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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

Intel's Alder Lake benchmarks show that their new mobile processor is faster than the M1 Max. So, this domination doesn't seem to be a long term thing.

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Yes-- they show a few percent victory in absolute performance while using nearly 5x the power, for a chip that's several months away.

it's launching this week fwiw

It's crazy that I can't get a bicycle chain for the next six months, but these chipsets are shipping?

CPUs (and laptops) have high enough margins where it can take an airplane to wherever it needs to go.

Bicycle chains, not so much.

> I can't get a bicycle chain for the next six months

Why?

Supply chain chaos? I assume bike parts in the US come from overseas in shipping containers. One of my shifters broke in September and the local bike shop said they were out of parts and didn't expect to have any more until April 2022.

Other than the usual supply chain stuff, there was also a huge demand for bicycles and bike parts during peak COVID.

automotive sector scooping it all /s

I would imagine if you were willing to buy a bicycle chain which had a several hundred dollar profit margin, then you would be able to find one rather quickly.

Intel has its own fabs, right?

And there are samples out in the wild being bought and sold right now, too.

It is? Source please. I've heard, for availability, "before the end of the year" and "Q1 2022" for mobile Alder Lake, which is what we're talking about.

Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow, desktop skus should ship early November.

https://wccftech.com/intel-officially-launches-12th-gen-alde...

OK, so then that's not meaningful at all for the discussion which was about comparative strength of mobile SKUs.

at 95W max power, m1 max is not much of a "mobile" SKU either. Lines are blurry where these chips are positioned.

As for your power consumption figures, Apple has a supply agreement over 5nm so don't think you can compare architecture apples to apples yet.

But did Intel use liquid nitrogen cooling to achieve this?

I am joking but just a bit. Intel has long history of dirty tricks when it comes to benchmarks - using liquid nitrogen cooling and not mentioning it, manipulating the compiler to generate slower code on competing CPUs, terms of service forbidding publication of benchmarks, fuzzy use (or not mentioning it at all) of TWP/energy usage.

What they say can only be used as an upper bound of how it actually is. The odds are is that it's much worse and with some strings attached as well.

Not to mention disabling mitigations against Spectre, Meltdown, MDS, etc

The same Intel that faked the CPU performance in 2018 by overclocking it and using some insane cooling?

Intel is playing this PR game where they release / announce or leak info, so people might try and wait for what Intel has to offer. It's super obvious, weak, and disingenuous.

What is the memory bandwidth of that processor?

The geekbench benchmark is more CPU focused AFAIK, and the article we are discussing is talking about just how much the astonishing M1(.+) memory access bandwidth is improving their rendering time.

The only result I could find with the memory details for the 12900HK didn’t calculate out what the (overclocked) memory bandwidth was: https://gadgettendency.com/intel-core-i9-12900k-lights-up-wi...

Seems doubtful to me.

Apple doesn't have to score the absolute highest in performance. For better or worse, they need a credible high-end chip that they can marry with their proprietary OS and computer designs to win customers via a compelling package not some benchmark result.

After the M1*, intel is facing an uphill fight to keep other laptop manufacturers on x86. They may well pull together and come out stronger, but the last 10y haven't been stellar and Apple exposed that weakness.

So, will intel win back some of the performance benchmarks? Sure, no doubt. But will Dell win over Apple customers using the latest intel chips? Let's see...

Does Alder Lake require security mitigations?

Will do

Do you have a link to these benchmarks ?

Well be very interesting to see given Alder Lake is dumping AVX-512 which was one of their core performance strengths against AMD. Albeit at staggering cost in thermals and power.

Finally some objectivity to stop the M1 love fest

And it will probably devour a ridiculous amount of power and generate a thermos of heat to be marginally overall faster. It also won’t have a comparable GPU.

M1 Max still is the better experience and innovation.

If you don't require a laptop then an alder lake chip doesn't take anything close to a ridiculous amount of power, nor is it hard to cool.

Edit: I know this discussion is partly focused on laptops, but the overall comparison is including server chips so it's clearly not just about laptops. And 60 or 100 watts is child's play in even a tiny desktop.

Yeah the 12900HK beats the Max by 3%, even though the M1 Max is way more power efficient and likely utterly smoked it on GPU. After all it’s 8% faster than a mobile 3060.

The 3060 alone is a 60W TGP.

The M1 Max running Cinebench consumes 9W while the 11980HK (previous gen) consumes 45W. Perf/W Is about 3X higher for the M1 Max on CPU alone and I suspect factoring in graphics we’ve got a breakaway here.

Intel will catch up but not today.

Just FYI because I've seent that a few times already: A 60W/70W 3060 is -very slow-. There are many laptops that supply much more power and conversely also get better results.

That's a very good point. Do you thing running a 3060 at a higher TGP gets you the same perf/W? I'm genuinely curious where they have them set along the curve.

I mean 60W is very low, probably 90-100W is the sweetspot? I have a Legion 5 Pro which supplies 130W and that's pretty much the highest you will get.

I am pretty sure perf/W for the M1 Max chips is excellent, better than the 3060. But saying it performs "on par" with a 3060 isn't really correct.

Except it ignores the fact that it requires 5 times the power to barley edge out the M1 Max. It certainly isn't going to end the M1 love fest.

So 200W for mobile processor? Are you sure? I'd say 65W tops

M1 lovefest won't end just like MacBook lovefest haven't ended all this years when Apple made stuff everyone criticizes now.

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