Apple M1 vs AMD Ryzen 9 4900H vs AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS

Apple M1

The Apple M1 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2020 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and Mac Mini. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 12 MB shared L2 cache. According to Apple the performance of these cores should be better than anything on the market (in late 2020). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3204 MHz.

The M1 is available in two TDP variants, a passive cooled 10 Watt variant for the MacBook Air and an active cooled faster variant for the MacBook Pro 13 and Mac Mini. Those should offer a better-sustained performance according to Apple.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 offers 8 cores (7 cores in the entry MacBook Air) and a peak performance of 2.6 teraflops. Apple claims that it is faster than any other iGPU at the time of announcement.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 11 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M1 includes 16 billion transistors (up from the 10 billion of the A12Z Bionic and therefore double the amount of a Tiger Lake-U chip like the i7-1185G7) and is manufactured in 5nm at TSMC.

AMD Ryzen 9 4900H

The AMD Ryzen 9 4900H is a mobile SoC for big laptops based on the Renoir architecture. At the time of announcement in March 2020 it is the fastest model of the 4000H series. The R9 4900H integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.3 (guaranteed base clock) to  4.4 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured in the modern 7 nm process at TSMC and partly thanks to it AMD advertises a 2x improved performance per Watt for the Renoir chips

According to our information, the Ryzen 9 4900H is only slightly faster than the Ryzen 7 4800H. The CPU is clocked 400 MHz (base +14%) to 200 MHz (boost +5%) higher, but the gains greatly depend on the cooling and TDP settings. Compared to Intel chips, the i9-9980HK top model should be comparable. That means the Ryzen 9 4900H should be able to handle all demanding tasks and gaming.

In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 8 integrated graphics card with 8 CUs. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 12 MB level 3 cache can be found on the chip. See our hub page on the Renoir Processors for more information.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 45 Watt (default). That means the chip is intended for big and relatively heavy laptops.

AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS

The AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS is a mobile SoC for big laptops based on the Renoir architecture. The 4900HS integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.3 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured in the modern 7 nm process at TSMC and partly thanks to it AMD advertises a 2x improved performance per Watt for the Renoir chips

According to our information, the Ryzen 9 4900HS is only slightly faster than the Ryzen 7 4800HS. The CPU is clocked 100 MHz (base and boost) higher, but the gains greatly depend on the cooling and TDP settings. Compared to Intel chips, the i9-9980HK top model should be comparable. That means the Ryzen 9 4900HS should be able to handle all demanding tasks and gaming. Compared to the similar named 45W-version, the Ryzen 9 4900H, the 4900HS is differs in 100 MHz boost and 300 MHz base clock.

In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 7 integrated graphics card with most likely 7 CUs. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 MB level 3 cache can be found on the chip. See our hub page on the Renoir Processors for more information.

The TDP of the APU is specified at 35 Watt (default). That means the chip is intended for big and relatively heavy laptops. The Ryzen 7 4900HS is the 35 Watt version of the R9 4900H with a 10 Watt lower TDP.