PC World - USA (2021-02)

50 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2021

REVIEWS TESTED: APPLE M1 CHIP

Of all of the chips here, Apple’s M1 uses

TSMC’s most advanced 5nm process, with

the two Ryzen laptops using TSMC’s 7nm.

Intel’s 11th-gen “Tiger Lake” Core i7-1185G7

is on Intel’s newest 10nm process, while the

Core i7-10710U is like the Core i7-10750H

and built on Intel’s—how can we say this

politely?—wise 14nm process.

CINEBENCH R20

PERFORMANCE

We’ll kick off our results with Maxon’s older

Cinebench R20. It’s a 3D modelling

benchmark built on the company’s in-house

engine used in its commercial Cinema4D

product. Cinebench R20 had versions for x86

on Windows and x86 on MacOS. Maxon’s

newer Cinema R23 offers native support for

Apple’s M1 chip, but the older R20 version

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Asus Zephyrus G148-core Ryzen 4800HS (Default AC)

Lenovo Slim 78-core Ryzen 4800U (Default AC)

Lenovo Slim 78-core Ryzen 4800U (Performance AC)

Apple MacBook Pro 138-core M1 (Default AC)

MSI Prestige 144-core Core i7-1185G7 (Default AC)

MSI Prestige 144-core Core i7-1185G7 (Performance AC)

MSI Prestige 146-core Core i7-10710U (Default AC)

MSI Prestige 146-core Core i7-10710U (Performance AC)

Acer Predator Triton 5006-core Core i7-10750H (Default AC)

3,767

4,266

2,097

3,883

2,463

2,403

2,409

1,6 0 0

2,863

Cinebench R20 nT

Multi-threaded performance

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Asus Zephyrus G148-core Ryzen 4800HS (Default AC)

Lenovo Slim 78-core Ryzen 4800U (Default AC)

Lenovo Slim 78-core Ryzen 4800U (Performance AC)

Apple MacBook Pro 138-core M1 (Default AC)

MSI Prestige 144-core Core i7-1185G7 (Default AC)

MSI Prestige 144-core Core i7-1185G7 (Performance AC)

MSI Prestige 146-core Core i7-10710U (Default AC)

MSI Prestige 146-core Core i7-10710U (Performance AC)

Acer Predator Triton 5006-core Core i7-10750H (Default AC)

487

495

407

489

590

583

451

427

460

Cinebench R20 1T

Single-threaded performance

must use Apple’s Rosetta 2 (go.pcworld.

com/rsta), a technology that handles just-in-

time translation of x86 instructions to Arm

from non-native code.

Having to pay a real-time translation

penalty typically blows chunks so we

expected the M1 to cough up furballs, but it’s

well-known now that Apple’s unlimited

funding and hard work has paid off

handsomely. Yes, you can look at the black

bar in the chart and see that the red Ryzen

4000 chipsstomps the M1 into the ground.

And yes, the quad-core Core i7-1185G7 is

faster too, despite the Mac have eight

physical cores, but remember the translation

penalty the MacBook is paying and how

much it saps performance. This is an

impressive showing by Apple.

Cinebench allows you to measure a