8 ms·

Isn't Geekbench always been very biased towards Apple silicon?

by pt_PT_guy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
steve1977 4y ago
Well, both are based on ARM designs anyway. I think some future Snapdragon will even get manufactured by TSMC.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  Thought chunks of them already were?
- aeadio 4y ago
  The Snapdragon in the S23 Ultra is already manufactured on TSMC 4 nm.
  - steve1977 4y ago
    Ah ok, that could well be, thx!
hs86 4y ago
It is biased towards passively cooled CPUs. It's dev once stated in an interview that they tried to recreate the typical bursty usage patterns of mobile phones, and therefore the added little pauses between the tasks.
mdasen 4y ago
The evidence is that Geekbench isn't biased towards Apple Silicon given that other benchmarks agree. For example, AnandTech runs a bunch of SPEC CPU benchmarks and found that the Apple A15 was a lot faster than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Exynos 2100 (all 2021 processors): https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo.... You can check the second page for graphics benchmarks. Apple has been making their own CPU cores for a while while Qualcomm and Samsung are both using the ARM-designed cores. In the case of the above benchmarks, both the Snapdragon and Exynos are using the Cortex-X1 cores from ARM. Google's Tensor processor also uses ARM's X1 cores. Newer Snapdragon processors like the 8 Gen 1 and 8 Gen 2 have used X2 and X3 cores. Apple's ability to produce their own CPU designs has been a big win for them, especially for single-core performance (really important for the majority of what people do with their phones including web/javascript) and for power efficiency (really important for the vast majority of time when users might be using their devices, but not in a taxing way). Apple's custom CPU cores give them a real advantage.
GeekyBear 4y ago
No, but there is evidence that Geekbench doesn't do a good job of measuring sustained performance. This video from Geekerwan takes more of a sustained performance / thermal throttling perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY
bitwize 4y ago
No, Apple stuff is just that much better.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nickpeterson 4y ago
  I love this response because no matter if I read it as sarcastic or not it’s still funny.
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    After M1 success, what’s funny?
    - nickpeterson 4y ago
      It’s just the way he tells the story, ya’know funny
gjsman-1000 4y ago
People who don't like the results always like to claim that... but it's awfully hard to find proof. Though, part of it I think may just be Geekbench's design as a microbenchmark that doesn't do long-term strain or attempt real-world tasks.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > but it's awfully hard to find proof. > Geekbench began as a benchmark for Mac OS X and Windows and was created by John Poole who ran the now-defunct Geek Patrol website, which reviewed hardware and software designed for Macs, and featured editorials and interviews of interest to the Mac community. [0] Basically, imagine an Nvidia enthusiast writing a system-agnostic GPU benchmark. I'm not as militant about rejecting Geekbench as some others, but you can't pretend the correlation is hard to make. Regardless though, it's not hard to see Apple being 1-2 years ahead of Samsung's output. If the iPhone is being manufactured on recent TSMC silicon, it will annihilate anything Samsung's fabs are capable of producing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geekbench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geekbench
  - aeadio 4y ago
    The S23 Ultra has a Qualcomm CPU (Snapdragon 8 gen 2), which is manufactured on TSMC 4 nm. The iPhone 12 uses an Apple A14, manufactured on TSMC 5 nm. This is more about Qualcomm being uncompetitive performance-wise, which has been true pretty much since the start of the smartphone wars.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Interesting! I assumed it was the annual Exynos rag, but I guess I thought wrong. Definitely seems like the onus falls on Qualcomm this time.
      - aeadio 4y ago
        Samsung has consistently manufactured their Galaxy S series in two different versions -- a Qualcomm one, and an Exynos one (Samsung's in-house CPU division), with different geographic markets getting different options. America has always gotten the Qualcomm version (which has consistently been faster), but other markets have seen shifts over time. The S23 Ultra went Qualcomm-only for the first time. In the year running up, they've been slowly expanding Qualcomm to more markets instead of Exynos. It seems like they're gradually phasing out Exynos, at least from the higher-end phones -- since they've always struggled to produce an SoC competitive with even Qualcomm, which is already behind the curve compared to Apple.

Isn't Geekbench always been very biased towards Apple silicon?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

steve1977 4y ago

Well, both are based on ARM designs anyway. I think some future Snapdragon will even get manufactured by TSMC.

sumtechguy 4y ago
Thought chunks of them already were?
aeadio 4y ago
The Snapdragon in the S23 Ultra is already manufactured on TSMC 4 nm.
- steve1977 4y ago
  Ah ok, that could well be, thx!

hs86 4y ago

It is biased towards passively cooled CPUs. It's dev once stated in an interview that they tried to recreate the typical bursty usage patterns of mobile phones, and therefore the added little pauses between the tasks.

mdasen 4y ago

The evidence is that Geekbench isn't biased towards Apple Silicon given that other benchmarks agree. For example, AnandTech runs a bunch of SPEC CPU benchmarks and found that the Apple A15 was a lot faster than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Exynos 2100 (all 2021 processors): https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo.... You can check the second page for graphics benchmarks. Apple has been making their own CPU cores for a while while Qualcomm and Samsung are both using the ARM-designed cores. In the case of the above benchmarks, both the Snapdragon and Exynos are using the Cortex-X1 cores from ARM. Google's Tensor processor also uses ARM's X1 cores. Newer Snapdragon processors like the 8 Gen 1 and 8 Gen 2 have used X2 and X3 cores. Apple's ability to produce their own CPU designs has been a big win for them, especially for single-core performance (really important for the majority of what people do with their phones including web/javascript) and for power efficiency (really important for the vast majority of time when users might be using their devices, but not in a taxing way). Apple's custom CPU cores give them a real advantage.

GeekyBear 4y ago

No, but there is evidence that Geekbench doesn't do a good job of measuring sustained performance. This video from Geekerwan takes more of a sustained performance / thermal throttling perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY

bitwize 4y ago

No, Apple stuff is just that much better.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nickpeterson 4y ago
I love this response because no matter if I read it as sarcastic or not it’s still funny.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  After M1 success, what’s funny?
  - nickpeterson 4y ago
    It’s just the way he tells the story, ya’know funny

gjsman-1000 4y ago

People who don't like the results always like to claim that... but it's awfully hard to find proof. Though, part of it I think may just be Geekbench's design as a microbenchmark that doesn't do long-term strain or attempt real-world tasks.

smoldesu 4y ago
> but it's awfully hard to find proof. > Geekbench began as a benchmark for Mac OS X and Windows and was created by John Poole who ran the now-defunct Geek Patrol website, which reviewed hardware and software designed for Macs, and featured editorials and interviews of interest to the Mac community. [0] Basically, imagine an Nvidia enthusiast writing a system-agnostic GPU benchmark. I'm not as militant about rejecting Geekbench as some others, but you can't pretend the correlation is hard to make. Regardless though, it's not hard to see Apple being 1-2 years ahead of Samsung's output. If the iPhone is being manufactured on recent TSMC silicon, it will annihilate anything Samsung's fabs are capable of producing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geekbench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geekbench
- aeadio 4y ago
  The S23 Ultra has a Qualcomm CPU (Snapdragon 8 gen 2), which is manufactured on TSMC 4 nm. The iPhone 12 uses an Apple A14, manufactured on TSMC 5 nm. This is more about Qualcomm being uncompetitive performance-wise, which has been true pretty much since the start of the smartphone wars.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Interesting! I assumed it was the annual Exynos rag, but I guess I thought wrong. Definitely seems like the onus falls on Qualcomm this time.
    - aeadio 4y ago
      Samsung has consistently manufactured their Galaxy S series in two different versions -- a Qualcomm one, and an Exynos one (Samsung's in-house CPU division), with different geographic markets getting different options. America has always gotten the Qualcomm version (which has consistently been faster), but other markets have seen shifts over time. The S23 Ultra went Qualcomm-only for the first time. In the year running up, they've been slowly expanding Qualcomm to more markets instead of Exynos. It seems like they're gradually phasing out Exynos, at least from the higher-end phones -- since they've always struggled to produce an SoC competitive with even Qualcomm, which is already behind the curve compared to Apple.