MARCH 2021 PCWorld 9in a PowerPoint-to-PDF export, and in multiple
Excel macros by a factor of 2.3x. And yes,
Intel used the Arm-native versions of Office for
its tests.
Our take: We’d really need to run
similar tests, but we don’t doubt the results.
Yes, you may think one multibillion dollar
company publicly beefing with another
multibillion dollar company means “it’s all
fake benchmarks,” but that’s probably not
the case because of the huge liability risk
Intel might face. That’s why Diet Coke
doesn’t outright call Diet Pepsi undrinkable
swill (even though it is).
What you can question is whether Intel
picked tasks that favor its own CPU design.
But even if you believed that, it doesn’t
invalidate the testing, because exporting to a
PDF is about as real—albeit boring—as you
can get.
We’d also be remiss if we didn’t point
out that WebXPRT 3 gives home-field
advantage to Intel, as the benchmark
developer (Principled Technologies) and
Intel have long had a relationship. That,
however, doesn’t necessarily mean the
benchmark favors Intel, as AMD’s Zen 3
(go.pcworld.com/zen3) currently has the
lead over Intel’s mobile CPUs. Nonetheless,
Apple fans are certain to say some fouls got
missed by the refs here.CLAIM: CORE i
CRUSHES M1 IN AI
For content creation tasks, Intel showed the
Core i7 to be about 1.12x faster than the M1 in