Apple MacBook Neo Beats Every Single x86 PC CPU For Single

Apple MacBook Neo Beats Every Single x86 PC CPU For Single-Core Performance (notebookcheck.net) 66 Early benchmarks show the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo beating every current x86 CPU in single-core Cinebench performance, including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports: We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in Cinebench 2024, where a single-core test takes about 10 minutes. The A18 Pro consumes between 3.5-4 Watts in this scenario and scores 147 points. This means it is faster than every other x86 processor in our database, including the two desktop processors Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This also means the MacBook Neo beats every modern mobile processor from AMD, Intel and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster. The A18 Pro is also slightly faster than Apple's own M3 generation in this scenario. Further reading: ASUS Executive Says MacBook Neo is 'Shock' to PC Industry X86 CPUs (Score:2) "including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports:" Who else would they be from? Terrible reporting. Re:X86 CPUs (Score:5, Informative) If they're being thorough, Snapdragon, Mediatek and Ampere (server) SoCs are also being sold in traditional PC forms. I might be interested if this thing could run Linux and had Thinkpad-grade input devices, but as it is, it's just a web terminal that's locked to Apple's ecosystem instead of Google's. That's just not very compelling. Re:X86 CPUs (Score:4, Interesting) Re: (Score:2) Asahi has been stalled for a long time, now. It still doesn't run on an M3. I do hope it moves forward- I'd love to upgrade my M1 MBA. Re: (Score:3) Linux on a chromebook is a terrible experience. Re: (Score:2) Linux on a chromebook is a terrible experience. The early Chromebooks didn't do Linux too badly, but that changed. Re: (Score:2) Odd, Linux of the not-Plasma versions runs just fine on a 2014 Mac mini which also has 8 GB of RAM. Chromebooks must be thoroughly messed up. Re: (Score:2) Apple never really locked down its Macs and there where always enough of them that people where prepared to put the effort into reverse engineering the hardware. Chromebooks.... weird things. Locked down in strange ways that I dont think anyone could be bothered to figure out. I'm not sure what the stall has been with the Arm macs. I guess a lot of people are enjoying the Apple flavor of unix? Re: (Score:1) Re: (Score:1) Those are all Arm systems, not x86. This thing is running macOS, so why do you think it's a web terminal? A MacBook Neo can run Xcode (Score:2) A MacBook Neo can run Xcode, as Sam Henri Gold reminds us in "This Is Not the Computer for You" [samhenri.gold]. What can a Chromebook run that's remotely similar? Re:X86 CPUs (Score:5, Interesting) I am not sure it is fair to describe this as no better than a Chromebook. This machine is running macOS. You can put Homebrew on it, and install many applications that way (including many open source applications). I use Geany, Octave, Maxima, R, and a whole other host of applications on my Mac, which I use mostly at work. Most of the applications I use on my Debian desktop are available on Homebrew. If you're concerned about Homebrew for security reasons, you can usually install packages directly from the application website. I totally understand people saying they don't want to run macOS because of various reasons, but the "walled garden" description of macOS is not fair in my opinion (it is completely fair for iPhones and iPads). I'm able to install the software I want on my Mac at work. While the security settings of macOS make you jump through some additional hoops, I don't think it's an overwhelming burden. I have heard this machine described as being on par with an M1 Macbook Air. My wife uses that machine on a daily basis, and it works well. My daughter is using an M1 Pro machine, and does not want to upgrade for college because she feels it is unnecessary. I think we need to do a better job of going after Mac for the real issues it has: cost of upgrades, lack of repairability, and inability to install Linux on the machine. Re:X86 CPUs (Score:4, Informative) I might be interested if this thing could run Linux and had Thinkpad-grade input devices, but as it is, it's just a web terminal that's locked to Apple's ecosystem instead of Google's. That's just not very compelling. You can run VMs, Wine, compile your own software, etc. The only limiting factor is the 8gb of ram and, as I have said repeatedly, 8gb for most users is not that big a deal. "No wireless? Less space than a Nomad. Lame." Re: (Score:2) iOS - yes, and I can't really think of a good use of an iPad for me. But the Mac is an open machine. Re: (Score:3) Zhaoxin (Chinese market) Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:1) Re: (Score:2) Who else would they be from? Terrible reporting. Did you read the whole summary: ". . . and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster." Re: (Score:2) No reason to worry! Back in the 90s, it looked like x86 would be eclipsed by myriad RISC challengers - MIPS and Alpha for Windows (NT), PowerPC for Mac OS and OS/2, Sparc and PA/RISC for Unix and so on. But at least on the Windows front, not running x86 natively turned out to be a major issue, which ended up killing MIPS and Alpha, when it came to running Windows applications. I do agree that Arm will completely oust x86 in the Chromebook space, where most of the apps are really Android apps. As far as Re: (Score:2) In the 90s those RISC processors had a huge performance advantage, but they came at a serious price premium and were typically only available from a single vendor. ARM is widely available, affordable, and covers the whole price/performance range. A lot of software these days is delivered as webapps which are platform agnostic. Mobile didn't really exist in the 90s but is huge now, mobile is already dominated by ARM. Emulation / dynamic recompilation has improved a lot if you need to run legacy binaries. A lot o This will be amazing! (Score:2) Re: (Score:1) Misleading Apple hype (Score:2, Interesting) When Apple first started making their own chips, one of the big features were accelerators for various tasks. This makes the Apple chips less of a general purpose processor and more of a product with specific market focuses. The fact that Apple has control over iOS and MacOS also allows Apple to really push their accelerators and support for them in a way that Intel and AMD could not. When you see the performance of Photoshop on one of these new Macbooks, you see the results of having an ecosystem som Re:Misleading Apple hype (Score:5, Interesting) Re: Seriously (Score:3) Large numbers of people buy Macs to run photoshop. So Apple selling a machine that is fast at Photoshop is somehow bad? Re: (Score:2) No, but acting like that's relevant to the general case is. And it's very much the same thing Slashdot did here with this story. They ragebaited us with this bullshit as usual. It beat other processors in single thread performance at a task no one does with a single thread, but this was billed by these clown asses as beating every other processor at single thread performance period. The headline should have the word Cinebench in it. Not having it there is what makes the story clickbait. They know that, as n Re: (Score:3) And what makes this a bad thing? The fact that Apple has control over iOS and macOS makes this laptop a great laptop for the intended market. Because Intel and AMD can't do this (your words) just makes Windows (because that's what we're talking about, right?) an average OS for average hardware. Let's face it: Microsoft has to support a shitload of processors and chipsets and whatnot used in a shitload of computers from a shitload of manufacturers. That alone makes Windows not perform optimally and the same goes for the hardware. It's a choice Microsoft has made and it's a different one than Apple has made. It doesn't mean it's Apple hype. Yeah - his was a strange post. I consider it an anti-flex. Apple's choices result in products I want. If as he seems to claim, Apples M-chips are specifically designed to run Photoshop, then that's a good thing. But they run everything very nicely. And You might be generous calling Windows an average OS. By the time my last digital communication classes were finished, and we paused it to recover - pervious classes had everyone running after 2 sessions on Windows 10 (W7 before that) We spent the entire time Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:3) When Apple first started making their own chips, one of the big features were accelerators for various tasks. This makes the Apple chips less of a general purpose processor and more of a product with specific market focuses. The fact that Apple has control over iOS and MacOS also allows Apple to really push their accelerators and support for them in a way that Intel and AMD could not. When you see the performance of Photoshop on one of these new Macbooks, you see the results of having an ecosystem somewhat dedicated to making it perform better. Seriously - what is that supposed to mean? I have an M4 mini, and it flies on the Adobe Suite. I have not found one program that it doesn't run faster than my Windows laptop that cost around 2.5 times as much. Are those grapes not sour? I like my computers to run things quickly. I do not give a rats ass about benchmarks. If my mini runs the Adobe suite and my other programs not only well, but faster - well, that's my benchmark. Re:Misleading Apple hype (Score:5, Informative) There are no magic "Apple accelerators" at play here. Vector instructions are being used, but equivalents are used on Intel/AMD (AVX2) as well. Apple Silicon has maintained a sizeable lead over all of x86 in general computing since the M1. It accomplishes this by doing something Intel and AMD aren't very interested in- burning silicon. Reorder buffers are larger, memory bus is wider, page size is larger. Re: (Score:2) If a program wants to take advantage of newer CPU features it either becomes incompatible with any earlier CPU, or requires multiple code paths to handle different processors. Or you can use a Linux distribution like Gentoo and compile everything with the matching -mcpu flag. Most publishers or binary software don't want to maintain multiple code paths, don't want to cut off potential customers with older hardware (even if the performance sill suck). At most they might do multiple code paths for specific per Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) The problem is that, they don't recycle, all is thrown away, it is more expensive to recycle or repair than to build a new one. and why is so expensive to recycle/repair? because it was design to be so, glued parts, components that only work in THAT device, all solder-in components in just one board. Framework proves that you can build a modular laptop, easy to repair and where you can reuse older parts without any problem, but elites like apple because of it's status and do not care about the rest Re: (Score:2) Oh look, working as designed, I can't fix my own thing, but I shouldn't have to care as long as I give Apple money to pay for any work. it is a shame (Score:2) that is your consumerist mind, you win, everybody loses, but you still don't care! yes, you get a new device, great for you... your previous device is now e-waste, can't be repaired, can't be reused, it is just trash. Cost a lot (money and environment) to refine all the ingredients, even more to build each components, all throw away to trash, with little or any component recycled because they are too expensive break apart and recycle. Human labor and environment cost are huge, but they are far away, you don Re:As a repair tech... (Score:4) I'm no fan of Apple, but that's what's different about the Neo. I saw a video of a teardown of a Neo, and there is no glue attaching anything. The motherboard is really small: the bulk of the real estate is taken over by the battery. Only thing about this is that the RAM is not upgradable, but I don't think many Apple laptops are, unless one is prepared to de-solder the existing DIMMs and solder in new DIMMs I do hope there is at some point an Arm equivalent of the Hackintosh movement, so that one can take a Framework system w/ an Arm CPU (should they make one), install macOS on it and configure it however they like Ever so subtle? (Score:3) Apple MacBook Neo Beats Ever Single x86 PC CPU For Single-Core Performance Is this how we signal "Not written by AI"? Or just "I slept through high school English class." ;-) Re: Ever so subtle? (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Probably ... YES. Not intentionally, but I've seen quite a few posts over the last months where I said "surely this isn't AI" (and by AI I mean what mostly everyone mean by "AI" nowadays, these LLM autocomplete). We got to the point where the AI stuff is coherently crafted from beginning to end while the "human" posts are what the average human (that's a really low bar) would do, possibly drunk or on drugs. Speculative execution attacks (Score:3) Do they beat Intel in this respect, too? Re: (Score:2) How good are mitigations to speculative execution attacks (Spectre, Meltdown) on the new Apple processors? Do they beat Intel in this respect, too? I'm speculating here, but the bad news is they might be vulnerable. The good news is, at 8GB RAM you're gonna notice after the third browser tab chokes on a pop-up. slashvert (Score:1) i dont genuinely bellieve that /. is being paid to promote these thignsa, but why are they flogging this thing so hard right now? ((plz forgive typos, im typing with gloves on since the temp went from 85F to 27Fin a day) Re: (Score:2) Slashdot has had a long running hatred of Microsoft products in general. I'd imagine that anything that helps loosen their grip on the sub $1,000 laptop OS monopoly would be cheered around here. performance (Score:2) Re: (Score:1) What is 8gb limiting you to? That's plenty for you average user. Re: (Score:2) Too bad its crippled (Score:1) Re: Too bad its crippled (Score:2) Apparently you do not have much experience with macOS. I have my gripes about it, but I have yet to find the perfect desktop operating system. I still have gripes about the Linux ecosystem, too, they are just different. The only OS that really fits your description is Windows. What a piece of garbage. Maybe a good alternative for Chromebooks (Score:1) I have helped my very tech-adverse mother to engage with the internet, and an iMac many years ago worked quite well for that. It made the experience friendly and reliable, and that definitely helped. Once that system was out of updates and too old, I transitioned her to Chromebase and later a Chromebox - and it worked even more flawlessly, I had even less maintenance to do (small silly human errors/details) and I really loved these options for the very average user who mostly just surfs a bit. Sadly then Goog Relevance? (Score:2) So? How much single threaded rendering does anyone actually do? I understand why in some cases single threaded performance is important, but not for the vast majority of use cases. I don't like Apple products (Score:2) "Unified memory" (Score:2)