2.5 GHz): ~990AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (ST - 4.4 GHz): ~1300M1 (MT): ~4530AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (MT): ~9500🤷‍♂️ (P.S. Yep, great IPC, but not so great clock: you can't have both so easily)November 16, 2020

The results are not in Apple's favor, the M1 scored 990 points in the single-threaded test at 2.5Ghz, the Ryzen 5 3600X scored 1300 points in the same test and likewise, the Ryzen 7 4800HS scored 1230. For the multi-threaded test, Apple's M1 scored 4,530 points, the 3600 9,500, and the 4800HS, 10,600 points.

This will be disappointing for Apple loyalists, as the M1 CPU gets destroyed against the stronger Zen 2 architecture from AMD. So against AMD's desktop and higher TDP laptop chips, the M1 doesn't stand a chance. But that isn't where the battle ends.

The M1's IPC is very good for what it is, being just 30-35% slower than the 4800HS at nearly half the frequency. If Apple's M1 can scale with a frequency well and we clocked it at a theoretical 4.5 GHz to match the 3600X and the 4800HS, there is a high chance it would be equal in performance.

So while the M1 can only compete with ultrabook notebooks in the 15W TDP range, who knows if Apple has another CPU in the works that can fully maximize TSMC's 5nm node for performance over power efficiency in its desktops. If Apple wants to put its own silicon in its entire product stack, the company certainly needs something more powerful than the M1 to do that.