Tag: Intel CPU
Why can’t Apple be clear about the M1 Ultra’s performance?
Apple's new M1 Ultra will be an impressive processor.
There's no doubt of that since the M1 Ultra is, well, pretty much two impressive M1 Max chips joined at the hip. That makes it a 20-core (16 performance, 4 efficiency) processor, plus a 64-core GPU and a nutty 800GB of memory bandwidth thanks to its unified LPDDR5/6400 memory for all cores.
But even with all those impressive specs and the M1's known pedigree, it's yet again maddening to understand why Apple won't ever be straight about how fast its new computers are.
For the M1 Ultra's reveal, Apple trotted out another series of its clear-as-mud performance charts, like the one below. Sure, the main take away is the 20-core M1 Ultra outperforms a “16-core PC desktop” while using less power, but the lack of clarity on just how much faster and what it's actually faster in is exasperating.
Apple
Apple does the same for graphics, saying the 64-core GPU in the M1 Ultra is slightly faster than the “highest-end discrete GPU” while using less than 200 watts less power. For the record, while Apple didn't say in its presentation what the components are, the company did spell out in the footnotes that it's taking shots at Intel's 12th-gen Core i9-12900K and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090.
Apple
What drives me even battier even is that despite these charts being about as generic as legally possible, there are some legit impressive-as-hell numbers Apple cited—but didn't mention whatsoever in its presentation.
In Apple's press release about the M1 Ultra, it says the new processor can transcode a 6K ProRes video 5.6x faster than the current Mac Pro's 28-core Intel Xeon CPU paired with its fancy Afterburner card. Sure, the Mac Pro's ancient Xeon is old and moldy now (whose fault is that?), but Apple's Afterburner card features a custom-designed ASIC made just to accelerate ProRes media on Apple's desktop. The fact the tiny Mac Studio can smoke it by 5.6x is indeed worth chest-beating over. But Apple didn't during its M1 Ultra reveal, instead focusing on those smoke-filled and undefined charts that makes people doubt the claims more than believe them.
So what should we believe? Obviously, Apple's performance claims about the ProRes transcode for one (by the way, ProRes is Apple technology). Early jaw-dropping leaks don't surprise us either: The M1 Ultra will indeed be fast.
For example, in a seemingly on-schedule goof up, someone leaked a Geekbench 5 score of the M1 Ultra putting it at 24,055 for multi-core performance and 1,793 for single-core performance. Geekbench, if you don't know, uses a couple-dozen performance “loops” modeled on modern workloads such as text compression, cryptography and JPEG decompression. It's also famous for people not paying attention to the warning signs that results are uploaded to the Internet.
It's hard to believe, but also entirely on schedule, that someone leaked the M1 Ultra's performance in Geekbench 5.
Geekbench
Is the M1 Ultra faster than Intel? Yes (and no).
Obviously, assuming we accept the leaked performance is close to the real M1 Ultra's performance, we can see two things from the Geebench scores: The 20-core M1 Ultra looks to be about 29 percent faster than the 18,551 score we saw in our original 12th gen Core i9-12900K review here. Given we're looking at 20-cores versus 16-cores that's probably in line.
In single-threaded Geekbench 5 performance though it's flipped. The M1 Ultra, remember, is basically two M1 Max chips with much better cooling. With the 12th gen Core i9-12900K scoring 2,001, that gives the Intel CPU an 11 percent win over the leaked M1 Ultra score.
If you're wondering how the M1 Ultra compares to the M1 Max, we've seen MacWorld's score for the 10-core M1 Max at 12,671 for Geekbench 5 multi-core which is about what you'd see if you snapped the 20-core M1 Ultra in half. In single-threaded, it's also essentially within the margin error with a score 1,788.
Seeing the gigantic, honking cooling Apple has put in the Mac Studio for the M1 Max, we expect final scores to be faster but on the face of it, it looks like the M1 Ultra gives you basically, well, 2x the M1 Max.
If we were to play that out even further by simply doubling the performance of the M1 Max, in say, Maxon's Cinebench R23, that would give the M1 Ultra a score of 24,750 (2 x12,375) in multi-threaded performance and likely the same performance at 1,529 in single-threaded performance. How does that compare to Intel's Core i9-12900K? For the multi-threaded performance, we recorded a score of 27,275 which would mean the 16-core Core i9, is outperforming the 20-core M1 Ultra by 10 percent. And with the Core i9's score of 1,984 the Intel CPU would easily sail by the M1 Ultra by almost 30 percent.
We still don't totally believe that though as it's hard to believe the giant copper-cooler Apple used in the Mac Studio wouldn't pay more dividends (we hope). None of this pays the proper respects to the power claims Apple makes but that's best left for actual performance results from independent reviewers.
Editor's note: Updated to add video.
New chip standard could pave the way for LEGO-like PCs
For years, the PC industry has embraced the mixing and matching of processors, expansion cards, memory, and more, all to create a modular, expandable platform. Now, a group of companies wants to do that at the chip level in what's called Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express, or UCIe.
UCIe takes the concept of “chiplets”—individual pieces of self-contained logic, stitched together inside of a chip package—and opens it up to the semiconductor industry at large. Both AMD and Intel have done this for years: Intel with its co-EMIB and ODI connections, for example, which gave the world its hybrid chip, Alder Lake. A specialized engineering partnership between AMD and Intel also produced an Intel CPU that included an AMD GPU, called “Kaby Lake G“.
Enter UCIe, which is designed to make a future “Kaby Lake G” chip even easier to manufacture. UCIe transfers data using either the existing PCI Express standard or the related CXL (Compute Express Link) interface used by data centers. Essentially, a chip maker could take a CPU core from one company, a graphics core from another, and a WiFi radio or 5G radio front-end from a third chip company, and snap them together like LEGO blocks using UCIe, in much the same way you can drop a graphics card or an SSD into a PC's PCI Express slot. With UCIe, this would simply be done at the chip level. (A UCIe white paper (PDF) has more.)
The membership of UCIe backers includes a who's who of major chip and foundry vendors: AMD, Arm, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (ASE), Google Cloud, Intel, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung and TSMC. The exception? Nvidia, which has yet to formally sign on.
The new standard is also a concession of sorts, one that acknowledges the demands of today's designs simply exceed the industry's ability to physically manufacture them. For decades, the PC industry has tried to design all-in-one PC processors that contain a CPU, GPU, I/O, and more, all on a single chip. But larger and larger chips provide more opportunity for lithography errors that can render the entire chip worthless. Indeed, UCIe is built to anticipate the day when new, hybrid chips might simply be too physically large to manufacture using today's lithographic equipment.
“What we're seeing is that a lot of our designs are hitting the reticle limit as the demand for processing is insatiable, so it's easier for us—and by ‘us' I mean the broader industry—to build smaller chiplets and stitch them together on the package so that they act as a single entity,” UCIe chair and senior Intel fellow Debendra Das Sharma told HPCWire. “So this is a scale up kind of solution.”
Hypothetically, UCIe would mean that essentially anyone with the appropriate licenses and intellectual property could snap together a chip package containing logic from any number of companies. UCIe also suggests that any number of small startups could develop specialized logic, package them up with a UCIe interface, and sell them to other chip companies.
To be fair, the chip industry has already had this capability for decades, with programmable logic and FPGAs from companies like Altera and Xilinx—both recently acquired by Intel and AMD, interestingly enough. Which leads to an interesting speculation: In a decade or so, could Intel and AMD become the new “PC” builders?
The best Ryzen motherboards for gaming
The best foundations for every Ryzen build.
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The best laptops: Premium laptops, budget laptops, 2-in-1s, and more
Are you in the market for a brand spanking new laptop? If so, you've come to the right place. We curated a list of the best laptops available today. From traditional clamshells to swanky 2-in1's, we've got something for everyone. If you're working with an inflexible budget, don't sweat it, we've included Chromebooks and a few other affordable options. Every single one of these laptops has been tested and personally vetted by the crew at PCWorld as well. Read on for our picks for the best laptops around.
Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition – Best gaming laptop on a budget
The Asus ROG Strix G15 Advanced Edition is an all-AMD laptop that delivers fast CPU and GPU performance at a reasonable price point. It's packing an AMD Ryzen 5900HX processor, an AMD Radeon RX 6800M GPU (with 12GB of GDDR6), 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. According to our review, the GPU “doesn't outpace higher-wattage RTX 3080 laptop GPUs, but it's a worthy competitor for conventional gaming tasks.” Unsurprisingly, the Strix G15 is one chunky machine, measuring 28mm at its thickest part. Although the additional thickness allows more space for cooling components, it's not very portable. That said, so long as you don't plan on taking this laptop everywhere with you, it's a powerful gaming rig that's well worth the money.
We understand that the $1,650 price tag isn't “cheap” in the traditional sense, but this all-AMD laptop costs significantly less than comparable laptops in power. If you look on Best Buy or Nvidia's website for 3080 machines, they cost upwards of $2,200 to $3,000.
Microsoft Surface Pro 8 – Best 2-in-1 laptop
Microsoft's Surface tablets were already atop our list of best 2-in-1 laptops, but Microsoft reworked the Surface Pro 8 in numerous ways by adding a larger, higher-resolution, faster screen, a pair of Thunderbolt ports that replace the legacy Surface Connector, and a new inking experience, among other features.
While this generation of the Surface Pro tablet forgoes an always-connected LTE option as well as the choice of a cheap Core i3, performance still soared to the top of the heap. Benefits like how the increased display refresh rate improves inking are subtle improvements that matter, too. It's the most dramatic revamp of a Surface in years and it's all for the better.
Pixelbook Go – Best Chromebook
Google's Pixelbook Go is a perfectly good Chromebook, and that's exactly what the company set out to create. It offers a careful balance of quality features and economical compromises for a reasonable $649 starting price. And it's a darn sight better than the typical bare-bones model. If you're committed to the Chromebook universe, this is a laptop worth buying.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 – Best Lenovo laptop
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is one such laptop. It's packing a quad-core Core i7-1185G7, 16GB of RAM, and integrated Iris Xe graphics. That means it's well-equipped to handle “Office and other productivity apps” and “a variety of multitasking scenarios.” The real star of the show is the 16:10 display, though, as it gives you plenty of room to work with. If you consider yourself a business professional, you'll definitely want to pick this one up.
HP Spectre x360 14 1Q881AV – Best laptop for college students
When we think about the best thin-and-light laptop, it's always been a close contest between the Dell XPS 2-in-1 and the HP Spectre x360. This time around, we're giving the luxurious HP Spectre x360 14 some time in the sun. The Spectre x360 14, now sporting the same Intel 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPU available in the Dell XPS line, trades blows with its eternal rival in test after test. It rises to the top because of a few key advantages: It offers longer battery life (thanks to a bigger battery), a far better keyboard, and little things like a USB-A port and a physical webcam shutoff switch, all for a lower price. Well played, HP.
Dell XPS 17 9710 – Best 17-inch workhorse
Dell's updated XPS 17 boasts a huge 17-inch screen, 11th-gen Intel CPU, and GeForce RTGX 3060 GPU. By packing as much screen real estate into such a compact laptop, the XPS 17 is the poster child for what a content creation workhorse laptop is.
Asus Zenbook Flip 13 – Best convertible laptop on a budget
The Asus ZenBook Flip 13 offers a lot for the money. It's a beautiful laptop that offers decent battery life, very good graphics, and a lot of pep for most of what you'd do on a small 13-inch convertible laptop.
Some might fixate on its lack of a headphone jack, but that would be unfair to its impressive 11th-gen Intel Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 chip and its drop-dead gorgeous OLED screen.
HP Chromebook x360 12b-ca0010nr – Best Chromebook on a budget
The HP Chromebook x360 12b takes you a cut above the rock-bottom basic Chromebooks that hover around $250 (and continue to sell well). Get one of those for your kids—who cares if they destroy it? But you, the adult in the room, deserve this one, with its surprisingly good design and great battery life.
This is still a budget-grade Chromebook, so there are some compromises: Performance is mediocre, and the 3:2 display, while nice and tall, isn't very bright. Still, we think HP made reasonable choices to provide a productive and enjoyable experience without breaking the bank.
Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L – Best laptop under $500
If this particular model of the Acer Aspire 5 looks familiar, it's probably because it's been sitting atop Amazon's laptop bestseller list for months. It's easy to understand why. This AMD Ryzen 3-powered Aspire 5 packs some enticing features for the price, including a Full-HD 15.6-inch display, a slim-and-trim chassis, and solid performance on everyday computing tasks.
That said, a Windows 10 laptop this inexpensive has its compromises. In this case, we're talking a scant 4GB of RAM and a cramped 128GB solid-state drive, while battery life falls significantly short compared to similar Aspire 5 models that don't cost much more.
How we tested
The PCWorld team puts each and every Windows laptop through a series of benchmarks that test GPU and CPU performance, battery life, and so on. The idea is to push the laptop to its limits and then compare it against others we've tested. Chromebooks, on the other hand, go through a series of web-based tests. It wouldn't be fair or possible to run the same kinds of tests on a Chromebook, as they're Chrome OS-based machines. Below, you'll find a breakdown of each test and the reasons why we run them.
Windows laptops
- PCMark 10: PCMark 10 is how we determine how well the laptop handles lighter tasks like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, and so on.
- HandBrake: HandBrake is more intensive than PCMark 10. It basically measures how long a laptop's CPU takes to encode a beefy 30GB file.
- Cinebench: Cinebench is a brief stress test of the CPU cores. It does this by rendering a 2D scene over a short period of time.
- 3DMark: 3DMark checks if 3D performance remains consistent over time by running graphic-intensive clips.
- Video rundown test: To gauge battery life, we loop a 4K video using Windows 10's Movies & TV app until the laptop dies.
Chromebooks
- CrXPRT 2: The CrXPRT 2 benchmark tests a Chromebook's battery life.
- Speedometer 2.0: This test determines a Chromebook's web browser performance. It simulates this by adding, completing, and removing a to-do list.
- Basemark Web 3.0: This benchmark gauges how well a Chromebook can handle web-based applications.
- Kraken 1.1: Kraken 1.1 is a JavaScript performance benchmark.
- Jetstream 2: Jetstream 2 is a combination of WebAssembly and JavaScript benchmarks. This is a way to gauge how well a Chromebook runs advanced workloads.
What kind of laptop should I get?
Ah, here we are at the billion dollar question. Do you spring for a basic Chromebook or go for a Windows laptop with more features? Well, it really depends on your personal lifestyle and what you plan on using your laptop for. For example, Chromebooks are a great low-cost option for those who just want the basics. I use a Chromebook as my primary work laptop, as it has everything I need for both editing and writing. If you travel a bunch for work, it's probably a good idea to invest in a laptop with solid battery life. If you're still unsure, don't sweat it. I've put together a list of quick tips below.
- Laptop type: The first question you should ask yourself is what kind of laptop you're looking for. There's traditional clamshells, 2-in-1's, Chromebooks, and much more. The displays on convertible laptops (aka 2-in-1's), for example, can swing around 360 degrees. This allows you to use the laptop like a tablet. They can also be propped up like a tent for viewing movies or participating in video calls. Chromebooks, on the other hand, exclusively run Google's web-focused Chrome OS and are generally used for everyday tasks. All you need is a Gmail account and boom, you're in. There are pros and cons to each of them. Chromebooks are affordable and generally have good battery life whereas convertibles are normally lightweight and portable.
- CPU: If it's CPU power you're looking for, the cream of the crop is the Intel Core i7-1185G7. It's a quad-core, eight-thread CPU with “awesomely high clock speeds.” It can hit up to 4.8Hz on boost, too. However, a Core i 7 is more suited to gaming and more intense work than everyday tasks. Intel processors are available in Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9. The higher the number, the more powerful the CPU. If you don't need a ton of power, Intel Core i5 processors are your best bet, as they offer a good balance of performance and price. Basic office and web work gets along just fine on a Core i3, however.
- Graphics: You'll want a discrete graphics card for hardcore gaming or editing videos. It's separate from the processor, so you can expect higher performance out of it. Integrated graphics, on the other hand, are attached to the CPU and uses less power as a result. This is perfectly fine for everyday tasks, especially if you're not doing anything that's graphics-intensive.
- Display size: If you're a video editor or someone who does a lot of multimedia work, you'll want a display that's anywhere from 15 to 17 inches. The sweet spot is really anywhere from 13 to 14 inches, though. The bigger the display, the heavier your laptop is going to be. A 13- or 14-inch display is the best in terms of portability and value.
- Battery life: If you plan on taking your laptop anywhere with you, aim for something that can last 10 to 12 hours on a single charge. That's more than a full work day, so it should theoretically get you through long flights or a day of classes. Obviously, more is always better. Just know that the bigger the battery, the heavier the laptop.
- Price: The price really depends on your budget. If you're strapped for cash (been there, trust me), go for a Chromebook or an entry-level business laptop. These laptops are good choices for students or young professionals. If you can afford to spend more, the versatility of a 2-in-1 laptop is really worth it.
- Ports: A wide array of ports is always a plus in my book, as it eliminates the need for an adapter. I'd recommend a laptop that has both USB-C and USB-A. An HDMI port is good, too. This is especially useful for when you want to hook up to an external monitor.
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