> Being able to match big core i7s in some benchmarks single threaded is to a large extent something that Intel's own low power chips can also do, at least burstily.
You're not wrong. In general, it's true that a microbenchmark amplifies the Apple A13's strengths due to power limits. The assumption I make is that microbenchmarks indicate the true peak performance of Apple's architecture, and as power limits become a smaller constraint when Apple uses its chips in laptops and desktops they will make available that performance in a more sustained way.
But even low power Intels don't compare that favourably. Intel's new i7 10510U delivers very nice single core performance [1]. But it's worth noting that 1) that still does not quite match the A13's burst performance 2) that chip is still rated for a power profile much larger than the A13's and 3) as always in these discussions - Intel's "TDP" is a marketing term not a power limit. At high turbos the chip is permitted to consume quite a bit more power than the 15W it's rated for.
This particular Intel chip boosts to 4.90GHz. For Apple chips, even stuff like clockspeeds are a matter of conjecture, but Wikichip without a source claims that the A13 tops out at 2.65GHz [2] which if true indicates a lot more thermal and frequency headroom in bigger form factors.
I just benchmarked my MacBook Pro+Safari in Jetstream 2.0 [3] - not a microbenchmark - and it scored nearly 145 compared to the nearly 130 the iPhone 11 scores [4]. That's with a "45W TDP" Core i7 8850H topping out at 4.3GHz. It's hard to benchmark iPhones well, but all evidence points to the fact that they are actually really fast.
* 6 year old Macbook Pro i7-4980HQ, Windows 10 - 102
* 5 year old Macbook Pro i7-5557U, OS X - 100
* Threadripper 2990WX desktop - 99
So, uh, I might have some questions about this benchmark's general validity now?! - though maybe it is some evidence in favour of my vague feeling that the Threadripper sometimes doesn't feel as fast as it seems like it ought to feel.
The Jetstream benchmark is made by the WebKit team. Its scores will vary per browser, so you have to compare browser to browser. I compared an iPhone 11 running Safari to a MacBook Pro running Safari. Apples to apples.
Moreover, while the Threadripper 2990WX is a really awesome processor, single core benchmarks (I think Jetstream is mostly limited to a single thread) aren't particularly its strength. Over multiple runs it should beat your Macbook Pro, but not by a huge amount. If not, take a look at how you're cooling that beast :)
I updated a six core i7 3930k with a sixteen core 1950x threadripper on one of my boxes. Biggest reason for the update was the disk IO (m2 drives) and number of cores and I'd had the 3930k since the launch day at Microcenter. On Windows, single threaded at stock speeds, the cores were comparable from a 6-8 year gap between the two CPUs. For hosting virtual machines... the speed did not matter as much as having an abundance of physical cores. Still - I was not expecting the 'core speed' as reported by a video game to be as close as it was.
The Zen2 (3900x) core speed on the other workstation reported as almost twice as fast, with 12 cores. Really wish that TR4 board supported the 39xx threadripper series.
Zen 2 was a big uplift in single-threaded performance.
Ryzen and Threadripper 1000- and 2000-series, and Ryzen Mobile < 4000-series are all on Zen or Zen+ architecture.
The current gen Ryzen and Threadripper 3000-series and the Ryzen Mobile 4000-series are the ones running on Zen 2. This is where AMD is competitive with Intel on single-threaded workloads, largely across the board.
It's the opposite. The latest generation of ThreadRipper is not only ahead in multicore peformance it is also comparable to the highest possible single core performance from the regular Ryzen Lineup.
You're not wrong. In general, it's true that a microbenchmark amplifies the Apple A13's strengths due to power limits. The assumption I make is that microbenchmarks indicate the true peak performance of Apple's architecture, and as power limits become a smaller constraint when Apple uses its chips in laptops and desktops they will make available that performance in a more sustained way.
But even low power Intels don't compare that favourably. Intel's new i7 10510U delivers very nice single core performance [1]. But it's worth noting that 1) that still does not quite match the A13's burst performance 2) that chip is still rated for a power profile much larger than the A13's and 3) as always in these discussions - Intel's "TDP" is a marketing term not a power limit. At high turbos the chip is permitted to consume quite a bit more power than the 15W it's rated for.
This particular Intel chip boosts to 4.90GHz. For Apple chips, even stuff like clockspeeds are a matter of conjecture, but Wikichip without a source claims that the A13 tops out at 2.65GHz [2] which if true indicates a lot more thermal and frequency headroom in bigger form factors.
I just benchmarked my MacBook Pro+Safari in Jetstream 2.0 [3] - not a microbenchmark - and it scored nearly 145 compared to the nearly 130 the iPhone 11 scores [4]. That's with a "45W TDP" Core i7 8850H topping out at 4.3GHz. It's hard to benchmark iPhones well, but all evidence points to the fact that they are actually really fast.
[1]: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...
[2]: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/apple/ax/a13 - worth noting that high-end Qualcomm SoCs also operate at comparable frequencies.
[3]: https://browserbench.org/JetStream/
[4]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro...