Apple M1 vs Intel Core i7-10750H vs Apple M1 Max

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.

Intel Core i7-10750H

The Intel Core i7-10750H is a fast 45 W processor designed for the beefier laptops. The Comet Lake-H CPU was launched in mid-2020. It features six cores (twelve threads) running at 2.6 GHz Boosting up to 5 GHz (single-core Boost). The likely all-core Boost frequency is 4.3 GHz. Most of the specs are the same as the 10750H’s direct predecessor, the i7-9750H. The newer model has two advantages over its predecessor, in that its Boost frequency is higher and the memory controller can now officially host memory clocked at 2,933 MHz, an upgrade over the 2,666 MHz limitation of the outgoing model.

Architecture

Comet Lake is a yet another revision of the dated Skylake architecture not unlike the previous Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, Kaby Lake families for similar feature set and performance-per-MHz between the five. Core i7-10750H is manufactured on the third-gen 14 nm Intel process that is no longer cutting-edge as AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors are manufactured on a 7 nm TSMC process.

The hexa-core CPU is compatible with dual-channel DDR4-2933 RAM and has support for PCI-Express 3.0 and Thunderbolt 3 but not the professional features (vPro, TXT, SIPP) supported by the costlier Core i7-10850H. Both the CPU cores and the iGPU have access to 12 MB of L3 cache. Intel 10750H gets soldered to the motherboard (BGA1440 socket) and is pretty much impossible to replace.

Please go to this page for more information on Comet Lake processor family.

Performance

Long-term performance sustainability of a mobile CPU tends to depend heavily on the cooling system performance as well as TDP settings of a laptop. That said, the average 10750H in our database is as fast as the Core i7-8559U and Ryzen 7 3700X in single-core benchmarks, while multi-core testing reveals the CPU to be similar to the Ryzen 5 5500U and Ryzen 5 5600H. As of mid-2021, the i7 is fast enough for any task, gaming included.

Graphics

We've known the Intel UHD Graphics 630 iGPU for a while. This is the same iGPU the Core i7-9750H and Core i7-8750H processors had. In this i7, the 24 EU iGPU is clocked at 350 MHz to 1,150 MHz. Intel UHD Graphics 630 supports up to 3 monitors with resolutions of up to [email protected] and the built-in video decoder can handle AVC, HEVC, VP9-encoded videos (AV1 is not supported). This is not a gaming GPU as it is not fast enough to handle most AAA titles released in 2020. At 720p resolution, Escape from Tarkov runs at just 17 fps (low quality preset), to give you an example. As the iGPU has no VRAM of its own, it is paramount that fast system RAM is used.

Power Consumption

Energy efficiency is not great here as the 14 nm manufacturing process is very old by now. While the default TDP value of the i7 is 45 watts, the actual consumption when under load will be significantly higher than this. Core i7-10750H is destined to be used in chunky, hard to carry around laptops, since a high-performance cooling system is a must. OEMs are free to set the TDP to 35 watts instead of 45 watts for leaner designs but the base as well as the Boost clock speeds would take a hit as a result.

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.