Two glaring issues:
1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB
2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both
1. The MacBook only has 8GB of ram whereas the Ryzen has 16GB
2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both
But are they priced similarly?
> 2. Comparing x86 linux vs arm linux on a MacBook (which is still early days) rather than the most stable and mature OS for both
Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument.
Meaningless question when they don't sell the M2 chip separately
> Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument
I guess "for each" would be better ? But OPs point still stands, if you put me on a race car you are not breaking any records no matter how good the car is
So it's not a meaningless question at all.
> Meaningless question when they don't sell the M2 chip separately
What does that have to do with the question "Does this X-dollar laptop outperform that X-dollar laptop?"
Does the Ryzen system come with a full aluminum enclosure?
Does it come with a screen with P3 color, 400 nits peak brightness, and HDR support?
What is the battery size on both machines, and how long do each last?
How thin is it? How light it it? How fast does it charge? How much does this affect you daily?
If it was only about CPU performance, I could grab the cheapest Clevo with a Core i9 and it would beat every other manufacturer in the “bang-buck” spec as you are defining it, but it would be an awful experience.
Yes, people might be searching for the best performance, and cost comparison here is fair.
> If it was only about CPU performance, I could grab the cheapest Clevo with a Core i9 and it would beat every other manufacturer in the “bang-buck” spec as you are defining it, but it would be an awful experience.
Evey user has his/her requirements and things he/she is okay to comprmise on.
But they aren't doing that!*
They're specifically comparing performance between two similarly-priced laptops[1]. That's what "benchmark" means.
If this was a review between the two laptops I'd agree with you, but it isn't a review, it's a benchmark suite.
> Does the Ryzen system come with a full aluminum enclosure?
> Does it come with a screen with P3 color, 400 nits peak brightness, and HDR support?
> What is the battery size on both machines, and how long do each last?
> How thin is it? How light it it? How fast does it charge? How much does this affect you daily?
All of these are valid questions, just not for a benchmark. The benchmark is one set of inputs a potential purchaser would take into account, with the other inputs being all those things you mentioned.
[1] I assume that they're similarly priced - I skipped the introduction and went straight to the benchmarks.
The person they replied to was
Lenovo's prices aren't Apple's, this laptop may be sold for similar as Mac.
If you really want one you can get one.
But if you are buying a laptop on the basis of how shiny it is does the CPU performance really matter?
When I bought a car for my wife she picked it out on the basis of how cute it is. She isn't going to run around being upset that it doesn't have 0-60 time of a Subaru WRX. To her the Subaru is ugly.
There's a reason why I still buy ThinkPads - because aluminum is still heavier than magnesium and carbon fiber... and it isn't indestructible.
I have literally two laptops in front of me - ThinkPad made with carbon fiber and MacBook Pro 2021.
Aluminum laptop is heavier, clunkier and less pleasant to work with
AFAIK the 6850U also isn't sold separately.
Linux has supported AMD CPUs for decades and AMD has engineers creating kernel patches to ensure their CPUs work correctly on Linux.
Linux support for Apple chips is in its infancy and what little support it does have has been provided by a ragtag team of volunteers that have reversed engineered the M-series chips.
It's reasonable to assume that the AMD chip might be at a slight advantage on Linux.
Linux has run on ARM since 2002. Apple OSX was first released for ARM in 2020. Apple iOS on ARM wasn't released until 2007.
Though I doubt that any of this is relevant for a CPU only benchmark. I'd bet the effect of compiler support overwhelms any other effects.
So 1800 for the Lenovo vs 1200 for the Mac.
This is a meaningless comparison.
It makes comparing them on prices almost impossible.
Final laptop price isn't that important when this is a CPU comparison, "Apple M2 vs. AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U"
> Hmm .. Doesn't "for both" negate the argument.
What I meant is that they don't use the OS which is most stable and most mature on each platform independently (i.e. some flavour of linux, or even windows, for the Ryzen and macOS for the M2). Either choice will introduce OS differences, but I believe that using the most optimized OS is the better choice as it allows each CPU to show off its best performance.
Hypothetically - a diesel BMW m3 may cost the same as a Camaro with a V8 engine, but what's the point of talking what engines they have... if you are purchasing these items for other reasons.
So the question is: are you spec benchmarking, or are you interested in the performance of the workload, because it's the actual work that matters, not how the bits are stored under the keyboard.
(In fact, you could consider the on-die RAM to be a really big Cache and the Flash storage to be REALLY REALLY big Non volatile addressable RAM.)
Those are big ifs. We don't know how much of those 8GBs were used, and how much swapping the OS was forced to do. But either way, it's a silly thing to have different.
Phoronix Test Suite isn't a benchmark, it's a marketing tool.
* SOTTR 1080p
* SOTTR 1440p
* SOTTR 4K
* F1 1080p
...
And this wasn't like they had a 1080p geomean and then a 1440p geomean and a 4K geomean... they just had one geomean with a bunch of different resolutions thrown into it, including duplicates of the same game at different resolutions. And sometimes different combinations of resolutions for different games (they might skip 4K for a particular game, etc).
That's pleb-tier benchmarking, pick a random redditor and they know not to make that kind of mistake, it's obviously and facially incorrect.
It just goes to show the power of community goodwill... UserBenchmark's actual sub-scores are reasonably accurate, but because the owner is a massive fucking twat they're persona-non-grata in the internet community (I'm sure I'm going to be regaled with NO THEIR BENCHMARKS ARE TRASH AND HE CHANGES THINGS TO MAKE INTEL but nope, the subscores are accurate, topline "summary" score weights are what he fucks with). Michael Larabel is a very nice guy and frankly doesn't seem to understand the first thing about benchmarking, or score weighting, or mathematics, and constantly puts out trash-tier results with obvious defects, and he's revered in the community, basically a saint.
I know, nobody else is really benchmarking Linux and he's what we've got, if you don't like it then be the change, etcc. But, his results are given incredibly disproportionate weight to the quality there, he's no anandtech. And sadly anandtech is no anandtech anymore.
Games are benchmarked at different resolutions for the same game because that shifts the CPU/GPU burden. It's a great thing to do and many benchmarks do it too, and yes in the same average.
If you don't include a game at those resolutions for no good reason that's one thing, but varying the resolution in the same mean is a good idea.
It also shows you the number of runs. It also shows you the compile options used. All this info is included in every graph.
The complete system setups are described. The test suite is also open source.
You'll get no argument from me on the OS...that's an interesting test decision.
It also makes the GPU architecture very different in ways that makes performance hard to compare.
Based on experience with the M1 Air at least one of those benchmarks Primeseive would be severely throttling.
This whole article seems pretty stupid to me given they really should be benchmarking the M2 MacBook Pro against the Lenovo.