isten, of course, we love the
PC. We have the word “PC”
in our title. But we have absolutely
no problem recognizing that
our favorite platform might not
always be the best option in every
circumstance.
Right now, a strong argument
can be made for the MacBook Air
M1 being the best sensible money
laptop computer for daily driving
duties, including browsing the web
and consuming video or music
content. It’s incredibly well built,
it’s slick and responsive to use,
thanks to both MacOS and the new
M1 chip, and it offers features such
as a fantastic battery life, a great
screen, and by far the best speakers
of any comparable portable.
Provided you don’t want or
need touchscreen support and
that you’re not using apps only
available on Windows, the M1 Air
is a fantastic, unpretentious and
effective machine. In fact, the M1
Air is a great example of how good
the Mac can be when all of Apple’s
advantages come together, when
its ability to control every aspect
of the machine, from hardware
to software, is fully exploited. But
that doesn’t necessarily make Mac
better than PC, overall.
Whether it’s Intel once again
flexing its muscles with the punchy
new Alder Lake CPU or the fact that
you can’t have a touchscreen Mac
because Apple has decided it knows
better than you, in the end, the PC
is just so much more flexible and
powerful than the Mac.
For the sheer breadth of software
and hardware choices the finely
grained control that Windows gives
advanced users over every aspect
of their PC, or the PC’s status as
comfortably the most powerful
and capable gaming platform
on the planet, it’s ultimately no
contest when it comes to an overall
platform comparison.In terms of pure, outright
performance, the PC rules
supreme. After all, the
current Mac Pro is based
on relatively ancient Intel
CPUs and Intel’s latest
Alder Lake CPUs for laptop
PCs just have the edge on
the Apple M1 Max for both
single and multi-threaded
CPU performance.
As we’ve also said, while
the M1 Max has incredibly
impressive graphics
performance for an all-in-
one chip, it can’t compare
with the best dedicated
GPUs, most of which aren’t
available on any Mac.
But how long will all
this remain the case?
Rumor has it that Apple is
preparing a new megachip
for its upcoming Mac Pro
containing no fewer than
four M1 Max dies. In CPU
terms, that would mean 40
cores, 32 of which would be
high performance.You’d need an awful lot of
Xeon hardware to compete
with that. Very likely, no
existing consumer-class
Intel Core-based PC would
be able to keep up.
On paper, a quad-die M1
Max would also roughly
be on-par with the mighty
Nvidia GeForce 3090 Ti
for GPU power and totally
obliterate any PC processor
for CPU performance.
Problem is, of course, the
PC isn’t sitting still, either.
Both AMD and Nvidia are
working on new families
of graphics chips, due out
later this year, that are
expected to deliver at least
twice the rendering power
of a 3090 Ti, enough to
thoroughly spank even a
quad-die M1 Max.
Meanwhile, AMD and
Intel have aggressive CPU
roadmaps for the next 18
months. Intel’s Raptor Lake
chips are due out later thisyear and promise a roughly
15 per cent single-core
boost, plus as much as
40 per cent more multi-
threaded performance over
the 12900K chip and its
Alder Lake siblings. Less
than a year after Raptor
Lake, Meteor Lake will
raise the bar once again.
The second half of
2022 will also see AMD’s
new Zen 4-based Ryzen
7000 Series CPUs arrive
and with them single and
multi-core performance
boosts of 25 per cent and
40 per cent respectively
compared to AMD’s existing
Ryzen 5000 Series chips.
AMD is expected to keep on
trucking in 2023 with Zen
5 and another big step in
performance.
All of which makes
it hard to predict which
platform will maintain
performance leadership
over the next few years.OVERALL
WINNER
There can be
only one. And
it’s the PC.THE TOMORROW WAR
L
In the end, what the comparison boils down to is that the PC is so much more flexible and powerful.
APR 2022 MAXIMU MPC 55