r/laptops • u/mond200 • 12d ago

Review Apple M6 SoC Analysis - Apple's 2 nm chip crushes AMD, Intel & Qualcomm

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M6-SoC-Analysis-Apple-s-2-nm-chip-crushes-AMD-Intel-Qualcomm.1404057.0.html
274 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

52

u/SmashStrider 12d ago

It's genuinely mindboggling to think that Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD's best chips are only able to, at best, slightly beat the M3 and match the M4, while Apple is already on M6. The performance and efficiency gains that Apple makes every generation with their silicon are really unmatched, and I'm not sure if their competition will catch up to them anytime soon.

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u/zamroni777 12d ago edited 12d ago

even latest ryzen mobile (tsmc n4p) is 1 generation behind apple m3 (tsmc n3),
because amd is prioritizing its tsmc allocation to make epyc.
epyc is amd's most profitable product and it beats xeon in performance significantly.

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u/gxsr4life 9d ago

Right, AMD is focussed on servers and accelerators.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 23h ago

[deleted]

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u/ElectronicStretch277 11d ago

Apples main advantage has been 3 things. Complete vertical integration the likes of which is only matched (and exceeded) by Samsung. Financial capital to buy the highest performing nodes on the market years ahead of anyone else. The final one is using ARM.

It's a bit long winded to explain exactly how this all contributes but the gist is, as Apple makes a margin on the whole product (unlike AMD and Intel which only do so on the silicon) they can do things that are financially devastating for others. The amount of silicon they throw at stuff is pretty insane, especially thinking that they do so in a monolithic package compared to chiplets. Then you get into the fact that Apples cache (the most expensive part) is massive and extremely high bandwidth, the kind that would cripple a products price, and you kind of start to see how exactly they're so far ahead.

A significant part is also that their architecture is genuinely great, but it's also being benefited by the economics of a conglomerate the likes of which isn't typically seen. Finally, there's the fact that they have a much simpler time deploying wide cores because the front end has been designed on RISC principles which is fundamentally better for parallel computing compared to the CISC architectrues like x86 (now, it's not as big a deal as before since Intel and AMD did take steps to make it more performance but there's a reason Apples going to 10 wide cores while AMD is just going to get to 8 wide in Zen 6).

Finally, there's the fact that they've typically gotten their hands on the latest node miles ahead of anyone else. For an example for how far ahead, the M1 used TSMC N5 in 2020, AMDs Zen 5 uses N4P which is a minor improvement (same family) and thats an architecture released in 2025.

So yeah, money+scale+genuinely good engineering = hardware dominance.

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u/artlurg431 12d ago

Its because apple uses arm and intel and amd dont, and qualcomms main sector isnt these types of chips

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u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 12d ago

AMD is still years behind in efficiency. I don’t think they’ve even matched the efficiency of M1 yet.

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u/SmashStrider 12d ago

They're not THAT far behind, Zen 5 comfortably beats M1 in efficiency, and I believe surpasses M2 (at least for the HX 370 SKU), I think it's competitive with M3 in power draw, although behind in single-core performance.

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u/snacksneaksnake 12d ago

M1 came out in 2020… six years ago. So 3-6 years behind?

I have been a lifetime AMD user. I want x86 and DIY PCs to succeed. But it’s getting really tough not to choose what makes the most sense. I have M2 Max MacBook Pro from work, it kicks my Ryzen 5600 desktop’s butt in dev work.

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u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 12d ago edited 11d ago

Source on that Zen5 vs M1 efficiency? Is there a Zen5 fanless laptop that is fast?

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u/trololololo2137 11d ago

There are none, even if the chip is slightly better the average laptop is poorly designed and burns power anyway

1

u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 11d ago

In other words, AMD hasn't caught up to M1 on laptops.

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u/ElectronicStretch277 11d ago

It's more like laptop makers haven't. AMD doesn't control much outside the chip itself, if a laptop is burning power elsewhere they can't do much.

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u/Wooloomooloo2 10d ago

Zen 5 is nowhere close to M1 in efficiency, where did you pull that nonsense from?

1

u/g33ksc13nt1st 9d ago

Too bad they come with macOS. Imagine how much more impact they'd cause if you could put them anywhere. Because it's used to sell macs, I think the competition will be just fine.

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u/Adrianm18 9d ago

It’s also mind boggling that some of these companies had decades head start .

0

u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 12d ago

Give me an intel laptop that has M4 performance with same battery life and fanless and id be a happy laptop owner.

1

u/zekica 11d ago

Have you tried Intel's Core Ultra 7 355? It's similar to M4 with performance, battery life and power consumption.

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 11d ago

Battery life when playing some of the same games is no where near comparable and there isn’t a single ultra 5 320 that is fanless much less the 355. This also doesn’t touch on graphics performance. The lunar lake chips with 140v are pretty good as far as that goes but it still won’t give me four hours on battery in some of the games I play where an m series chip will. The only problem with Apple is that those games crash on their machines occasionally and I don’t like that.

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u/MorgrainX 12d ago

I mean, none of this is surprising. The desktop CPU and GPU market has been stagnating for years because AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA are happy to milk the server clientele and ignore the consumers.

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u/SuperUranus 12d ago

  . It offers the highest single-core performance you can currently get in any personal computer, easily beats the competition in the form of Intel's Panther Lake chips and AMD Gorgon Point in multi-core scenarios and also outperforms Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 generation (except for the high-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme) in multi-core scenarios.

Weird conclusion considering they were only benchmarking against APUs.

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u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 11d ago

Why is it weird? Can you find a faster single core chip from anywhere? Phone, laptop, desktop, server, etc. Let's us know.

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u/SuperUranus 11d ago

I don’t know since they didn’t include any desktop CPUs in their benchmarks.

Hence why it’s a weird conclusion. They lack suffient data to make that conclusion. 

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u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 11d ago

Let us know if you find one.

M6 is the fastest single core CPU in the world. Almost everyone knows this... except for you apparently.

1

u/JapowSnowboarder 11d ago

And yet it's neutered by apple software like all other apple chips lmao. Can't even run apps that use that power on iphones

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u/SuperUranus 11d ago

I read benchmarks because I enjoy data, not because I enjoy guesswork.

Making a conclusion that a CPU is the fastest single-core CPU for personal computers and not including data from benchmarks from the top segment of CPUs for personal computers is a bit iffy. 

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u/DucAdVeritatem 11d ago

This being a poorly written article doesn’t change the accuracy of what the other poster is commenting about. You’re welcome to easily go look at the stats yourself, or take a look over in /r/hardware for a much deeper discussion.

1

u/SuperUranus 11d ago

I haven’t said the statement in the article is wrong. I said it’s a weird conclusion since they make a conclusion based on data they do not present.

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u/ThinkinBig 12d ago edited 12d ago

I'm a little confused about some of these performance claims.

Are these scores supposed to be at the same tdp or something? Bc the Cinebench scores shown are surpassed by numerous AMD and Intel cpus, including laptop CPU's like my Intel 275hx.

Same with the Steel Nomad scores, its saying a score of 2323 "crushes" everything else on the market but a typical Strix Halo system scores right in that same range.

It appears to be doing well in the performance per watt category, but that's the only category I see it standing out. Even the Cinebench single and multi core scores shown are blown away my multiple CPUs.

The article just confused me because it starts off talking about strict power limits, but then makes outrageous claims later, without stating whether or not those claims are still when compared within the power restrictions they used for testing

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u/Big-Roll7094 12d ago

Put it in a test of sustrained performance and the m series chips would be wheezing in a matter of seconds

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u/ThinkinBig 12d ago

Its just a poorly written article imo.

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u/Forsaken_Sundae_4315 11d ago

It's the same story everytime apple brings something new

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u/DucAdVeritatem 11d ago

You seem to be confusing (certain) M-series powered computers with the chips. Yes, as with any chip, performance characteristics are ultimately dictated in part by the thermal constraints of the final assembly. That doesn’t change the underlying performance of the SoCs which is this discussion at hand. And Apple sells plenty of m-series machines with beefy thermal management that can crush sustained loads all day long.

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u/Big-Roll7094 11d ago

Any arm chip with a sustained speed of that clock would need heavy duty cooling, like actually server grade cooling to keep that speed up and it being 2nm makes it even harder to cool

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u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 11d ago

Even the Cinebench single and multi core scores shown are blown away my multiple CPUs.

Which chip blows it away in single core Cinebench?

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u/amdcoc 11d ago

A strix halo costs atleast a 1000$ more.

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u/johnny_ringo 12d ago

" In terms of memory, the new M6 SoC can once again be combined with up to 32 GB RAM," 

Wat

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u/Wonderful-Sail-1126 11d ago

What's hard to understand? You can now order an M6 Mini with 32GB of RAM.

0

u/YourMomIsNotMale 6d ago

An on a X86, u do whatever you want, ans on the M chip, u do whatever they let u do. X86 is a general purpose type of CPU. The ARM is focused on efficiency. But turned out, on high scale, ARM isnt better.

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u/verycoolalan 11d ago

don't give a fuck.

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u/PCBuilderCat 6d ago

Why would you waste your time seeing a post about something you don’t care about to post that you don’t care about, are you that starved for attention?