MacBook Air M1 Geekbench | Hacker News Reader

MacBook Air M1 Geekbench

browser.geekbench.com

68 pointsadmiralspoo11 comments

MacRumors has a piece on how the GeekBench scores stack up against other Macs [1]. Spoiler: fastest Mac ever (single core), fastest laptop ever (multi-core) and competitive with their desktop offerings.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/11/m1-macbook-air-first-be...

Currently being discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25065026. We'll merge this thread thither.

(You could repost your spoiler bit there - it looks like a good summary)

Does anyone know if GeekBench also tests thermal throttling? Would you be able to get the same results sustainably over a longer period, or even 3 or 4 GeekBench testruns back to back?

So can anyone comment on how we should interpret these benchmarks:

a) Across the various Mac models (i.e. why buy a pro vs the air vs the mini). If they all benchmark the same, what am I paying the difference for?

b) The M1 chip vs a ryzen desktop (naively interpreting this its punching up near a 5950X, which seems TGTBT?). How do these chips compare against the larger TDP competitors if portability and batteries aren't an issue?

b2) Compared to the AMD mobile chips? (i don't have much insight into these)

c) someone else on here posted a Tiger-lake intel chip benchmark beating the M1. Now that makes even less sense to me now, because now there's an intel mobile chip beating the top of the line Ryzen desktop?

Help out an honestly confused individual.

a) Binnings/thermal envelope. The 7 GPU MBA SKU makes it clear that it’s still the same chip with 1 GPU disabled. Kindof like Ryzen.

b) Unsure. Apple will definitely come put with a chip more powerful/with more connectivity (>16GB RAM, discrete GPU). Clear head to head will be possible on th ARM iMac release.

b2) The current MBP can be compared to that. My prediction is better efficiency + better performance.

c) Benchmarks can be very different to each other. Raw compute/AVX compute/Perf per Watt.

There is also the MacBook Pro with M1 results posted here: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4652718

thanks. i was looking for the pro scores.

here's a search of all (2) MacBookPro17,1 results:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=MacBookPro17%2...

It's pretty crazy that the main difference between the new Air and Pro is that the Pro comes with a fan.

Slightly larger case and fan could be a big difference depending on what you use it for. Air has a cheaper option for 7 core GPU. Also, toucbar on Pro - as if anyone actually _wants_ that.

Most likely it’s a binning thing. The top bins that can sustain longer boosts on higher temps would be binned for the MBP. The ones that can boost with a bit more cooling gets into a Mini. The lower binned ones would be on an MBA, and “faulty” chips with 1 GPU disabled would go in the cheaper 7GPU MBA. Higher yields, better economics.

Don’t forget the un-tapered profile!

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