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Portables (Apple) IT Technology

New iPad Pro Has Comparable Performance To 2018 15" MacBook Pro in Benchmarks (macrumors.com) 171

A series of benchmark results have shown up on Geekbench for the new iPad Pro, and its new eight-core A12X Bionic chip is truly a powerhouse. From a report: The new iPad Pro achieved single-core and multi-core scores of 5,025 and 18,106 respectively based on an average of two benchmark results, making it by far the fastest iPad ever and comparable even to the performance of the latest 15-inch MacBook Pro models with Intel's six-core Core i7 chips. We've put together a chart that compares Geekbench scores of the new iPad Pro and various other iPad, Mac, and iPhone models.

That the new iPad Pro rivals the performance of the latest 15-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.6GHz six-core Core i7 processor is impressive, but even more so when you consider that the tablet starts at $799. The aforementioned MacBook Pro configuration is priced at $2,799, although with 512GB of storage. Even the new 11-inch iPad Pro with 512GB of storage is only $1,149, less than half that of the Core i7-equipped MacBook Pro.

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New iPad Pro Has Comparable Performance To 2018 15" MacBook Pro in Benchmarks

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  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:56PM (#57576912) Homepage Journal

    Apple already did PPC to Intel on the current architecture and a good number of people believe the Mac will go Apple ARM soon.

    Then it's simply a matter of having a Mac Mode on the iDevices that offers a KVM experience.

    Looks like that day is getting closer.

    • by jonnyj ( 1011131 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:18PM (#57577082)

      Mac on ARM makes a lot of sense for Apple.

      From a business perspective, they have always believed in vertical integration. Using their own CPUs will also leverage their existing investments in A-series CPUs. If ARM Macbooks can sell for the same price as Intel Macbooks, Apple's profits will increase sharply and they will better control their own destiny.

      From a user perspective, ARM Macbooks will likely be quieter, lighter and need to be recharged less often. Old software will need to be recompiled, but all major software packages (Office, Adobe stuff, etc) will become available immediately and smaller software houses will have no option but to offer ARM versions of their code. Besides, most things are done in the browser these days.

      The only losers will be people who want to dual boot Windows. Maybe Microsoft will rescue them with ARM Windows, but I doubt Apple cares very much.

      • Mac on ARM makes a lot of sense for Apple.

        From a business perspective, they have always believed in vertical integration. Using their own CPUs will also leverage their existing investments in A-series CPUs. If ARM Macbooks can sell for the same price as Intel Macbooks, Apple's profits will increase sharply and they will better control their own destiny.

        From a user perspective, ARM Macbooks will likely be quieter, lighter and need to be recharged less often. Old software will need to be recompiled, but all major software packages (Office, Adobe stuff, etc) will become available immediately and smaller software houses will have no option but to offer ARM versions of their code. Besides, most things are done in the browser these days.

        The only losers will be people who want to dual boot Windows. Maybe Microsoft will rescue them with ARM Windows, but I doubt Apple cares very much.

        MS already has an 64 bit ARM Port of Windows 10, and it even provides for x86 Application compatibility through a JIT Compiler scheme.

        https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com]

        "The WOW64 layer of Windows 10 allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows 10. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization wh

        • by martinX ( 672498 )

          Might make running VM difficult

      • by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday November 01, 2018 @07:20PM (#57578260) Homepage

        I just hope that if they have "convergence" between the iPad Pro and Macbook, it keeps the relative openness of the Macbook. I can't use a computer that requires I get all of my apps from their app store. I can't use a computer that refuses to give me access to the terminal.

        I'm a bit annoyed right now with Apple, the way recent versions of MacOS keeps making scripting, automation, and administration more difficult. They're increasingly blocking access to the OS itself, requiring manual user intervention to grant access to various functions of the OS.

        • by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @08:15PM (#57578458)

          Apple should believe its own bought and paid for hype comparing different processor generations on limited benchmarks, published on highly reputable site "Macrumors". Apple should transition all its high end laptops and PCs to ARM, I'm hoping for it. Can't wait to see the sadfaces.

          BTW, with no fan? Seems legit.

      • Windows runs on ARM and Microsoft already has an amazing cross platform development framework. Millions of developers already have the skills to ship software for this platform. This is the CPU competitor we have needed for ten years.
    • That I could program FOSS software on, I could replace my old MacBook Pro.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by EMB Numbers ( 934125 )

        I'm confused. iOS is OS X. I can compile the same code base for both systems with the press of a button.

        There is lots of Open Source software already running on iOS:
        https://github.com/dkhamsing/o... [github.com]

        If a full blown Unix like programming environment with full support for C and C++ isn't enough, xamarin is there and provides "Single shared codebase for Android, iOS, and Windows" available under the MIT license.
        https://visualstudio.microsoft... [microsoft.com]

        There is also no requirement to use Apple's App Store as long as you

        • by Anonymous Coward

          The OP wants to "program FOSS software". I think the parent confused OSX and iOS, and running on iOS and developing on iOS. From the link:
          > Single shared codebase for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone
          > Develop on PC or Mac

          You can't replace a Macbook with an iPad if you need a Macbook to compile, run sshd, connect USB devices like drives or mice. I, too, am looking for things that could replace this MBP when it dies, but no matter how fast it is, an iPad isn't going to do it.

    • there is a nice looping symmetry here.
      1990 - ARM is founded as a spin-off from Acorn and Apple, after the two companies started collaborating on the ARM processor as part of the development of Apple's new Newton computer system.

      Apple shed ARM after the newton failed. Then after tablets came back the ARM became the key. Now apple has made the best ARM hardware implementation.

      Next step is for the tablet to grow a keyboard and it's the new Acorn-- a light weight computer. Someone should put an Acorn emulator

    • Apple's done this multiple times.

      68k -> PPC -> X86

    • by Gordo_1 ( 256312 )

      Yup, totally agree. The real story here is that Intel's notebook and desktop CPU dominance are soon to be challenged. They've stumbled around with x86 desktop performance for close to a decade now. If Apple is able to drive 90% improvements from last year's iPad to this year's version and nearly equal Intel's ultrabook chips in the process, what do you think they pull off with a move to ARM on Macbooks with 1-2 years of further development and the luxury of a heatsink and fan to boot? I would be shaking in

    • by J-1000 ( 869558 )
      I get the feeling they are definitely not going to do a "Mac Mode" after seeing how things turned out for Microsoft. Apple will just make iOS more and more competent until there's no need for Mac OS anymore.
  • by igor.sfiligoi ( 1517549 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:59PM (#57576932)

    The MacBook Pro prices are inflated, so the comparison between IPAD and MacBook is not that interesting.

    But an ARM CPU on par with the (relatively) high end Intel Core i7!?!?!
    This is big news!!!

    • by timholman ( 71886 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:16PM (#57577062)

      But an ARM CPU on par with the (relatively) high end Intel Core i7!?!?!
      This is big news!!!

      Big news for Apple, and very bad news for Intel. The last thing they need is yet another indicator of how stagnant the Intel processor line has become.

      Lots of people have speculated that the next generation of Apple laptops will drop Intel entirely. If Apple can fab a 7nm A12X variant at TSMC that runs Mac OS, the switch could happen as early as next year. TSMC already has at least a one-year lead over Intel. Intel's 10nm fab (comparable to TSMC's 7nm fab) won't ramp up until late 2019.

      And if Apple abandons Intel for ARM / TSMC, how long will it take for other companies to do the same?

      • by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:49PM (#57577318)

        TSMC already has at least a one-year lead over Intel. Intel's 10nm fab (comparable to TSMC's 7nm fab) won't ramp up until late 2019.

        And if Apple abandons Intel for ARM / TSMC, how long will it take for other companies to do the same?

        Depends on who can supply them. Apple isn't going to sell its ARM chips to competitors; and until someone makes an ARM chip that is as powerful as an x86 and can run x86 emulation well so existing programs can run out of the box, there will be little reason to dump Intel.

    • Well this is really surprising. I wonder what spec they gave up to get that. My understanding,perhaps wrong, is the A12 is an ARM, probably some derivative of an ARM cortex 64 bit. Is it true that Arm I liscences the basic instruction system but people are free to tweak the silicon?
      if not you'd think other makers using the ARM design would be reporting the same specs already.
      if so it's possible I guess that apple found a way to make the ARM processor as fast as a flagship Intel processor.

      But ARM has alwa

      • Without a fan, it's hard to understand how high performance could be sustainable for long term number crunching. Maybe it's not for sustained calculation? Still even if it's just a burst it means the thing won't be laggy. It just won't replace the laptops use case in serious calculations

        • the benchmark is geekbench so it's going to be a non-trivial speed measurement and not just integers. But it is the geekbench cpu benchmark not the geekbench computer benchmark so it's trying to test the processor speed not the integrated computer speed or real-world calculation that uses other parts of the computer.

        • by imgod2u ( 812837 )

          Geekbench 4 runs with built-in "cool down" periods to avoid CPU throttling effects. Its meant to measure peak performance, not sustainable performance.

          But realistically, most applications are bursty. They don't really peg the CPU at 100% for sustained periods of time. Even media workloads get caught waiting for memory long enough that the CPU isn't constantly crunching instructions.

          • by shmlco ( 594907 )

            True. One should also keep in mind that this is given an iPad's power and thermal budget.

            Be extremely interesting to see how fast the thing can go with a laptop's power budget and cooling capacity.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Well this is really surprising.

        Not really, it's Geekbench. It's the go-to benchmark for when someone wants to write an "ARM beats x86" article.

      • by amp001 ( 948513 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:51PM (#57577330)
        ARM licenses the instruction set and their implementations of it independently. Apple licenses the instruction set, but their A-series chips are custom implementations of that architecture as far as I know. One of the differences is that the recent A-series chips no longer include support for the 32-bit instruction set –only 64-bit (iOS can't run any 32-bit code any more). This is important because the older 32-bit instruction set had some unpleasant aspects when it came to performance (barrel shifter in the data path, conditional execution bits taking up instruction encoding space, 16 architected registers, etc.; that's just from memory). The 64-bit ARM instruction set is pretty clean (I remember thinking it looked more like MIPS or Alpha when I looked at it briefly), and that helps when you're trying to go fast. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has to continue to support the older 32-bit instruction set (and maybe even the ancient "thumb" stuff) on the same die as the newer 64-bit mode. Intel is in the same boat (only with even more –and even older –baggage). There's another difference between Apple's processors and the ones on Android phones that goes unnoticed by most. Apple's APIs are all non-blocking / event-driven. Want to run an HTTP server on the same thread as your UI? You can, and it's easy, and it even works pretty well. Android APIs are almost entirely blocking, because of the Java legacy. So, on iOS, you see lots of apps with only a few threads doing most of the work, while on Android, you see dozens of threads, and the work is spread across them. This is why Apple focused early on optimizing single-core performance while Qualcomm was busy adding lots of slower cores to their chips. Both companies were doing the right thing for the platforms they were targeting. But, now that Apple has those highly optimized single cores, and a machine like the big iPad Pro that can dissipate more heat, then can put 4 of those fast cores in there and get some impressive numbers.
        • could you explain this non-blocking versus blocking paradigm's implications more. Also I don't quite see why I'd want to have a server and UI on the same thread.

          • by amp001 ( 948513 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:53PM (#57577754)
            Sure. Blocking APIs are things like "reading this file and wait until the bytes are actually read before moving on to the next line of code". But, even though reading a file doesn't take long, the kernel still has to do something with your thread while it's waiting on the IO. So, it has to put that thread to sleep and find another thread to run. Now, imagine this was a network IO over a cellular network instead of just reading from a file. Those network IO calls are often blocking-style, too. You definitely don't want to stop the UI thread from responding to inputs or updating the screen while you go do that kind of thing. So, you need to put all your IO on a non-UI thread. That means you have to communicate across threads, which means thread-safe data structures with locks, etc. The code ends up a bit more complicated.

            Non-blocking APIs look more like "start reading this file and call this other function when you're done, but return immediately". Your code ends up being structured differently, since everything is an event. Once you're used to it, it's pretty nice. Closures and lambdas make everything really simple, so your code even starts to look more like the linear/blocking style. So, if you do need an HTTP server in your app, it just looks like a few IO event handlers that you set up along with all your UI event handlers. Putting it on your UI thread is a judgment call at that point. You can make sure the HTTP event handlers never take enough time to impact usability, and in return you get to avoid having to deal with inter-thread communication, etc. Or, you can go ahead and create a thread and give it its own event loop to run the exact same non-blocking style code. I've done it both ways, and couldn't tell the difference in the UI (this was on an old iPhone 3GS back in the day).

          • Blocking means that when a process needs to wait for something to finish (typically I/O operations), it basically pauses and does nothing, blocking further execution. This is also known as synchronous.

            Non-blocking (also known as asynchronous) means that the process doesn't stop & wait for the lengthy operation to finish, it continues executing the following code immediately. When the lengthy operation DOES finish, it will trigger some further event-driven action (like calling a callback function or fu

        • ARM licenses the instruction set and their implementations of it independently. Apple licenses the instruction set, but their A-series chips are custom implementations of that architecture as far as I know. One of the differences is that the recent A-series chips no longer include support for the 32-bit instruction set –only 64-bit (iOS can't run any 32-bit code any more). This is important because the older 32-bit instruction set had some unpleasant aspects when it came to performance (barrel shifter in the data path, conditional execution bits taking up instruction encoding space, 16 architected registers, etc.; that's just from memory). The 64-bit ARM instruction set is pretty clean (I remember thinking it looked more like MIPS or Alpha when I looked at it briefly), and that helps when you're trying to go fast. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has to continue to support the older 32-bit instruction set (and maybe even the ancient "thumb" stuff) on the same die as the newer 64-bit mode. Intel is in the same boat (only with even more –and even older –baggage).

          There's another difference between Apple's processors and the ones on Android phones that goes unnoticed by most. Apple's APIs are all non-blocking / event-driven. Want to run an HTTP server on the same thread as your UI? You can, and it's easy, and it even works pretty well. Android APIs are almost entirely blocking, because of the Java legacy. So, on iOS, you see lots of apps with only a few threads doing most of the work, while on Android, you see dozens of threads, and the work is spread across them. This is why Apple focused early on optimizing single-core performance while Qualcomm was busy adding lots of slower cores to their chips. Both companies were doing the right thing for the platforms they were targeting. But, now that Apple has those highly optimized single cores, and a machine like the big iPad Pro that can dissipate more heat, then can put 4 of those fast cores in there and get some impressive numbers.

          Fascinating, and nicely explains why they pitched all the 32 bit Apps and support thereof.

          Apple truly DOES Rule ARM!

        • Android APIs are almost entirely blocking, because of the Java legacy.

          Why is that?

          Java has had non-blocking IO [wikipedia.org] since 1.4, which was released in 2002.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by amp001 ( 948513 )

            Why is that?

            Java has had non-blocking IO [wikipedia.org] since 1.4, which was released in 2002.

            Java has had NIO for a long time. But, the Java world was pretty mature already by the time those APIs were introduced, and a ton of libraries had already been written that used threads and blocking calls, including some that were included in Android. That momentum just made it easier for Android to adopt the blocking call model for a lot of the new stuff they added. There's a bit more to it than that, if you're interested, going back to the creation of OpenBinder at Be, Inc. (& then at Palm), followed

        • Android APIs are almost entirely blocking, because of the Java legacy.

          No, wrong. Android uses more threads than I-os because the Linux scheduler is a lot more efficient than the Mach scheduler. On Linux there usually is no benefit to writing complex, fragile non-blocking code just to avoid the scheduler, only drawbacks. So with threads you get to have nice clean code and high performance too. On Linux.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by gnasher719 ( 869701 )

            No, wrong. Android uses more threads than I-os because the Linux scheduler is a lot more efficient than the Mach scheduler. On Linux there usually is no benefit to writing complex, fragile non-blocking code just to avoid the scheduler, only drawbacks. So with threads you get to have nice clean code and high performance too. On Linux.

            I use Grand Central Dispatch, and you can stick your Linux threads wherever you prefer them.

      • Laptops with Win 10 ARM run x86 applications about the same as a low end laptop but at mid-range price. Give it another 5 years and they might be in a position to compete.

        • Laptops with Win 10 ARM run x86 applications about the same as a low end laptop but at mid-range price. Give it another 5 years and they might be in a position to compete.

          That's because they run it on Qualcomm or Intel ARM.

          Just wait until W10 is running on APPLE's ARM chips...

      • The WOW64 layer of Windows 10 allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows 10. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again. The caches are produced for each module so that other apps can make use of them on first launch.

        Apple has an ARM "Architecture" License. On of only a few in the world. It allows them to actually CHANGE the ARM instruction set, and design CPU Cores FROM SCRATCH, rather than just piecing standard ARM IP together like most.

        What fascinating is that Qualcomm and Samsung, who both ALSO have ARM Architecture licenses, can't produce anything that holds a candle to Apple's native ARM designs.

        Could be because very few have as much ARM experience as Apple.

      • Microsoft is perfectly positioned for any technology. They offer the only viable open source cross platform development solutions currently.
      • Apple has a license that lets it do _anything they want_ with ARM. The new iPad Pro has four 2.5 GHz cores and four 1.5 GHz cores. Massive L1, L2 and L3 caches and another 16MB cache between CPU and anything looking like a memory access. 10 billion transistors.

        But that's Apple ARM CPUs. Others are quite a bit behind (like 50%).
    • The MacBook Pro prices are inflated, so the comparison between IPAD and MacBook is not that interesting.

      But an ARM CPU on par with the (relatively) high end Intel Core i7!?!?!
      This is big news!!!

      On ARM, Apple RULES!

  • Selective (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:02PM (#57576970)

    I am betting that the benchmarks chosen were very selective and probably software bound. Not a lot of detail here.

    • Apple has a long history of exactly that.

      Remember when the PPC supposedly outperformed x86? They never said it was only on integer math.

      • Re:Selective (Score:5, Informative)

        by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:23PM (#57577122)

        Apple has a long history of exactly that.

        Remember when the PPC supposedly outperformed x86? They never said it was only on integer math.

        They ran on-stage demos of doing complete photoshop editing workflows and there are minutes of difference between the Intel and PPC outcomes. Those were real world examples of the PPC creaming the intel at that time. Of course eventually intel won back the crown as the ppc development went off-track.

        The same sort of thing goes on with the AMD ryzen vs intel right now too.

        • Re:Selective (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Mark of the North ( 19760 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:54PM (#57577758)

          I remember those on-stage demos and seeing them repeated on one of the local tech TV shows. The big gains were on a few filters (one was lens flare) which were optimized for the PPC architecture. The difference on the optimized filters was stark, but the rest of the comparisons were pretty...comparable.

          But tech is a horse race...without a finish line. Intel's MMX came out, and that was that.

        • More specifically it was the AltiVec instructions.

          a single-precision floating point and integer SIMD instruction set designed and owned by Apple, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor (formerly Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector) — the AIM alliance

        • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

          Eh, they were effectively cheating. They had Altivec-optimized filters running against non-optimized ones on Intel (yeah, Intel being a different architecture didn't have Altivec obviously, but they did have SSE which was conveniently not used). Also in the P4 era it was quite easy to find tasks where a PPC was faster than Intel, just as long as you did not throw in an Athlon 64 in the comparison.
          The funniest thing was when Apple was switching to Intel, for a while they were selling both Intel and PPC so th

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jon3k ( 691256 )
        Apple has a long history of what? Apple didn't produce these benchmarks.
    • Watch the Apple product release for the iPad Pro and watch them edit a 3GB PSD file. First editing a small part, then zooming out, editing, so on and so forth, out and out until you saw the whole thing with many hundreds of layers.

      That's the kind of thing that provides proof the benchmarks were not "very selective", it shows that the benchmarks are telling us something very real about performance.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    2018 MacBook Pro has paltry performance equal to a cell phone CPU powered iPad Pro.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Make sure you hold it correctly.
  • A lot of us were waiting for a new iPad mini 5. I use an iPad mini 4 for flight planning and it works brilliantly, exactly the right size to use in the cockpit. But it's four years old now, and while its CPU and graphics are up to the task, its battery life kinda sucks.

    • by JazzXP ( 770338 )
      How would using an iPhone Xs Max fill that role? Seems to me like that is the replacement these days.
      • The iPhone screen is too small to display charts and navigation data. Both practically, and legally. Some countries have regulations on the subject.

      • by hawk ( 1151 )

        I have the big Xs, and thought it would replace an iPad for casual book reading.

        It just isn't quite big enough.

        So now I need to choose between an outdated mini or a newer iPad . . .

        hawk

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Why replace the batter for $29 when you can buy a new machine for $350!

  • Geekbench is Shit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:30PM (#57577180) Journal

    Wilco, geekbench has apparently replaced dhrystone as your favourite useless benchmark.

    Geekbench is SH*T.

    It actually seems to have gotten worse with version 3, which you should be aware of. On ARM64, that SHA1 performance is hardware-assisted. I don't know if SHA2 is too, but Aarch64 does apparently do SHA256 in the crypto unit, so it might be fully or partially so.

    And on both ARM and x86, the AES numbers are similarly just about the crypto unit.

    So basically a quarter to a third of the "integer" workloads are just utter BS. They are not comparable across architectures due to the crypto units, and even within one architecture the numbers just don't mean much of anything.

    And quite frankly, it's not even just the crypto ones. Looking at the other GB3 "benchmarks", they are mainly small kernels: not really much different from dhrystone. I suspect most of them have a code footprint that basically fits in a L1I cache.

    Linus Torvalds, Transmeta Engineer

    • by imgod2u ( 812837 )

      https://www.realworldtech.com/... [realworldtech.com]

      Geekbench 4 (used here) gets Linus's seal of approval.

      • interesting. It seems that Torvald's conciliatory statements are much less remembered than his epic rants.

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      I recall decades ago when Byte evaluated some new-fangled compilers for microcomputers. I forget what language they did.

      The fastest? Execution in under a second as it optimized the *entire* loop out, as the results were not used . . .

      hawk

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:31PM (#57577198)

    The performance might be fine, but the price isn't. The iPad Pro costs as much or more than a gaming laptop. The new Mac Mini is twice as expensive as basic i3s from PC OEMs.

    On top of it all, they are almost impossible for the average person to repair. You're paying top dollar just to get screwed when it breaks.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 )

      Macs are not for average people. They are for people whose time is valuable and thus who want computers that they don't have to screw around with. These people also are not concerned about repairing or putting win-modems or sound-blaster cards in their computers and having to screw around with choosing non-conflicting interrupts. Yes, I know those interrupt nighmare days are long past and windows isn't a joke anymore. But I'm just making the point there's always been a market for people who want their c

    • The upgrades from the defaulta 128GB flash drive to 512GB is $500, while you can just to buy one outright for well under $200. Similar story for RAM. Overpriced hobbled base model with price gouging for upgrades. Same old Apple.

  • It better be about as fast, at a similar price-point.

  • How about they compress a a big file, or transcode a video file?
    Sounds like Geekbench is a very badly written software that favors Apple's chips.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Well, lets look at what Geekbench actually tests...

      Test number 2... LZMA... That is... compress a big file.
      Test number 3... JPEG... not video encoding, but image encoding, very similar stuff.
      Test number 4... Test the speed of the LUA interpretter... pretty real world
      Test number 6... How fast can SQLite look up queries... yup, still in real world territory.
      Test number 7&8... How fast can a web browser engine process DOM manipulations and parse web pages... yup... still real world.
      Test number 10... How fa

  • And to a larger extent: does it run anything useful? It's not gonna beat a laptop until it has a laptop OS. OSX or otherwise.

  • by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:37PM (#57577666)

    I looked on http://browser.geekbench.com/p... [geekbench.com] and it says "Geekbench 4 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 4000 (which is the score of an Intel Core i7-6600U). Higher scores are better, with double the score indicating double the performance."

    I scrolled down to 4000 and couldn't find the 6600U.
    If you scroll down further you can see Intel Core i7-6600U 2.6 GHz (2 cores) 3438

    They're also saying, for example, a 16 core Threadripper 1950X is slower at multi-core than a 10 core Intel 6950X. Everyone else puts the 1950X at ~50% faster - it has more cache, more cores, more mhz, consumes more power and is a year newer.
    If that's how they compare two x86's I'd hate to see how bad ARM vs x86 is in their tests.
    They'd have you believe an iPhone XS is about a fast at single core tasks as a Mac Pro boosting to 4.something GHz

  • by berchca ( 414155 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:55PM (#57577764) Homepage

    "Apple would not be forced to wait on new Intel chips before being able to release updated Macs."

    Is that what's been happening? I guess it took Intel 4 years to update whatever processor was in the Mac Mini...

  • it looks like a nice machine. If it would run macOS instead of iOS, I would consider it. A tablet like that, which I would use as a notebook replacements, needs to be able to run a shell and a compiler or it isn't a notebook replacement.

    I realize I'm a minority, but I still prefer real computers over tablets.

    • I carry both: the ipad pro is used for reading (web / pdf) and writing. Note-taking and image construction has become 1000x easier. But it is not a computing platform. I carry a laptop (dell xps with linux) so that I have a shell and a compiler. Together they fill all my needs, but there is no single device yet that covers all those needs as well as two separate devices.

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        That exactly is my point. I had an iPad and a MacBook for a time, but considered it crazy to carry three computing devices (smartphone as well). I understand smartphone plus notebook (my current combination). But you know what my ideal would be? Smart watch that doubles as phone (with earphones or detachable) and tablet that is also a full computer. And then at home a strong desktop machine with Handover or such.

        Anyone from Apple reading? You are close, so close, but still so far away.

        • Convergence between a laptop and a tablet would be great. Would be.

          Current attempts are compromises though, which is why I still carry two. I think we are close to the end of the line though, my ideal device should only be 2-3 generations away. I want it to fold up small enough to be as portable as a phone, but with an input device / screen combo that is as productive as a laptop. It has to be real machine - that I get a shell on and can write code for. A pen interface is great for note-taking and drawing,

  • "iPhones are as fast as Macs are" makes a good headline, but the iPhone benchmarks are measuring burst performance. iPhones throttle down the cpu speed for thermal reasons VERY quickly, and canâ(TM)t really match a Mac for long. It would be interesting to see what would happen with those cpus in a Mac chassis though.
  • by nastyphil ( 111738 ) on Friday November 02, 2018 @12:25AM (#57579238)

    Over priced tablet has same performance as shitty laptop.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Over priced tablet has same performance as shitty laptop.

      Was about to say this.

      Tells us less about the Ipad Pro and more about how useless a £2,600 pound laptop is.

  • May be we could consider that the MBP has awful performance if it perform like an iPad ?

If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- William Baumol

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