With a title like “Intel Just Matched Apple Silicon. Seriously.“, the latest video from [Jeff Geerling] makes some pretty bold claims. But as we’d expect from [Jeff], he’s got the benchmarks up on GitHub for both the MacBook Neo and Dell’s latest XPS 13 to back it up.
We’ve embedded the full video below, which has [Jeff]’s comparative review of the two laptops. The Mac wins on iGPU, sound, and not shipping Windows, while the Dell gets points for being able to load Linux and having a backlit keyboard. But the figure we were hoping to see is the efficiency. After all, it’s ARM’s ability to crank out gigaflops on fewer watts that won them the mobile market and got Apple interested in that architecture in the first place. If Intel is catching up, that’s news.
On [Jeff]’s version of the Top500 benchmark — the same HPL Linpak test used for Supercomputers — the MacBook cranked out 57.012 Gflops at 10.6W, for 5.38 Gflops/W while the Dell managed 127.91 Gflops at 20.6W, for 6.21 Gflops/W. That’s just astounding, considering the historical data all goes the other way. This Dell also beats out both M4 and M3 Mac Studios, only failing to the M4 Mac Mini at 7.57 Gflops/W. Even when not crunching big numbers, say at idle or web browsing, the XPS matches the MacBook sip for sip in energy efficiency.
Some people have been saying for a few years now that ARM’s observed advantages in power consumption have more to do with the chips themselves than the instruction architecture, and it looks like the Core 5 320 chip in this Dell proves them right when it comes to x86.
While you might think you need to code in Assembly or C to maximize those efficiency gains, your choice of language may not be as important as you think.
Have to say having recently changed from an M1 MBP 16″ to an M5 MBP 16″ (both with the base CPU but with 32 GB then 48 GB) I was expecting a marginal increase in battery life given the 4 years that have passed. Oddly, comparing my experience with the previous machine’s now 4 year old battery directly with the new machine I only feel that the new machine drains faster.
This being a case of coming home from work then doing the same stuff as usual. Previously I’d more often than not survive a regular evening without needing power. Now most evenings I need to reach for power before I’m done for the night. Not impressed…
I think the Dell is available with Ubuntu pre-installed so you don’t have to pay for Windows if you don’t want it.
But both laptops rule me out as a customer because of the little tiny arrow keys – I have adult male sized fingers. It’s a real concentration breaker when you hit the wrong one during some high-concentration coding.