M1 vs Intel, Did You Make the Right Choice?
Unless you live under some kind of mountain, you’ll know that Apple has released a new chip for their Macbooks. They just gave reviewers the new Macbook with their M1 chip, and this is my hands-on review.
A new generation
As you know, the M1 is a new generation of chips, one that’ll only improve overtime. Everyone who gets this chip will become like a lab rat, trying out Apple’s latest. It’s been a while since Apple or any large company for that matter, which have created a new type of chip. So we’re excited to see what this chip has to offer once it’s more polished. So far this chip is faster for a few selective apps, but for the rest, there are no huge differences.
Battery
A chip that scores higher on a benchmark usually takes up more battery and is heavy on the device, however, this new M1 chip doesn’t seem to be the case. The performance is great, it scores higher than 7,000 on multi-core. Apple claims that without changing the battery size itself, they made the battery 100% more efficient, which is a HUGE claim. Now, I have tested this and although that this doesn’t seem to be 100% more efficient, it is miles ahead of the Intel chip. I got roughly 130% of the battery compared to my current Mac, but I have been using this one for a few months so the battery might have slightly degraded. Keep in mind though, that I did not stick to the optimized apps so there could definitely be a difference once all the major apps are optimized. Keep in mind though that a lot of major apps even with huge teams like Photoshop and pixel editor would take a while.
Performance
As I said earlier, this chip scores a considerable amount higher on a benchmark so does that mean this chip is a lot better? Well, mostly. Remember, the M1 is still a very new piece of tech, and that means a lot of room for improvement. “You don’t see how things are bad until you see how it can be improved” Marques Brownlee, and I totally agree with that. Although right now the M1 chip seems inevitable especially with the optimized apps, there is still a whole lot of improvement that can be done. Like speed, for example, it’s never fast enough, it’s always faster. So until the others catch up, this chip is great.
CPU & GPU
With an impressive 8-core CPU & GPU. Apple claims that this is the fastest chip with the best graphics they’ve ever made, and we’ll see if that’s true. Now, on paper this is Apple’s new performance powerhouse, but how does this fare against its counterpart? The Intel chip Mac, now I’m going to make this the battle of the titans so I’m going to use the i9 processor to compare with it. The M1 has a GPU frequency of 3.20GHz whilst the i9 has a 0.35GHz frequency, the M1 chip gets a landslide victory. However, with max GPU memory, it’s a different story. The M1 only has 8GB, on the other hand, the i9 has 128GB, clearly, the i9 wins for this one. So right now, we have a tie, and so we move on to the next sector.
Technology
So you might think that because the i9 chip has been here for way longer than the M1, it is much more advanced, right? Maybe not. The i9 is a 14nm chip with 24 execution units, and the M1 is a 5nm chip with 128 execution units. So far, it means like the M1 chip is absolutely killing the i9, but here is where the i9 gain back some territory. The M1 has a clock frequency of 3.20GHz whereas the i9 has 3.60GHz. It isn’t a lot but the i9 is going to need all the help it can get. The i9 also has hyperthreading which the M1 does not. The i9 can also be overclocked but the M1 cannot. There are also more in-depth details to the chips, but most people don’t consider them so I will just cut them out. you can visit (https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-intel_core_i9_9900k-890) if you want the in-depth details.
Conclusion
Adding up the points, the M1 has 2 points and the i9 has 4. Although on paper, the M1 loses to the i9 I think that the i9 isn’t twice as good as the M1, especially when the M series chip gets more upgrade and gets out of its beta version. With that said though, I think that the M1 isn’t quite ready yet. If you are looking for a new working laptop, or just trying to get an upgrade to your current one, you might want to sit this one out.
