Yesterday, Apple launched the first devices, including the 13-inch MacBook Air loaded with its in-house ARM-based processor dubbed M1. The processor is a 5nm chip with 16 billion transistors and is based on unified memory architecture.
According to Apple, the new chipset will provide up to 3.5 times the CPU performance of the previous-gen Air and up to 5 times faster graphics. The SSDs are said to be two times faster too. Endorsing these claims, the latest benchmark scores reveal that the 13-inch MacBook Air with M1 beats all the existing iOS devices.
The variant with 8GB RAM received a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433 and has a 3.2GHz base frequency.
The iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the top of the line iOS device on Geekbench’s charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.
Similarly, the new MacBook’s single and multi-core performance beats out all of the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro models, including the 10th-generation high-end 2.4GHz Intel Core i9 model. The 16-inch MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 1096 and a multi-core score of 6870.
However, as far as raw CPU benchmarks are concerned, the 16-inch MacBook Pro likely offers better performance in other areas such as the GPU since they come with high powered discrete GPUs.
there’s reason Apple never made Direct comparisons with either AMD’s ZEN and ZEN2 or Intel’s Tigerlake Processors and that’s because it’s M1 is just a Glorified iPad Pro Chip. There’s day and night difference between real Laptop/Desktop chips and this ARM based M1. Majority of the software is also not available to run natively because doing so will tank the performance. If it was me I would still buy intel based Macs as those are still available to purchase on Apple’s website. and They are still productivity champs in comparison to these new Macbooks which essentially just iPad Pros in laptop form factor.