MARCH 2021 PCWorld 41laptops with big, burly GPUs or integrated
graphics do better as well.
The winner, no surprise here, is the
11th-gen Core i7-1185G7 in the MSI Prestige
14, by a huge margin. Even the laptops with
very fast GPUs can’t beat it—though they get
pretty close.
The mighty Ryzen 5000 in the Asus ROG
Flow X13 is handcuffed by the GeForce GTX
1650 Max-Q, but the worst performer by far
is the MacBook Pro M1. In fact, when
Macworld ran Gigapixel AI for us, it was the
first time the editor had ever heard the fan on
the MacBook Pro M1 turn on.
This result tells us one thing: As apps take
advantage of Intel’s DL Boost features, Intel’s
CPUs stand to have a serious leg up. Apple’s
M1 actually features its own AI hardwareRosetta 2 translation, so we’ll have to revisit this
when Adobe releases native versions. For
those who actually use one of these new
laptops right now, the Ryzen 5000 is clearly
faster.
It is a little unfair that the Asus ROG Flow
X13 comes with 32GB of RAM compared to
the 16GB of RAM in the MacBook Pro M1, but
we don’t blame Asus for that. It offers its
laptop with 32GB of RAM, whereas Apple
limits the MacBook Pro M1 to 16GB.
We’ll close out our results using Topaz
Lab’s Gigapixel AI. It’s an application that uses
AI to increase the quality of up-sampling of
images. It’s one of a handful of applications to
use Intel’s AI hardware acceleration, so Intel’s
newest 11th-gen CPUs tend to do the best.
The application can also use OpenGL, so
Adobe Photoshop 22
PugetBench 0.92
Seconds
Asus Zephyrus G148-core Ryzen 9 4900HS (Default AC)
Asus ROG Flow X138-core Ryzen 9 5980HS (Turbo AC)
Asus ROG Flow X138-core Ryzen 9 5980HS (Default AC)
Lenovo Slim 78-core Ryzen 7 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 (CoolBoost AC)
Gigabyte Aero 178-core Core i7-10870H (Boost AC)
LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE653659877544897687561836797Topaz Gigapixel AI 5.3.1
Raptor Upsample
Seconds
Asus Zephyrus G148-core Ryzen 9 4900HS (Default AC)
Asus ROG Flow X138-core Ryzen 9 5980HS (Turbo AC)
Asus ROG Flow X138-core Ryzen 9 5980HS (Default AC)
Lenovo Slim 78-core Ryzen 7 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 (CoolBoost AC)
Gigabyte Aero 178-core Core i7-10870H (Boost AC)
LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE94284148207141552407882