Can you estimate how much more performance and efficiency gains AMD needs to overtake Apple's M8?
The biggest game changer for AMD will be inclusion of LP cores, which AMD does not have currently. That's a game changer for battery life, which most people take as a proxy of efficiency.
So, this advantage, perception of efficiency will shrink significantly.
Here's a baseline for you via Notebookcheck. M4 Pro is roughly 52% faster in Cinebench ST and 3.6x more efficient than Strix Halo.
The ST absolute scores of Mac CPUs is why they are so legendary. And why it is something of an inspiration, I bet, to all the CPU designers. It seems like AMD is gunning for those numbers. But +52% is a big gap.
The ST performance per Watt has too much noise to be of any use.
Let's suppose M8 doubles M4 per/watt to 19pts/w. Let's suppose ST is increased by 46% over 4 generations to 260 points.
Will Zen7 increase Strix Halo efficiency by 7.2x while also increasing ST performance by 2.2x?
MT is a more useful measure of core efficiency, because it maximizes power usage by the cores and minimizes extraneous variables.
In that performance, M4 leads by 21-25%, which (plus future Apple gains) should be quite achievable.
In MT efficiency, M4 leads by 37% in efficiency. So, this would be more challenging, but don't forget that Apple has a node advantage now and will not have node advantage when Zen 6 and Zen 7 ship.
All of the gaps shrink just from closing the gap in the process technology used, before any new CPU design features are introduced.
| Benchmark | Strix Halo 395+ | M4 Pro Mini | M4 Max | % Difference (M4 Max vs Strix Halo) |
|---|
| Memory Bandwidth | 256GB/s | 273GB/s | 546GB/s | +113.3% |
| Cinebench 2024 ST | 116.8 | 178 | 178 | +52.4% |
| Cinebench 2024 MT | 1648 | 1729 | 2069 | +25.6% |
| Geekbench ST | 2978 | 3836 | 3880 | +30.3% |
| Geekbench MT | 21269 | 22509 | 25760 | +21.1% |
| 3DMark Wildlife (GPU) | 19615 | 19345 | 37434 | +90.8% |
| GFX Bench (fps) (GPU) | 114 | 125.8 | 232 | +103.5% |
| Blender GPU Party Tug (GPU) | 55 sec | 43 sec | — | — |
| Cinebench ST Power Efficiency | 2.62 pts/W | 9.52 pts/W | — | — |
| Cinebench MT Power Efficiency | 14.7 pts/W | 20.2 pts/W | — | — |