Apple M1 silicon upsets the establishment by skipping past the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and coming close to Intel Core i7-11700K single-thread performance on PassMark

There have been plenty of superlatives already written and expressed about Apple’s M1 SoC, which is the company’s first ARM-based processor that can be found inside products such as the latest versions of the MacBook Pro laptop and the Mac Mini desktop. The versatile 5nm chip has made a strong appearance in PassMark’s latest single-thread performance chart, where it sits in third place behind the best Rocket Lake can currently offer and ahead of the mighty Ryzen 5000 series. The Apple M1 showed desktop CPU-level performance but with laptop CPU-level power requirements.

The CPU Mark rating for the 8-core, 8-thread Apple M1 silicon is 3,543 points, which puts it just -0.14% (five points) behind the Intel Core i7-11700K. The Rocket Lake processor will be relying on those wanting strong single-thread/single-core performance to ensure its success, as demonstrated by its 3.60 GHz to 5.0 GHz clock speeds. The M1 has a much lower boost rate of 3.20 GHz but can offer a performance per watt level that the i7-11700K can’t even get close to. For reference, the Apple Silicon has a 10 W TDP for passively cooled devices and a higher TDP variant for actively cooled machines, with PassMark registering 15.1 W typical TDP. The Intel Core i7-11700K stands at a 125 W TDP, and as has already been reported, this figure can go much higher.

As for the Ryzen 7 5800X (105 W typical TDP), this impressive desktop processor has a single-thread performance rating of 3,509 points, leaving the Apple M1 SoC with a +0.97% advantage. Obviously, both the AMD and Intel processors can thrash the Apple upstart in average CPU Mark score because of their SMT capabilities (8C/16T vs. 8C/8T), higher power consumption, and greater clock rates. But there are many who will place a lot of value on efficient single-thread performance and can seemingly trust Apple’s hyperbolic statements that the M1 “features the world’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon” and “the world’s best CPU performance per watt.”

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