Intel wins, in HPL FP64.
Its a stretch to take a single metric and apply it's outcome broadly to the chip's general functionality. Especially when by large the A18 chip with half the power requirement beats it in almost every other benchmark.
Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
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Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that, the efficiency (FP64, HPL) is also beating all the M4/M3/M2/M1 systems I've tested besides the M4 Mac mini: https://github.com/geerlingguy/top500-benchmark#results I think the bigger news is Intel's made a chip that isn't just pushing clocks to hit some performance number, they've actually tuned clocks for efficiency... which also leads to much better battery life. And the fan on the system in the orig…
Ok so Intel managed to make a 20W TDP chip that gets 6.x Gflops/W. Call me back when they’ve got a chip that still gets 6.x Gf/W with a 200W 1,200Gflop package like the M3 next on your list. This little fellow is only 50% more efficient than my aging M1 Max! It’s great that they are making progress. Competition is good. They certainly need good news right now. I have exactly one intel cpu in my house in a NUC I got o…
> I have exactly one intel cpu in my house in a NUC I got off eBay and it’s about to be replaced by my M4 mini.
Do some tests pre and post upgrade. It’s ridiculous how efficient the mini is. My power usage is about 1/12 what it was with a Nuc.
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#23If you normalise for both process node and clock speed, AMD and Apple are tied on single threaded perf/watt, and AMD Zen 5c cores have about a 12% perf/area advantage.
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think it’s completely unfair to say that the Neo is based on a chip that was first announced in Sep 2024 while the Intel chip is from Apr 2026. Also, I think the battery life most people are practically interested in is more like running (close to) idle and less like the number of Watts spent when running maxed out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Arm chips still win on that metric…
Plus it’s a phone chip. Yeah it’s used in the Neo but it’s no M5. It’s good Intel got to this point, but you can’t declare them tied with Apple. They qualified for the real race, which us great, but they're not going to win with that chip.
Doesn't it being a phone chip make the efficiency claim more impressive, not less?
Moreover, from tfa:
> This Dell also beats out both M4 and M3 Mac Studios, only failing to the M4 Mac Mini at 7.57 Gflops/W.
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#25A more accurate title is can Intel (Linux/Windows) beat Apple?
If you don't want to run Windows, is there even a choice? My issue now with the non-Apple computers if you want to run Linux it's really hard to predict how awful Chromium/Firefox will be. My work Dell Laptop is only a 3 year old CPU with integrated GPU (and unused Nvidia GPU) but Chromium and Firefox are both slow as shit just loading pages like Slack and Outlook. Even resizing the browser windows seems 4-5x times slower than my M3 Macbook Air.
Maybe this is strictly a Linux issue but it hardly matters when the Windows ecosystem is pretty stagnant, full of junk-ware, and software development is much, much better on Linux/MacOS.
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#26Intel wins, in HPL FP64. Its a stretch to take a single metric and apply it's outcome broadly to the chip's general functionality. Especially when by large the A18 chip with half the power requirement beats it in almost every other benchmark.
M4's GPU does not support 64 float. So, yeah. No hardware support, so what are you expecting? The fact that it comes close is pretty impressive.
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#27A more accurate title is can Intel (Linux/Windows) beat Apple? If you don't want to run Windows, is there even a choice? My issue now with the non-Apple computers if you want to run Linux it's really hard to predict how awful Chromium/Firefox will be. My work Dell Laptop is only a 3 year old CPU with integrated GPU (and unused Nvidia GPU) but Chromium and Firefox are both slow as shit just loading pages like Slack an…
My servers run linux, my customers run windows, but if I run Mac that only adds to my complexity. So all our dev boxes run Linux.
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#28Intel wins, in HPL FP64. Its a stretch to take a single metric and apply it's outcome broadly to the chip's general functionality. Especially when by large the A18 chip with half the power requirement beats it in almost every other benchmark.
M4's GPU does not support 64 float. So, yeah. No hardware support, so what are you expecting? The fact that it comes close is pretty impressive.
These tests were done on the CPU cores, not on the GPU. In every test I ran the A18 chip blew past Intel's Core 5 on GPU performance.
There were a series of other benchmarks too, but the Hackaday article only highlights HPL as that was the benchmark that changed my perspective on Intel a bit. This was the first X86 chip to trade blows in efficiency (and idle power draw) with Apple's M3/M4 (I don't have any M5 to test with right now).
Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#29The improved efficiency is great! The Apple Neo was still 2x faster for graphics and around 1.4x faster for single core cpu. And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series. It is strange that this chip is so crazy efficient though. I would love to know the details of exactly why it is? It seems like some new tech or process? I do want 1.5x battery life for free out of my nex…
Apple has been working ruthlessly on battery efficiency for a long time because of the phones and their tendency to minimize battery sizes on Macs for thinness. The exact design of the cores, how they’re scheduled, the way background stuff is handled on MacOS. All of it. The chips are made on a fantastic process too, but that alone isn’t it. For example they’ve been putting the ability to drop refresh rate really low…
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Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
#30The improved efficiency is great! The Apple Neo was still 2x faster for graphics and around 1.4x faster for single core cpu. And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series. It is strange that this chip is so crazy efficient though. I would love to know the details of exactly why it is? It seems like some new tech or process? I do want 1.5x battery life for free out of my nex…
> And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series. We really need to get over generalization like "phone CPU". Times have changed. Phone or not really isn't the focus. Per core the A series (cough phone) isn't that much slower than equivalent M series. It's literally the same family just with some extra features, more power, etc.
Phones have markedly different thermal limits compared to desktop or even laptops. A laptop CPU can easily suck 30W or more while a phone might not ever reach 10W.