[pdpi]

It all makes a lot more sense if you remember that this is Phoronix we're talking about. This is the rest of today's posts:

  * Radeon ROCm 5.2.3 Released (...)
  * Mesa 22.2-rc3 Released (...)
  * [bootloader project] Updated With Improved SMBIOS Support
  * GCC 12.2 Compiler Released With 70+ Bug Fixes

They're a Linux-centric outlet through and through, and the Phoronix Test Suite (the benchmark they're running) is Linux-based. Of course they're running the benchmarks on Linux, that's whole point!

As for the hardware, the Air is just the entry level model, and AFAICT the X13 they're using is roughly the same price as the Air. About as fair a comparison as you could make it. They also specifically call out the power thing:

> Due to the Apple M2 currently lacking any power/temperature sensor support under Linux, this is simply looking at the raw performance of the M2 and Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U with not being able to accurately compare the M2 power efficiency / performance-per-Watt at this time.

It's important to look at the context: Lenovo laptops have been a staple in the Linux world for a long time, and people in the Linux world are genuinely excited about the Apple Silicon laptops, hell even Linus is running Asahi. For the target audience, this comparison is exactly the benchmark they want.

[paulmd]

> They also specifically call out the power thing:

saying "we can't measure the power on M2" isn't the same thing as pointing out that in broad terms the M2 is only using 1/3 of the power of the 6850U. These are really different power classes and yeah, you'd expect the processor with triple the power budget to pull ahead.

Triple isn't my number, but, Ryzen is allowed to boost extremely high during short tests like Phoronix is doing, where a MBA is always 15W max, period the end, even in max clock states.

[sudosysgen]

This is just completely false. You have no idea what the actual max power consumption of an MBA is.

15W is it's TDP, and various companies release chips that run at triple their TDP - including repeated by Apple in the past. Saying it's never going to exceed it's TDP is just blatantly ridiculous, and Phoronix were completely right in treating it as a useless number (which it is).

The only reliable way to measure power draw is either to monitor the exact voltages and amperages on each power lane - which is not made available by Apple - or wire into the motherboard. Anything else is not serious, least of all taxing the TDP to its word.