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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

> With that said, there is a huge M1 hype on HN.

The main thing driving this is that people are comparing a new M1 to their Intel Mac laptops with processors from ~2016 and then naturally it's a marked improvement because it's being compared to a five year old machine.

You compare them to a modern Intel or AMD system and they're competitive. They win some and lose others. Much was made about the M1 Max taking the single thread performance crown; for less than a month. Golden Cove from Intel just took it back. It's plausible that it will be AMD's again in a couple months when we get Zen 3 with 3D V-Cache.

They're all within single digit percentages of each other and the winner is whoever released their top end processor most recently.

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>Much was made about the M1 Max taking the single thread performance crown; for less than a month.

This is quite misleading in multiple ways.

The M1 Max has the same single thread performance as the M1, which has been out for around a year.

You're also comparing Intel's latest desktop CPU to a laptop CPU. Before the M1, a laptop CPU competing with the highest-end consumer desktop CPU in multi-core OR single-core was unthinkable and had never happened. Yes, there have been leaks in which Alder Lake's mobile CPU beats the M1, but we don't know whether these benchmarks are representing the numbers we'll be seeing in consumer laptops with laptop cooling.

That being said, I hope there will be competition!

AMDs Renoir stood up to desktop CPUs some 6 months before the M1. Still yeah, the M1 is a performance beast. But like others have said already, in the latest gen (and considering Alder Lake is fresh out of the oven[0]), they're all quite close, trading blows with each other.

[0] almost literally by the thermal numbers

> You compare them to a modern Intel or AMD system

I compared my 2014 MBP to 2019 MBP and there was no marked difference. It was running hot and eating battery very fast. 2019 Intel Mac and 2020 M1 Mac are two completely different animals. Also, the price drop for a better-performing machine was jaw-dropping.

Apple selling you mid-range-3-year-old-intel CPUs (that are known to thermal throttle quite badly) at 50% markup, then robbing you slightly less hard on a product is not jaw dropping, it's merely you falling for their marketing three times in a row.

I'm not sure where you're getting that from...

The i9-9980HK (released April 2019) in the 16" 2019 Macbook Pro looks like the highest-end mobile i9 Intel had released as of November 2019 when the laptop launched.

And the i7-9750H in the base model was also launched in April of that year, and looks like it was their 2nd-fastest mobile hexacore i7 at the time?

The MacBook Air line seems to be the only viable alternative for fanless notebooks at the moment, though.

Out of curiosity which laptop should I be looking at if I dont want to be robbed by the apple on a M1?

I just got a Lenovo Blue Phantom w/ Ryzen 5800H and 3050TI for 999 USD. 3.2ghz 8c/16t Ryzen 3. Feels amazing even with Win11 on it and I am going from a Dell G3 i5 9300H with 1660TI QMax and its a very tangible feeling upgrade. (even if the OS is a downgrade lol). I did have to do 40 USD memory upgrade to get it to 16g Dual channel so 1039 USD + tax so there is a hidden extra cost there. Or you could do a 32gb upgrade kit instead and sell your 8gb stick.

I don't think the GPU is much of an upgrade, but it does have tensor cores, the better video encoder (could be an OBS monster) and I believe better thermals. I am sure putting Pop!_OS or Manjaro on it would make this a great *nix platform for developers, content creators or streamers.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the screen is not nearly as good,1080p vs 3K, worse color spectrum, worse contrast. The fan noise is typical of gaming laptop while under load although M1 pro stays mostly inaudible. I haven't checked but I doubt the battery life can be compared as well.

If portability/battery longevity and a high resolution is what you are after, there is always going to be a tradeoff. The monitor on my new laptop is 165hz IPS sRGB and I couldn't care less about build in monitor only doing 1080p vs Retina/4k. But I am willing to get more of what is more important to me vs what apple offers. If I get an M1 it will be a Mini, not a laptop. And if I need 4k I just output to an external monitor in docked mode anyways.

Trying to find a cheaper apple quality device that is as good... you'll really be limited to the cheaper Yoga 4k screen models and their ilk. But I have no experience with those devices.

Any Ryzen one

I definately have to pay more for a similar to a maxxed out Macbook Pro 14" specced Ryzen driven Laptop in Germany. Due to current graphic card prizes Desktop is even worse. Can't say that I feel robbed buying a MBPro when Linux runs on it while I felt that immedeately buying a Tigerlake Notebook.

"Linux runs on it" ?

Yeah tried that, nup.

Looking at pure performance without power usage is meaningless for these machines.

Power usage doesn’t scale linearly, at all. Mobile Ryzens are very competitive with the M1 watt for watt (trading blows with Ryzen winning sometimes). Seems you’ve fallen for Apple marketing again.

What Ryzen laptop would you recommend with performance and battery life roughly equivalent to an M1 MacBook Air? A lot of people on HN obsess over benchmarks, but people buy laptops, not CPUs. I haven’t yet seen a product that’s competitive with the M1 MacBook Air in its niche (which to be fair isn’t really a niche - a laptop for what 90% of people use their laptops for).

I haven’t yet seen a product that’s competitive with the M1 MacBook Air in its niche

This is the inconvenient truth of these discussions. If anything, Apple is under playing the bang for the buck and performance per watt of these machines.

Im also curious. I run amd on the desktop w good results- but not seeing the air competition yet when I last looked when air came out

I am very Interested in a good mobile Windows/Ryzen laptop with a MacBook Air-comparable form factor, performance, and battery life. Please link if you know of one.

All the Intel machines I've looked into have fans and still manage to be 30-50% slower.

Me too. Let me know if you find one. If I was in the market for something like the MacBook Air, I’d definitely get the MacBook Air.

I’m fact I use an M1 iPad right now. It’s great. For browsing Facebook and video calls and doing remote work, it’s perfect. And for serious workloads, those go straight to my desktop workstation (AMD). Best of both worlds.

Ryzen is at a process disadvantage currently so Apple should be more efficient on average. When AMD gets on N5 (soon), it's going to be even more competitive.

But don't compare to the modern desktops, only laptops. I often see that people want to compare new M1 to the latest desktops (hot and power-greedy), then say "well, just a little bit better in that benchmark" and think that it was a good and fair comparison :)

> Golden Cove from Intel just took it back.

I mean, yes, somewhat, in (almost comically) high power desktop configurations, depending on which benchmark you believe. This is of cold comfort to anyone who wants a fast laptop, though.

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