The Gap is Getting Scary: Apple Leaves Intel in the Dust

LaptopMedia.com News The Gap is Getting Scary: Apple Leaves Intel in the Dust

From: Simeon Nikolov 12 May 2024 / 15:52 | 0

Game Over? No. It has just started. But Intel may not be part of it.

The graph below shows the single-core performance progress of Intel’s and Apple’s main mobile chips over the last five years. And while it doesn’t show the whole picture, it’s pretty self-explanatory as to why Apple ditched Intel chips for their own M-series CPUs.

Apple’s M4 boasts a 22% single-core performance jump compared to the M3, and a 60% advantage over Intel’s Core Ultra 7 165H

Although most benchmarks today focus on the multi-core capabilities of modern CPUs, single-core performance is still more important for the majority of users. It is crucial not only for most “simple” office tasks like surfing the web or navigating the OS, but also for gaming. And we’re sure that Apple is working hard to further penetrate this market.

But that’s not all.

The AI tsunami is coming. The next OS versions of both macOS and Windows will certainly include a lot of AI features.

And this is yet another situation where Apple chips excel because they are designed in a way that allows them to easily run AI models locally (thanks to having huge amounts of memory that can be used as VRAM), albeit much slower compared to NVIDIA GPUs.

So…don’t be surprised when you see the stock returns of Apple vs Intel over the last five years:

Intel is having a hard time. Can they turn things around?

Is Apple the undisputed king now?

Thankfully, no. Actually, the market will get hotter very soon because the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is ready to be unleashed. And while it still falls behind in the first single-core tests, it shows mighty performance in multi-core. Check out our Apple M4 vs Snapdragon X Elite – The Next-Gen CPU Battle comparison.

Thanks to @lafaiel for the SC chart!