[spuz]

The 2.8x faster CPU claim is based on the following fine print:

> Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Open source project built with prerelease Xcode 12.2 with Apple Clang 12.0.0, Ninja 1.10.0.git, and CMake 3.16.5. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

I can't find any 2020 model of the Macbook Pro with a 1.7Ghz i7 chip so I'm wondering if they are comparing it with an even older model. Would definitely wait for these to get in the hands of viewers before taking Apple at their word.

Edit: Looks like they are comparing with the Intel 8th-gen i7 version of the A2289 model which was released in May this year. There was a small deal made at the time when they released new Macbooks with both 8th-gen and 10th-gen models. Apparently there is not much difference between the 8th-gen and the 10th-gen chips in terms of CPU performance but it's still a bit disingenuous of Apple not to compare with the best of their previous models.

https://www.howtogeek.com/671586/should-you-buy-the-13-inch-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hSOuK7qBgM

[ebg13]

> it's still a bit disingenuous of Apple not to compare with the best of their previous models.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/ Says: "“World’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon”: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM measuring peak single thread performance of workloads taken from select industry standard benchmarks, commercial applications, and open source applications. Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially available at the time of testing."

"highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially available [in October 2020]" seems pretty good to me.

[post_break]

Here is the 1.7ghz https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook...

[bserge]

It's the Intel i7-8557u, which is pretty good. Twice the performance though? Likely in very specific benchmarks.

Still, this is pretty impressive, and I say this as someone who will never buy Apple hardware.

[derefr]

> Twice the performance though? Likely in very specific benchmarks.

Keep in mind that the general performance of a given chip, and the performance of that chip in a thermally-constrained form-factor like a laptop, are very different things. Just because the i7-8557u is a decent CPU in a testbench, doesn't mean it didn't thermal-throttle itself under sustained load inside an MBP.