Apple M1 Pro 8-Core vs AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS

Apple M1 Pro 8-Core

The Apple M1 Pro 8-Core 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 8 cores from the 10 available in the chip divided in six performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). 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. Finally, the SoC includes 16 MB System Level Cache shared by the GPU. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3228 MHz.

The unified memory (16 or 32 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 256 bit memory controller and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers 14 cores (of the 16 cores in the chip).

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 ProRes).

The M1 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC and integrates 33.7 billion transistors. The peak power consumption of the chip was advertised around 30W for CPU intensive tasks.

AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS

The AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS is a processor for big (gaming) laptops based on the Cezanne generation. The R9 5980HS integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3 GHz (guaranteed base clock) to 4.8 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm process at TSMC. Compared to the 5980HX (up to 54 W), the 5980HS is configured to a TDP of 35W and offers a 300 MHz reduced base speed.

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.

With the increased clock speed and IPC improvements thanks to Zen 3, the Ryzen 9 5980HS should be clearly faster than the lower clocked Ryzen 9 4900H.

In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 8 integrated graphics card with 8 CUs and up to 2100 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 16 MB level 3 cache can be found on the chip.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 35 Watt and therefore suited for smaller laptops than the 5980HX (35 - 52W, default 45W).