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Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

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Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#31

Post by slaw »

nomel wrote: post #18
robotnikman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualcomm is just happy lazily sitting back and collecting licensing fees while putting out mediocre products at this point.

That's not fair at all. Snapdragon 8 gen 2 was ahead of Apples best offering, just a few days ago [1], in gaming. That's not "mediocre". That's much closer to "head to head". Thermal throttling is also a significant problem with iPhones, for anything real world [2]. A new snapdragon will come out shortly, and the battle will continue. [1] https://beebom.com/snapdragon-8-gen-2-vs-apple-a16-bionic-be... . [2] https://w…

> Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 scored 1490 in the single-core

> Apple’s A16 Bionic chipset scored 1879.

Both on the same 4nm TSMC process.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#32

Post by nixpulvis »

Aloha wrote: post #19
gary_0 wrote: post #11

I find articles like this really vexing because this isn't a general-purpose CPU, it's just a chip meant to run the software that Apple allows on the App Store. Most of the software I use day-to-day can't run on it by design. It's kind of depressing that the most advanced mobile CPU technology (that can only be fabbed by a single company in a far-away country) is monopolized by a company that heavily restricts the so…

Just because you can't run whatever software you like on it, does not make it non-general purpose CPU.

True. But it does make it functionally a non-general purpose CPU. I suppose you can load your own programs if you have a dev account or jailbreak right?

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#33

Post by TradingPlaces »

wmf wrote: post #13
MBCook wrote: post #8

What’s really embarrassing is how it compares to the Snapdragon. Is the gap expanding at this point?

That's why Nuvia/Oryon is coming.

I don’t think people understand what a big leap this going to be for their CPU cores.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#34

Post by whiddershins »

nixpulvis wrote: post #32
Aloha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can't run whatever software you like on it, does not make it non-general purpose CPU.

True. But it does make it functionally a non-general purpose CPU. I suppose you can load your own programs if you have a dev account or jailbreak right?

Yes. And a dev account is like $100/year.

It’s bad that they can gatekeep like this, I agree. I should just be able to put whatever on the hardware I buy.

But the expense in practical terms, immediate pragmatic terms, is negligible compared to what it unlocks.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#35

Post by scarface_74 »

gary_0 wrote: post #11

I find articles like this really vexing because this isn't a general-purpose CPU, it's just a chip meant to run the software that Apple allows on the App Store. Most of the software I use day-to-day can't run on it by design. It's kind of depressing that the most advanced mobile CPU technology (that can only be fabbed by a single company in a far-away country) is monopolized by a company that heavily restricts the so…

It’s a preview of what will probably be the basis of the M3 series of Macs that will allow you to run any software you want

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#36

Post by r00fus »

wmf wrote: post #13
MBCook wrote: post #8

What’s really embarrassing is how it compares to the Snapdragon. Is the gap expanding at this point?

That's why Nuvia/Oryon is coming.

Looks like they're having issues delivering from their 2022 vision https://wccftech.com/qualcomm-oryon-problems-potential-snapd...

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#37

Post by jocaal »

nixpulvis wrote: post #28
nomel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on that? Why does GHz matter? Performance should be measured as a black box, with the metric being the time it takes to accomplishing some task.

The catch is that we can expect better performance when they increase the clock to be closer to the i9. However, it’s never clear how high it go safely.

You can't just turn up clockspeed and expect linear increase in performance. The chips are packed so dense with transistors that the chips have to do some magic to be able to operate at those clock speeds without frying. Desktop parts don't really care about energy efficiency and are thus designed to be able to operate like that since max performance is more important than efficiency. Microarchitectural design decision allow engineers to pick tradeoffs for where they want to place their chips in the market, but most major advantages between chips come from fabrication. And these days there aren't much gains left to be made there.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#38

Post by jeswin »

slaw wrote: post #31
nomel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not fair at all. Snapdragon 8 gen 2 was ahead of Apples best offering, just a few days ago [1], in gaming. That's not "mediocre". That's much closer to "head to head". Thermal throttling is also a significant problem with iPhones, for anything real world [2]. A new snapdragon will come out shortly, and the battle will continue. [1] https://beebom.com/snapdragon-8-gen-2-vs-apple-a16-bionic-be... . [2] https://w…

> Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 scored 1490 in the single-core > Apple’s A16 Bionic chipset scored 1879. Both on the same 4nm TSMC process.

There are different benchmarks one can pick depending on the article they want to write. Geekbench 6 favors Apple CPUs more that Geekbench 5, which was already better on Apple CPUs than say Antutu.

Antutu CPU - A16 248335, SnapDragon 8 Gen2 268542

Antutu GPU - A16 394336, SnapDragon 8 Gen 2 580101

If You look at Geekbench 5 scores for A16 and SD8G2, A16 is ahead by less than 10%.

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#39

Post by brokenmachine »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #33
wmf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why Nuvia/Oryon is coming.

I don’t think people understand what a big leap this going to be for their CPU cores.

Why's that? Will they run Windows? Linux?

Re: Apple's A17 Pro Within 10% of i9-13900K, 7950X in Single-Core Performance

#40

Post by nixpulvis »

whiddershins wrote: post #34
nixpulvis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But it does make it functionally a non-general purpose CPU. I suppose you can load your own programs if you have a dev account or jailbreak right?

Yes. And a dev account is like $100/year. It’s bad that they can gatekeep like this, I agree. I should just be able to put whatever on the hardware I buy. But the expense in practical terms, immediate pragmatic terms, is negligible compared to what it unlocks.

I disagree. $100/yr to put what might be a very simple little toy application is not worth it. Sure, that toy might inspire more, and it could even lead to a promising career, but it’s a stretch to argue it was worth it when it could just as easily never be utilized.

The promise of general purpose computing and open source as well is that it empowers all kinds of users.

Oh how badly I want to tweak little things about my iPhone, but can’t because the software is locked down.

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