Apple M1 Max vs AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS

Apple M1 Max

The Apple M1 Max is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2021 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers all 10 cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and two power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). There is no Turbo Boost for single cores or short burst periods. The cores are similar to the cores in the Apple M1.

The big cores (codename Firestorm) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 24 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB in the M1). The four efficiency cores (codename Icestorm) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. CPU and GPU can both use the 48 MB SLC (System Level Cache). The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3228 MHz.

The unified memory (32 or 64 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 512 bit memory controller (200 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU. This is the main difference to the M1 Pro and the CPU performance is quite similar.

The biggest difference to the M1 Pro is the bigger integrated GPU with 24 or 32 cores (up from 16).

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine, a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including two ProRes engines).

The M1 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC and integrates 57 billion transistors. The peak power consumption of the chip was advertised around 30W for CPU intensive tasks. 

AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS is a processor for big (gaming) laptops based on the Cezanne generation. The R7 5800H integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.8 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.4 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT for a total of 16 threads. The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process. Compared to the 5800H (up to 54 W), the 5800HS is configured to a TDP of 35W.

The new Zen 3 microarchitecture offers a significantly higher IPC (instructions per clock) compared to Zen 2. For desktop processors AMD claims 19 percent on average and in applications reviews showed around 12% gains at the same clock speed.

In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 8 integrated graphics adapter with 8 CUs (512 shaders) at up to 2,000 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports dual-channel DDR4-3200 and quad-channel LPDDR4-4266 energy efficient RAM. Furthermore, 16 MB level 3 cache (up from 8 MB at the 4800U) can be found on the chip.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system built around the 5800HS as of August 2023, we have tested several laptops featuring the 5800H, a chip with very similar specs (Cezanne, 8 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.4 GHz). Based on that, we fully expect the 5800HS to be just slightly slower than the Core i5-12500H, Core i7-11800H, Core i7-12650H, Core i9-11950H and also the AMD Ryzen 9 4900H, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. Which is pretty damn fast, as of late 2022.

Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your system is, and how high the CPU power limits are.

Power consumption

The Ryzen has a default TDP, also known as the long-term power limit, of 35 W. A proper cooling solution is a must for a CPU like this.

This Zen 2-based APU is built with TSMC's 7 nm process for average, as of mid 2023, energy efficiency.