Vaguely related question for the gurus: are all Windows (/ Linux) laptops still hopelessly behind Macbooks in terms of speed? (since Apple announced the M1 and followups I mean) I’m trying to figure out if a laptop like this one is worth the lower cpu speed
Apple's primary advantage is being the first on TSMC's new process nodes, which generally yields a modest but not enormous performance advantage on single thread, no advantage for multi-thread (because Apple's CPUs have fewer cores), and only lasts for a few months before AMD is on the same process. At which point the results look like this: https://www.notebookcheck.net/R9-7945HX3D-vs-M2-Max_15073_14... Which is to…
I believe this is a result of the architecture being derived from a mobile device where instant interaction for single running apps is the most important thing. As anyone could have guessed it doesn't scale very well for what PCs have been for a long time: extremely distributed computing, where the core running the UI do not have that much work to do, so a fast single core score doesn't translate in that big of a difference.
Which is exactly why most people feel like PCs have been stagnating for a while, because yeah from a UI performance point of view, things havent improved that much but it doesn't matter on such a device.
Just the other day I did some work on a M2 MacBook Pro (24GB version) and I was appalled at how slow the UI of Activity Monitor was on top of the general sluggishness feeling.
I do not understand WTF everybody is on about Apple Silicon, it is barely competitive, and certainly not at the price they sell it.