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 video 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
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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