Slightly worse CPU ( https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7483669?baselin... ), much better GPU and NPU, similar/slightly worse efficiency, 33% more RAM capacity.
That's like 80% of comments in the thread. Unfortunately HN his is not the place for sane discussion. It's a place for people to vent their Intel hate.
I don't know about the Apple ecosystem, but have you seen ANYTHING using the NPU on PC? I have not. I own an AMD laptop with an NPU (Ryzen 9 8945HS) and the NPU has never seen a single percentage of utilization since the laptop was unboxed and put to use. And I actually have an interest in local AI, but all the stuff I use (like Ollama or ComfyUI) run on the GPU, even if they had support for the NPU (I do not think they do) I would not run that stuff on the NPU because it's just not competitive with the nvidia gpu that's also on my laptop.
To me, seeing intel and AMD include this sort of useless thing is anger inducing. I am paying for this. I want every inch of that silicon to be useful. Not detrimental waste of space, like the NPU.
Seeing "better NPU" in a sentence meant to market a CPU doesn't elicit positive emotions.
In the windows world, the one thing that might end up using an NPU is also the thing most people do not want: Windows Recall. And that feature, for now, is exclusive to Qualcomm ARM PCs, current x86-64 NPU owners can't get it.
So don't pay for it. No one is making you. Wait for a model that doesn't have an NPU, or buy an older model that doesn't. It's not like it won't still be fast enough.
How many years from now? There isn't any high end CPU in laptops without those useless things now.
> buy an older model that doesn't
I don't think you've ever shopped for laptops, or you're lucky and live in a country that is particularly plentiful for choices in PCs. Looking for the specific combination of having 32gb of ram, 1tb of SSD, an AMD CPU (with Intel's current manufacturing woes I was not willing to gamble), an NVIDIA GPU with a minimum of 8 gb of vram took far more efforts than I am normally to spend doing activities like shopping. And now you tell me "do all that while looking for a model that predates NPUs"?
Of course I could order online from god knows where but I like buying from retailers that are known to honor their warranty well and good since there's always the possibility of buying lemons and I don't feel like wasting time shipping crap myself when I could just exchange it in place if it happened.
Entirely up to you. Point is, vote with your money.
> There isn't any high end CPU in laptops without those useless things now.
Even not considering processors from Intel/AMD?
> I don't think you've ever shopped for laptops,
I've purchased 6 in my life.
> Looking for the specific combination of having 32gb of ram, 1tb of SSD, an AMD CPU (with Intel's current manufacturing woes I was not willing to gamble), an NVIDIA GPU with a minimum of 8 gb of vram took far more efforts than I am normally to spend doing activities like shopping.
So be less picky or find a laptop that lets up upgrade the parts.
> I don't feel like wasting time shipping crap myself when I could just exchange it in place if it happened.
Fine, but this is a compromise you are willing to make, just like paying for the NPU. That's my point.
You don't need a super modern laptop.
Intel’s NPU is better but as noted in a thread higher up their average package wattage is a little over double (37 vs 15W) for a 20% performance claim.
M3 is around 3.5 TeraFLOPS, Lunar Lake is 5.2-6.5 TeraFLOPS. I'm sure more detailed benchmarks will be coming up soon, but realistically, there is no way to make up that gap.
Apple here says the Macbook Pro has 18 TOPS (compared to Lunar Lake's 48 TOPS)...it's not really in the same league. https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
You also can’t compare NPU TOPs without knowing the baseline data type. Apple for the M3 uses FP16 whereas Intel uses INT8. You have to double the Apple number to get the raw data throughput (ignoring any other efficiencies for operations in different types).
It’s ~36 vs 48. So closer to 33% more for 100% more power use (impossible to measure just the NPU use though). The more comparable SOC for power use would be the M3 Pro
You will see gaming benchmarks come out soon, and Lunar Lake will be about 50% faster than the M3. (A secondary issue of course is how few latest gen games run on macOS....)
True, that's FP16, but it's not clear if M3's Neural Engine even supports INT8.
I'm sure M4 will make this much more competitive, but right now, Lunar Lake is overall a much more balanced architecture that most people would prefer, ceteris paribus....
It also ignores things like occupancy and memory throughput, among many other aspects of a GPU.
I think a 50% delta for GPU is very wishful thinking given even Intel are only claiming a 33% uplift versus meteor lake, which itself was behind the M3 line when compared against similar TDP.
Regarding the NPU, the M3 does support INT8. It’s just that between the M3 and M4 release, the rest of the industry started coalescing on INT8, hence the change in base type.
I expect the same will happen again now that NVIDIA are touting INT4 as their performance standard for marketing.
Of course there are many other aspects, but given it's Intel's latest architecture, which has improved efficiency tremendously (see https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/824434/2024_Intel_Tech%20Tou... ) it's pretty unlikely M3 has any fundamental advantage.
Do you have any reference showing Neural Engine in M3 supports INT8 (and at 2x FP16? Just curious.)
Regarding INT8, the frontend for the neural engine is CoreMLtools and it’s supported INT8 for a while , though their page does say the M4 has new int8-int8 acceleration https://apple.github.io/coremltools/docs-guides/source/opt-o...
And one of the contributors to the repo saying the Neural Engine supports Int8 https://github.com/apple/coremltools/issues/929#issuecomment...
At the end of the day though, users vastly prefer a more powerful built in GPU for the occasional game session...Intel is willing to pay for the transistors, and Apple reserves them for the M3 Pro instead.
Nice to see ANE supports that...good to know!
> Intel is willing to pay for the transistors, and Apple reserves them for the M3 Pro instead.
Apple is also willing to pay for it. You just happen to be comparing the higher tier Intel to the lower tier Apple chip.
Intel just doesn’t have a suitable answer in that tier level yet because they haven’t launched the Core Ultra 3.
If you were to map the Intel levels to Apple, they’d roughly line up like so (ignoring Intels power delineated lines):
Core 3 -> base M series
Core 5 -> M pro
Core 9 -> M Max
The Ultra 9 288V you quote is their highest spec device and has a recommended range of 17-37W.
The Ultra 5 226V is the closest to an M3 at 8-37W but loses a lot of the performance numbers you quote and still consumes more power as a whole.
Full pricing on Lunar Lake is not available yet, but for example, XPS 13 with with an Ultra 7 is $1399 (16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD) https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-computer-laptops/new-xp...
Thinkpads will probably be a bit more...Acer a bit less...Asus will probably be around the same or less.
Here's a high spec Asus (32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD). https://shop.asus.com/us/90nb14f4-m00620-asus-zenbook-s-14-u... for $1499... Apple's equivalent is $2,599!
Neither of those laptops you linked are comparable to the MacBook Pro on a number of points, primarily the display.
Just like Intel doesn’t have an M3 competitor out, Apple doesn’t have a competitor for the lower end of premium laptops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnJw54oyfLE
14.0-inch, 3K (2880 x 1800) OLED 16:10 aspect ratio, 0.2ms response time, 120Hz refresh rate, 500nits HDR peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 1,000,000:1, 1.07 billion colors, PANTONE Validated, Glossy display, 70% less harmful blue light, SGS Eye Care Display, Touch screen, (Screen-to-body ratio)90%, With stylus support
vs
14.2-inch (diagonal) Liquid Retina XDR display;1 3024-by-1964 native resolution at 254 pixels per inch
1,000,000:1 contrast ratio XDR brightness: 1000 nits sustained full-screen, 1600 nits peak2 (HDR content only) SDR brightness: 600 nits Color
1 billion colors Wide color (P3) True Tone technology Refresh rates
ProMotion technology for adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz Fixed refresh rates: 47.95Hz, 48.00Hz, 50.00Hz, 59.94Hz, 60.00Hz