But the higher end "many" core CPUs (especially outside the Intel universe cough AMD) with much higher TDP are still achieving much higher overall performance. Apple still has to catch up to them in those markets. Did you see the AnandTech review of the Mac mini with the M1?
The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of
everything Intel has to offer, and battles it with
AMD’s new Zen3, winning some, losing some. And in
the mobile space in particular, there doesn’t seem
to be an equivalent in either ST or MT performance
– at least within the same power budgets.
What’s really important for the general public and Apple’s
success is the fact that the performance of the M1 doesn’t
feel any different than if you were using a very
high-end Intel or AMD CPU. Apple achieving this in-house
with their own design is a paradigm shift, and in the
future will allow them to achieve a certain level of
software-hardware vertical integration that just hasn’t
been seen before and isn’t achieved yet by anybody else.
And for many people, right now Apple systems just are not an option. Not until all software and games run without issue. Software is a near certainty - games remain to be seen, but Apple has not prioritized them in the past. (And while the M1 integrated graphics are great, they are not at all competitive with existing dedicated graphics, and will not be suitable for replacing gaming systems.)AnandTech's section is called "M1 GPU Performance: Integrated King, Discrete Rival" which should tell you what's up. Spoiler—it's more than competitive with dedicated graphics and certainly none of them can touch it when it comes to power consumption. And remember, this is the *low-end chip; wait until what we see in the next generation.
Finally, putting theory to practice, we have Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Released in 2016, this game has a proper Mac port and a built-in
benchmark, allowing us to look at the M1 in a gaming scenario and
compare it to some other Windows laptops. This game is admittedly
slightly older, but its performance requirements are a good match
for the kind of performance the M1 is designed to offer. Finally,
it should be noted that this is an x86 game – it hasn’t been ported
over to Arm – so the CPU side of the game is running through Rosetta.
At our 768p Value settings, the Mac Mini is delivering well over 60fps
here. Once again it’s vastly ahead of the 2018 Intel-based Mac Mini,
as well as every other integrated GPU in this stack. Even the 15-inch
MBP and its Radeon Pro 560 are still trailing the Mac Mini by over 25%,
and it takes a Ryzen laptop with a Radeon 560X to finally pull even
with the Mac Mini.
