56 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2021REVIEWS TESTED: APPLE M1 CHIP
Adobe’s Photoshop.
To test its performance, we used Puget
Systems’ PugetBench, which is where we also
sourced the M1 performance results. Puget
Systems looked at the M1’s performance (go.
pcworld.com/psm1) to help people have a
clearer understanding of where the new
MacBook Pro M1 stands in relation to desktop
performance (which will always be faster).
Despite the flexing from Mac super fans, even
an old desktop PC is faster than the MacBook
Pro M1, as Puget Systems found.
Comparing it against contemporary
laptops, though, shows the M1 does quite
well with performance, surpassing the Lenovo
Yoga Slim 7 and its Ryzen 7 4800U chip. It’s
about tied with the Ryzen 9 4900HS in the
Zephyrus 14 too. Photoshop has traditionally
been very single-threaded, so we’re not too
surprised to best honest. Single-threaded
CPU performance never really was Ryzen
4000’s strength. Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake
chip is in front of the MacBook Pro M1 by a
small amount.
Also of interest are the results from two
older 14nm-based Intel laptops. The Prestige
14 with its GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q and
very boost-limited high clocks doesn’t quite
pay off the dividends you’d expect, so we
really think the test makes far sparser use of
the discrete GPU than you might think.
What doesn’t disappoint though is that
relatively large Acer Predator Triton 500. It’s
the overall winner. We attribute that to its farbetter cooling, which enables higher-clock
speeds; possibly its GeForce RTX 2080 Super
Max-Q GPU; and, crucially, its 32GB of base
memory. Intense Photoshop users should
always opt for as much memory as you can
pack into a laptop.PUGETBENCH PREMIERE
PERFORMANCE
Moving on to something far stiffer, we also
used PugetBench Premiere on the laptops.
Since the test takes over an hour and requires
as much performance as you can get, we’ve
decided to limit it only to the laptops in their
respective performance modes. Against
laptops with integrated graphics—the Ryzen
4000 Slim 7 and the 11th-gen Prestige 14
Evo—it’s a win for the MacBook Pro M1. More
so against the Slim 7, which falls behind
further than expected.
Laptops with discrete graphics fare better,Adobe Premiere 14.5
PugetBench 0.92
Seconds
Asus Zephyrus G148-core Ryzen 4800HS (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 (Performance AC)
MSI Prestige 146-core Core i7-10710U (Default AC)
Acer Predator Triton 5006-core Core i7-10750H (Default AC)LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE608360359233524300