Comment by tiffanyh 8 days ago
While true, also keep in mind that the iPad Pro (M4) which has no active cooling, and uses only 1/4th the power ... is still faster (single & multicore) than this 9800X3D - and it's also been on the market for 1/2 year now already.
UPDATE TO MY COMMENT: The new small Mac Mini does have an option for the M4 Pro but not the M4 Max. For the curious, the M4 Pro supposedly gets around 22,000 in Geekbench. It's an $800 premium over the base M4 Mac Mini while adding 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Single core yes, but multi core no.
The Geekbench scores cannot compare laptop CPUs with desktop CPUs, because the tasks that are executed are too short and they do not demonstrate the steady-state throughput of the CPUs. The desktop CPUs are much faster for multithreaded tasks in comparison with laptop/tablet CPUs than it appears in the GB results.
The Apple CPUs have a much better instructions-per-clock-cycle ratio than any other CPUs, and now in M4 they also have a relatively high clock frequency, of at least 4.5 GHz. This allows them to win most single-threaded benchmarks.
However the performance in multi-threaded benchmarks has a very weak dependence on the CPU microarchitecture and it is determined mostly by the manufacturing process used for the CPU.
If we were able to compare Intel, AMD and Apple CPUs with the same number of cores and made with the same TSMC process, their multithreaded performance would be very close at a given power consumption.
The reason is that executing a given benchmark requires a number of logic transitions that is about the same for different microarchitectures, unless some of the design teams have been incompetent. An Apple CPU does more logic transitions per clock cycle, so in single thread it finishes the task faster.
However in multithreaded execution, where the power consumption of the CPU reaches the power limit, the number of logic transitions per second in the same manufacturing process is determined by the power consumption. Therefore the benchmark will be completed in approximately the same number of seconds when the power limits are the same, regardless of the differences in the single-threaded performance.
At equal power, an M4 will have a slightly better MT performance than an Intel or AMD CPU, due to the better manufacturing process, but the difference is too small to make it competitive with a desktop CPU.
> The Geekbench scores cannot compare laptop CPUs with desktop CPUs, because the tasks that are executed are too short and they do not demonstrate the steady-state throughput of the CPUs. The desktop CPUs are much faster for multithreaded tasks in comparison with laptop/tablet CPUs than it appears in the GB results.
Bullshit. What you're talking about is the steady-state of the heatsink, not the steady state of the chip. Intel learned the hard way that a fast CPU core in a phone really does become a fast CPU core in a laptop or desktop when given a better cooling solution.
> However in multithreaded execution, where the power consumption of the CPU reaches the power limit, the number of logic transitions per second in the same manufacturing process is determined by the power consumption. Therefore the benchmark will be completed in approximately the same number of seconds when the power limits are the same, regardless of the differences in the single-threaded performance.
No, microarchitecture really does matter. And so does the macro architecture of AMD's desktop chips that burn a huge amount of power on an inefficient chip to chip interface.
For an apples to apples comparison, you'll need to compare Zen 5 with M3, or whatever Zen 6 is going to be with M4.
Apple is paying for exclusive access to TSMC's next node. That improves their final products, but doesn't make their architecture inherently better.
Do you though? M4 is what is on the market now and this chip is just coming out. Maybe they are on different processes, but you still have to compare things at a given point in time.
Why would a consumer care about what node something is on? You should only care about a set of processors that is available in the market at the same time. The M4 is available now and Zen 6 is not. Once zen 6 is here we probably have an M5.
Where can I buy an M4? I don't care about the rest of Apple's products, but the chips are pretty sweet.
Is this a serious question? Apple.com and basically every computer part store.
> for single threaded 9800x3d scored about 3200, whilst m4 had 4400... The m4 is so far above the rest it's ridiculous.
Except the fact that your computer runs more than one thread. Pity that this "single core" performance cannot be utilized at its maximum potential.
And the OS is terrible, so it's practically useless for me.
Hehe ... yeah, single threaded, in some benchmarks. Very impressive chip, the M4. Multi-threaded loads that take more than 30 seconds, no way, come on. But to see the X3D chips really shine above their competitors, you need to slot in a high-end graphics card, and load up a ... uh well you can't compare to Apple Silicon at that point ...
In multi-threaded workloads, the M4 gets 13,380, the 9800X3D gets ~19,000 (varies by build), and the 9950X gets 22,000-24,000 depending on build.
The M4 Max you can pre-order gets around 26,000 multicore but is significantly more expensive than the 9950X ($569) or 9800X3D ($479). The M4 Max is a $1,200 premium over the M4 on the 14 inch MacBook Pro and a $1,100 premium over the M4 Pro on the 16 inch.
The M4 Max is only available in the MacBook Pro at present. The Mac Mini and iMac will only get the base M4. The Mac Studio is still based on the M2.
This is just a summary of performance and cost. Portability, efficiency, and compatibility factors will weigh everyone's choices.