Apple M1 destroys Intel and AMD in newly-released benchmarks
Intel could be in serious trouble
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We already knew that theApple M1 chipwas a beast, despite being a fresh face in the world of CPUs. It’s now been revealed through a PassMark benchmark that the M1 defeats theIntel Core i7-11700KCPU in single-core performance, leaving it second only to theIntel Core i9-11900K.
WhileAppleis certainly a force to be reckoned with, the idea of a new CPU entering a market that has so long been dominated solely byAMDandIntelwas certainly brave, so to have pulled off outperforming so many established products in such little time should give both team red and team blue some concerns.
Will we see an ARM wrestle?
The PassMark benchmark results show that the M1 chip leads theIntel i7-11700Kby just seven points, but given this is Apple’s first release of its chip for Macs and MacBooks, it’s no small feat. Indeed, single-core and single-thread workload proficiency has always been firmly Intel’s domain.
Notebook Checkhas also pointed out that the M1 is an attractive choice when looking at the affordability vs performance, given that the Rocket Lake i9-11900K has an MSRP of $539 (around £395, AU$715) alone, while anM1-based Mac minidesktop computer with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage is available for $699/£699/AU$1,099We also covered in our review of M1 products like the newMacBook Airthat despite being firmly in the ‘luxury product’ market, these silicon products are now undoubtedly the best laptop devices for a surprisingly affordable price given how well they perform.
The other CPU brands certainly still have advantages of course – in a recent Intel campaign, theApple M1 chip was mockeddue to its lack of real gaming capabilities, or features such as touch screens and tablet mode that aren’t present in Mac products.The Intel Core i9-11900K is still sitting pretty for now, but these results should give both Intel and AMD reasons for concern. These scores are obviously not reflective of multi-core workloads and comparing theARM-based M1 to other chipsets isn’t a clear cut, but Apple has proved that they can close the rankings gap despite competitors having decades of developmental experience.
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Jess is a former TechRadar Computing writer, where she covered all aspects of Mac and PC hardware, including PC gaming and peripherals. She has been interviewed as an industry expert for the BBC, and while her educational background was in prosthetics and model-making, her true love is in tech and she has built numerous desktop computers over the last 10 years for gaming and content creation. Jess is now a journalist at The Verge.
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