Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#141

Post by zdragnar » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 7:52 PM UTC

thewebguyd wrote: post #88

zdragnar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just looking at an HP laptop with a snapdragon X processor that claimed 34 hours of battery life while watching video. It'd be tempting if I had any idea what the software compatibility story would be like. For example, the company I'm contracting with now requires a device monitor for SOC2 compliance (ensuring OS patches are applied and hard drive encryption remains on). They don't even want to do it, but thei…

It may still work. The prism emulation is pretty good, almost on par with Rosetta2. I have the surface laptop 7 with the X elite in it. The only thing I've ran into that outright didn't run was MSSQL server. It's not my main machine, that is still an M4 Macbook pro but I hop on it occasionally to keep up with what Windows is doing or if I need to help someone with something windows specific. I've got WSL2, Docker, VS…

Sadly, I'm doing dotnet work, including a legacy webforms codebase. Not running mssql server directly, but lots of other tools- visual studio, sql server profiler, sql server management studio, that sort of thing. EVEN IF all of that worked, I have already verified from the company that supplies the device management software that they don't support non-x86 architectures.

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#142

Post by Jtsummers » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 7:55 PM UTC

ceayo wrote: post #101

Why would it have 9 cores? Feels a bit weird to have an (a) uneven and (b) not a power of two amount of cores on a processor.

Nothing magic about even or power of two core counts.

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/chip_multiprocessor

Lots of "odd" counts by your two criteria (though not many odd counts).

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#143

Post by Zak » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 7:56 PM UTC

I'm not especially impressed that Apple came up with a mobile CPU that pretty much doubles the performance of the three year old Ryzen 6850u in my Thinkpad. What I'm impressed with is it's doing that in an iPad, which presumably doesn't have a fan.

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#144

Post by sib » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 7:59 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #18

AlphaAndOmega0 wrote: post #16

I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations. The rumors about an upcoming touchscreen Mac are interesting, perhaps Apple will deign to make their ridiculously overpowered SOCs usable for general purpose computing. A man can dream..

I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations. It's a nice problem to have, since for most of computing history it's been the other way around. (Meaning the hardware was the constraint, not the OS.)

>> I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations.

> It's a nice problem to have, since for most of computing history it's been the other way around. (Meaning the hardware was the constraint, not the OS.)

For anyone who works with (full-size) image or video processing, the hardware is still the constraint... Things like high-ISO noise reduction are a 20-second process for a single image.

I would be happy to have a laptop that was 10x as fast as my MacBook Pro.

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#145

Post by thewebguyd » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 8:04 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #141

thewebguyd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may still work. The prism emulation is pretty good, almost on par with Rosetta2. I have the surface laptop 7 with the X elite in it. The only thing I've ran into that outright didn't run was MSSQL server. It's not my main machine, that is still an M4 Macbook pro but I hop on it occasionally to keep up with what Windows is doing or if I need to help someone with something windows specific. I've got WSL2, Docker, VS…

Sadly, I'm doing dotnet work, including a legacy webforms codebase. Not running mssql server directly, but lots of other tools- visual studio, sql server profiler, sql server management studio, that sort of thing. EVEN IF all of that worked, I have already verified from the company that supplies the device management software that they don't support non-x86 architectures.

Bummer. They are neat little laptops, and with the X elite 2 (assuming they end up in some windows laptops and aren't exclusively for the new android chromebooks) it's about the closest we'll get to a MacBook on Windows for now.

I wish Microsoft put more pressure on vendors to support ARM.

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#146

Post by bhouston » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 8:29 PM UTC

robbinb wrote: post #136

bhouston wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a MacBook Air 15" has my full stack main development machine. It is just light and portable on the go. At home I just plug it into a docking station with 10 GigE and output to a 48" OLED monitor - a beautiful setup.

just curious what brand etc monitor and docking station you're using here.

I have had really good experience with OWC docking stations - rock solid compared to Dell ones I've had in the past: https://www.owc.com/solutions/connectivity

I won't recommend my monitor because it has auto-dimming you can not turn off. Good but not great.

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#147

Post by grigio » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

if only it could run Linux..

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#148

Post by dagmx » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

nchmy wrote: post #127

amelius wrote: post #92

To what extent can these improvements be ascribed to Apple, as opposed to the particular silicon fab process node?

I'm also curious about this. And, even moreso - did apple just start designing chips from scratch or did they buy someone who already had some cutting edge technology? Its hard to believe that they're beating everyone just out of nowhere...

It’s not out of nowhere. It’s just that people didn’t pay attention to their mobile chips.

But Anandtech had articles as far back as the A12 7 years ago where it was competing with the intel chips of the era

A secondhand link because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/apples-a12-bionic...

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#149

Post by latexr » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 8:32 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #53

latexr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anytime I've seen speculation, Apple execs seem to shut that idea down. They also said they weren’t merging iOS and macOS, and with every release that becomes more of a lie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOYikXbC6Fs

Strategies change. That was 7 years ago, pre-Apple Silicon. It turns out that people want windowing options on their large and expensive tablet, to do long-running tasks in the background, etc.

> That was 7 years ago, pre-Apple Silicon.

There have been rumours of Apple wanting to shift Macs to ARM chips for 14 years. When they made that announcement, they already knew.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Apple_silico...

It was obvious it was going to happen. I remember seeing Apple announcing iPads doing tasks my Mac at the time could only dream of and thinking they would surely do the switch.

> It turns out that people want windowing options on their large and expensive tablet, to do long-running tasks in the background

The problem isn’t them making iOS (or iPadOS) more like macOS, it’s them doing the reverse.

Re: Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores

#150

Post by serf » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 8:40 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #123

jyap wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding market share and your friends and family recommendations, you’re thinking first world. Rest of the world wants and can only afford sub-$500 laptops.

I’ve found that the $1000 Mac laptop is worth about $500 after 3 years and the $500 laptop is worth $50. The price difference over time really isn’t that big and the Mac is going to have a better trackpad and display and longer battery life.

larger initial purchases are harder on the lower income earners regardless of the long term value they offer; that's one of the hard parts about being poor, it also makes positive economic decisions harder to accomplish.