- (canadianmist.delete@this.protonmail.com) on June 15, 2022 12:27 pm wrote:
> 1870-1919 on GB5 ST, 3.47GHz (nominally 3.49GHz by the OS).
>
>
> Pretty impressive at that frequency. Absurd PPC.
>
> https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/15482594
>
> https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/15482532



These values are similar to a Rocket Lake.

They are of course exceptional for a CPU with a so low clock frequency, therefore with a so low power consumption.


Nevertheless, the distance between the single-thread performance of an Apple CPU and the best single-thread results for Intel or AMD CPUs has increased since the launch of M1.

When Apple M1 was launched, its single thread performance was better than for most Intel/AMD CPUs and only 5% less than the best x86 CPUs (i.e. ST GB5 was 1750 for Apple M1 vs. 1850 for Ryzen 9 5950X).


Now, after its slightly more than 9% clock frequency increase, which has raised the GB5 score in exactly the same proportion, Apple M2 matches only the obsolete Rocket Lake, while having a gap in ST performance of more than 15% vs. desktop Alder Lake and Zen 4 (more than 10% vs. laptop Alder Lake) and an even greater gap vs. Raptor Lake.


So for now, the Apple results do not have anything new. While Apple has kept the same microarchitecture, the competition has introduced improved CPUs last year (Alder Lake), and other improved CPUs are due in a few months (Raptor Lake, Zen 4), which will be the contemporaneous CPUs of Apple M2.


When Apple will introduce their next microarchitecture, then the results will be much more interesting, to see whether the next Apple CPU will succeed to match or exceed the best x86 CPUs in absolute performance, not only in performance per watt or joule.