Media Processing Tests: First let’s take a look at those three result sets, for
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(raw CPU muscle for image rendering). You’ll note two Handbrake result sets
and two Cinebench sets here...park that thought.
As noted earlier, the M1 uses four cores for demanding tasks and can ramp
down, at Big Sur’s behest, to its four power-saving cores for less demanding
tasks. Presumably here the four full-strength ones were engaged. But the big
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Cinebenches.
Why is that? Start with Handbrake. The 1.1.1 version is an older version we use
across all of our test models for consistency, and on it the Mac mini returned
decent numbers, though it was outpaced by the most recent Dell XPS 13 (based
on a new Intel “Tiger Lake” mobile Core i7 CPU) and the HP Spectre x360 15 (a
2020 model highlighted here since it uses a muscular H-series Intel “Comet
Lake” CPU and a dedicated GPU, the GeForce GTX 1650 Ti). But look at the M1
Macs’ results with 1.4 beta. The 1.4 beta version is a Universal native app rolled
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for this task, and, well, zoom.
You can see a similar dynamic at play with Cinebench. The R23 version is a new
Universal app, while the venerable R15 isn’t. The M1-based Macs do a bang-up
job on R15 by themselves, rivaling the H-series Core-based Spectre x360 15, but
they practically run away with the ball on R23.
Meanwhile, Photoshop CC, not being a Universal app, exhibits the same kind of
relative behavior as the 1.1.1 version of Handbrake. The M1-based Macs stay in
the game versus the U- and H-series Intel Core systems. We’ll have to see in
2021 how the Universal version of Photoshop shakes out. But these three tests
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apps will be as Apple Silicon gains more momentum.
Productivity and Browser Tests: Next up, let’s look at some productivity
and browser tests we could compare across these new M1 Macs, older
MacBooks, some recent iOS devices, and a few key competing Windows PCs: