Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#201

Post by aurareturn » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:38 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

aurareturn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. Many top quality CPU reviewers also do this. Chinese reviewer Geekerwan is probably the best at it. In the past, written reviews like Anandtech will always do it. Today, anyone with video editing software thinks they can review CPU performance. Ever since Youtube, there have been plenty of low quality reviewers that mislead people. I di…

> Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. That's not actually isolating CPU power. To begin with, the CPU itself has idle power draw. Measuring that way would favor a CPU that has worse power management because it would be excluding the draw the CPU itself fails to shed at idle. It also gets it wrong the other way. The SSD etc. is using however much at idle but that isn't the…

You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate.

The most accurate is reading from the wall. Thats what Notebookcheck does.

For all intents and purposes, it is good enough to get a read on CPU efficiency. Furthermore, if you are comparing equivalent systems, it is good enough to compare the two.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#202

Post by testing22321 » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:58 AM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #184

testing22321 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you’re trying to justify kicking dogs because everyone in the industry goes around kicking dogs. Say it ain’t so. Just because lots of people are doing something that sucks does not make it OK.

It's a hook . That's been a standard part of writing for like at least a hundred years. It's not kicking dogs. Or, if it is kicking dogs, society has been doing it for at least as long as publishable media has been a thing, probably longer with the likes of bards. This is ridiculous

I’m a writer, I write for a few magazines and have published three books. I write hooks all the time.

A good hook does not have to be clickbait.

In my experience, when a person struggles to come up with a good hook, they write clickbait.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#203

Post by wasfgwp » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 6:44 AM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #108

anticorporate wrote: post #6

Rather than the Hackaday article, which doesn't add anything to the original, here's Jeff's actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2B7oI0FYqo and post: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/excited-for-intel-eff...

Did Jeff Geerling get paid to post misleading headlines and reviews on Intel vs Apple? He's basing this on his own "super computing benchmark" measuring only FP64 performance. Meanwhile, any normal person using these $600 laptops will never run FP64 supercomputing tasks on the CPU. He also only showed perf/watt in this one benchmark but skipped the fact that Apple Silicon is significantly faster. Obviously, all this…

> faster M3 and M4 Macs are pushing through up to 1.2 Teraflops.

That Intel chip is competing against the A series in the Neo. To get to M you need to spend at least 50% more (and there are considerably better Intel chip in laptops at that price range as well)

Also benchmark performance hardly matters for people buying laptops like this. It just has to be fast enough and not lag when running a handful of apps and have decent battery life (which presumably is the case here)

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#204

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

> While you might think you need to code in Assembly or C to maximize those efficiency gains, your choice of language may not be as important as you think.

Yep, and the linked article is also kind of interesting.

Re: Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?

#205

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 8:14 PM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #201

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. That's not actually isolating CPU power. To begin with, the CPU itself has idle power draw. Measuring that way would favor a CPU that has worse power management because it would be excluding the draw the CPU itself fails to shed at idle. It also gets it wrong the other way. The SSD etc. is using however much at idle but that isn't the…

You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate. The most accurate is reading from the wall. Thats what Notebookcheck does. For all intents and purposes, it is good enough to get a read on CPU efficiency. Furthermore, if you are comparing equivalent systems, it is good enough to compare the two.

> You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate.

And what results from this when you compare system with a 15W CPU to one with a 60W CPU on performance per watt when both systems have an additional 10W draw from non-CPU components?