Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Comparing PC Parts to Apple’s M3 – Part 1”.
I’Ve always had a problem comparing Apple silicon to PC parts, because gaming wasn’t ready. I’Ve always wanted to know how Apple silicon compares to off-the-shelf PC, gpus and CPUs, and that’s not something. We’Ve been able to test because Macs and PCs now use completely different architectures and there were no games that ran natively on both, but that’s changed check this out. I am playing Boulders Gate 3, one of the hottest video games right now on a Mac and it’s running natively on Apple silicon, there’s now a growing list of games that support both Apple’s Graphics, hardware and Metal, Graphics apis without any sort of translation layer. So, with the help of lmg labs, we’re going to finally compare Apple chips with PC graphics cards and see what gpus from Nvidia and AMD compete with Apple’s M series, though not in this article, that’s part two because in part one, we need to build the test Benches that the gpus will be on and those test benches have CPUs, so we’re going to figure out what CPUs are the closest to Apple silicon, and I need to ask Labs if they’ll help me what did I think? Oh my god.
Well, it’s going to be interesting. It’S going to be a learning experience. We haven’t tested Max really all that much so this is going to be the first time Labs really tackles Max Nicholas hey. This is Nicholas Harris he’s, LTT lab software developer. Part of his job has been developing and automating the tests for PCs and all their parts here. The first step is figuring out the tests, and so Nicholas, worked with test technician: John Duran, to figure out how to measure these two completely different computers.
Our primary goal was to find tests that can natively work on either system to avoid the Rosetta layer, because that’s that’s another variable that we want to isolate for, but we also by isolating for the CPU that also limits us, because we do have tests that test. The whole system, but we’re not looking to test the memory and the SSD and and the graphics card yet, but our current test suite for mark bench is very Windows focused, so there wasn’t really anything we could just reuse from that. There is a test framework out there called fonics, which has been there out there for a long time. So we tried to find some that did compression stuff. That did maybe some encoding things that were just pure computational. They came up with seven tests and we’ll get to them and their results, but first there’s a problem which I’ll tell you about after award from this video sponsor Squarespace need to build a web page. Well, Squarespace is your One-Stop shop. They have a huge variety of templates for any blog portfolio or business and, if you’re a business, their marketing tools make it easier than ever to track and build your internet presence plus with 24/7 support.
You can leave the worrying to someone else. In fact, we use it here at lmg, get started today at squarespace.com /mc address and save 10 % off your first purchase. Okay, so I have to confess something I had this idea fantasy, really that Labs would test a bunch of Macs and then compare it to a matrix of CPU data. That would show us what desktop and laptop CPUs perfectly match their M series counterparts, but we have to use new tests so we’re starting from scratch. While we would have loved to investigate every CPU, it is wholly unreasonable to get labs to test them all. For instance, here in logistics there are about 150 different CP available to test and that doesn’t even include the laptop CPUs and all the shapes and sizes they’re cooled in either.
So we have to make trade-offs and this is about graphics cards, and so that’s why we’re only including desktop components if you’re after gaming performance uh. The question then becomes like okay cool. We have three contenders right.
We have apple Intel and AMD Intel changes their socket. All the time but AMD you can go back three generations on am4 on the same platform, and so it’s why we’re going to be sticking with am4 chips. In our conclusion, though, we did run the tests on a few Intel chips earlier in this project, all right.
So let’s go through the tests and the results. The first we did is of course, cine bench. It’S widely used in the tech media space and they just came out with an update for it, though we did our 23.
It includes both a multi-core and single core score. We chose cine bench because it kind of chooses itself as it’s the prolific go-to processor Benchmark, and it’s really good that it supports apple natively as well as as Windows. Looking at the single core results, you can see how the newest chips rise to the top, but once all the cores get involved, you can see just how the 24 and the M2 Ultra push it to the top sticking with single core tests lab did a flack Encode test, where they encoded a bunch of copies of a 9-in nail song from wave to Flack.
We actually struggled to find single core tests, because most most tests are all about loading. The CPU and trying to you know how fast you compute this thing in this test and another you’ll see apple silicon is so far ahead of the other chips and they’re all grouped together. That’S why we’re going to be weighing this test less when we figure out our matches. The last single core tests are the XZ and lz4 compression test, with both compressing an iunu image.
We actually tried like four different compression algorithms or compression tests, but not all of them worked. Sometimes they worked on one, but not the other, even though they’re advertised for platform, so we did find that XZ and lz4 we were able to compile for for both natively lz4 single core shakes have slightly differently from cinam bench with most of the ryzen 5000 is Closer to the M3 generation, but it appears that with the XZ compression test, ryzen has a bit more strength than it does in cine bench. What was it like to do? All the testing Illuminating testing is pretty straightforward. Once you identify the tests and you come up with your test Suite the execution it’s just while you do your testing and as now as results, come in, it’s like putting your your puzzle together right as the pieces slowly fit in more you, you get more of The picture, however, the difference is you’re completing a puzzle that doesn’t you don’t know what the end picture is. So it’s interesting that way to kind of see see. The story reveal itself to you all right. So how about the puzzle pieces that tested multiple CPU cores blender is a popular 3D modeling program and in it Labs rendered the barbershop scene. We might need to find a new scene as it can render fairly quickly.
It’S a popular scene used to to Benchmark rendering performance in blender in blender. The mid-range amds provide a transition between the M2 and M3s. The 5600 xng are surprisingly weaker here. Another render type test that I’d never heard of is Cay. It’S a simple Ray Tracer that outputs this’90s looking image. Cay gives us another uh render type of test, but mostly we chose it cuz it works on both so depth. We got for some of these, but it’s a very simple, efficient load to uh multicore AMD is relatively weaker in this test, with the 3600 sitting between the m1’s and their different cooling. The next test Labs did is lib raw which tests how well CPUs handle raw photographs. Lib raw is also nice that it has a built-in post-processing Benchmark, which we run 30 times on the test, image that comes with fronix and then it spits out like a a megapixels per second Libra is the other test we’re going to have to weigh less because Of Apple silicon’s, apparent Supremacy, it does feel like the Macs are especially tailored to calculate audio and visual codecs. Lastly, if you’re into numbers there’s Prim siiv, we chose it because y cruncher doesn’t work natively on Mac because we do favor y cruncher. It’S a very popular benchmarking, one but uh we found Prim Prim prime prime CV, Prime C. It calculates prime numbers up to a certain length, so we can considered that it was kind of a it’s our standin for y cruncher and that it’s something computational uh generating number over over a long period.
It’S multicore as well. We learned a lot by doing this, and that is that this is hard for one picking. Am4 means that we’ve got an array of chips that don’t quite fit with single core performance as that’s where Apple silicon shines, and these are old, but then with am5, there aren’t any low-end chips to compare with the lower-end Mac chips. Either.
Single core is more important for gaming, so we weighed higher, but we weighted Flack and Libra less because they favor Apple silicon egregiously in a way, that’s not related to gaming. All right, our picks. These choices for CPUs are still even a best guess because we don’t know: what’s the bottleneck CPU wise once the gpus are installed and running games, so these are not exact matches. I really was in fantasy land thinking.
This was possible, but we’ve learned a lot. We’Re going to use the AMD 5800 x3d as a control and to match the M2 Ultra, because its 3D cache really helps in gaming, and the M2 Ultra screamed well ahead in every test. We threw at it the M2 Pro and Max as well as the M3. Pro chips will be matched against the 5800 X.
The 5700x were pitting alongside the basic M3 and the basic M2 and M1 chips are matched against a 5600 G. I’M feeling as well as I could the only way to feel better is just you’re, never done testing. You could always test more right.
There’S! No like oh well, I guess I’m done and then walk away with. You know I solve you, know everything and that I guess is the biggest lesson on this journey and it’s that we’re always learning, but now that we have our CPUs figured out. The next step will be to test the gpus, have Nvidia and AMD met their match.
We’Re going to have to see where they line up, but things are looking good in their own little way. Personally, I wasn’t expecting the Mac the apples to be as strong as they they were. I knew they were super efficient, so this is my first like really EXP experience um. Now during this project I started daily driving the 15-in MacBook Air and I loved it.
The fact that I could close it neglect it for 3 days and it still had power. Um I mean I ended up buying one what you bought a Mac from this project, I mean I did immediately sticker bomb it. How dare you, but that’s fine thanks for testing this Mac address Labs uh. If you want to check out another video, we did check out the iPad tier list, video and I’m curious in the comments below who of you are like Nicholas and bought a Mac for gaming. .