It’s a mix of a simpler ISA, good core design, and small process nodes.
AMD laptop CPUs easily compete with or even beat the M chips according to this comparison.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5215vs4104/AMD-Ryzen-7-...
It's only recently that other companies like AMD are able to use TSMC's 5nm node process.
But I do wonder, given the other comments here about TDP and these days of thermally-limited performance, what the results are if both are locked to the same constant frequency.
2. The brand new M2s are only about 20% faster, so the results are still valid.
How is the battery life in practice? Are there laptops with AMD chips which can run all day like Apple's M1/M2 laptops?
The main issue is that AMD/Intel turbo so hard, while Apple clocks their M chips much more conservatively. They are also much bigger, wider designs than AMD (which means they are more expensive but can afford to run slower).
Another is that Windows + OEM garbage + random background apps do so much useless processing in the background. And I'm not even a pro-linux "bloat" zealot... it really is just senseless and unacceptable out-of-the-box.
Too bad there are no bare/unsoldered Apple Silicon chips to try building such boards around. I'm sure, if there were, you'd find them all over AliExpress.
I'd also be curious which of those two boards would have a higher BOM!
[1] https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-pro-vs-amd-ry...
[2] https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m2-pro-vs-amd-ry...
I'm not really knowledgeable when it comes to this, so perhaps I'm missing something.
1: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m2-pro-vs-apple-...
It's also a design that prioritizes perf/watt, whereas CPU vendors tend to prioritize perf/area. (aka perf/$)
Apple's M_ Max CPU variants come with a very hefty price tag though.
Power consumption scales non-linearly with clock speed. So you're comparing two variables that are dependent on each other. If you want a meaningful comparison, you have to align one of those variables. As in, either reduce x86 to M2 Pro/Ultra/Whatever's power budget and then compare performance, or align performance and then compare power.
This is especially true for the desktop class CPUs where outright performance is the name of the game at all costs. AMD & Intel are constantly throwing upwards of 50w at an extra 5% performance, because that's what drives sales - outright performance.
So that means that, using the same amount of power, Apple processors -are- faster.
Using the same highest amount of power - absolutely not, unless you could overclock Apple processor and prove that.
Some things just does not scale, if you try to feed 100 amps @ 1.5v to an ARM CPU and run it on 6 GHz, it'll burn out.
