Intel downgrades Apple’s M1 chip with “carefully crafted” benchmarks

Nearly three months after the launch of Apple’s M1 Macs, enthusiastically reviewed, Intel has fired again, but there are some asterisks involved.

In a slideshow shared by PCWorld this week, Intel highlighted what PCWorld is described as “carefully crafted” benchmarks in an attempt to show that laptops with the latest 11th generation Core processors are superior to those with Apple’s custom-designed M1 chip.

For example, Intel said that exporting a PowerPoint presentation as a PDF file is up to 2.3 times faster on a Windows laptop equipped with an 11th-generation Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM compared to performance of the same task on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 chip and 16GB of RAM, with Intel noting that PowerPoint ran natively on both systems.

Intel also indicated that Topaz Labs ’AI-based photo enlargement software, Gigapixel AI, ran up to 6 times faster on the Core i7 system compared to the MacBook Pro M1. In this case, PCWorld He said “the results are pretty real” and noted that Topaz Labs ’applications are designed to take advantage of hardware acceleration from Intel processors.

In terms of gaming performance, the results were mixed, Intel highlighted the established view that Macs are not ideal for gaming and have no support for “countless” games like Gear Tactics, Hitman 2 and others.

Intel also conducted a “real-world battery life test” and found that both the MacBook Air M1 and the Acer Swift 5 with an 11th-generation Core i7 processor achieved a battery life of 10 hours virtually identical when streaming Netflix with additional tabs open. Intel said both laptops had a screen brightness of 250 nights, with the MacBook Air with Safari and the Acer Swift 5 with Chrome for testing.

It is worth noting that Intel switched from the MacBook Pro for performance settings to the MacBook Air for the battery life test, and Intel also used a different Core i7 processor SKU for each of these tests.

Apple’s website announces that the MacBook Air M1 has up to 18 hours of battery life when it continuously plays 1080p content on the Apple TV app with a screen brightness set to 50% and up to 15 hours of Battery life when browsing 25 popular Safari websites via Wi-Fi with the screen brightness set to 50%.

Intel added that its processors are not only performance-oriented, but also of choice, as they power all types of devices, from traditional laptops to tablets with features like touch screens and compatibility with various external displays. Officially, the M1-based MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro only support an external display, but some users found that this limitation can be bypassed with DisplayLink adapters as an unofficial solution.

“M1-unpleasant reference parameters”

Apple columnist Jason Snell referred to Intel’s benchmarks as “M1 dislikes” in comments shared on its website Six colors.

“Inconsistent testing platforms, changing arguments, omitted data and the not-so-faint smell of despair,” Snell wrote. “Today’s M1 processor is a low-end chip for low-end systems, so Intel only has a small window to compare favorably with those systems before Apple’s high-end silicon Macs do their work much harder. “

Tom’s HardwareAndrew Freedman also warned that all benchmarks provided by the seller should be taken with a grain of salt.

Apple claims that the M1 chip provides industry-leading performance per watt, with the latest MacBook Air surpassing an Intel-based 16-inch MacBook Pro with maximum performance in Geekbench. Rumors suggest that Apple will launch new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, a redesigned iMac and more with Apple’s new generation of silicon later this year.