Other A11 vs desktop CPUs... actual comparison?

[heov]

Hi all,

We've all seen the great benchmark scores the A11 produces... besting even some MacBooks.

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-benchmarks-fastest-phone,review-4676.html

But we also know that this doesn't necessarily mean it's "faster" in use than a MacBook.

So my question is, has anyone done real world benchmarks comparing the A11 to an i5? For example, in Tom's guide, they encode a 4K video on various smartphones. My question is, how long does it take the MacBook to encode the same video?! Why isn't that compared?

What about FPS with the same video? Can't 3DMark play the same video and benchmark it? Or the same game could be played, if such a cross platform game exists.

Anyone have comparisons like that? I'd be very interested!

 

[thecore762]

People buy the bs they read online about the A11 chip being comparable to a desktop.

A desktop can multitask several things at once, a desktop cpu can play video games at higher resolution with proper gpu. If you put an apple a12 it’s not gonna even run it. I’m honestly tired of seeing people comparing a smartphone cpu to a desktop cpu. It will destroy the smart phone cpu when running apps.

 

[eyoungren]

People buy the bs they read online about the A11 chip being comparable to a desktop.

A desktop can multitask several things at once, a desktop cpu can play video games at higher resolution with proper gpu. If you put an apple a12 it’s not gonna even run it. I’m honestly tired of seeing people comparing a smartphone cpu to a desktop cpu. It will destroy the smart phone cpu when running apps.

^This.

Also, an iPhone won't give you multiple displays. My work Mac runs three monitors. Don't know an iPhone out there that can do that.

 

[thecore762]

^This.

Also, an iPhone won't give you multiple displays. My work Mac runs three monitors. Don't know an iPhone out there that can do that.

Two different animals that do different things, unfortunately people think Apple made a huge breakthrough that will replace an actual desktop/laptop...

 

[theMaccer]

I dont know how the benchmark works, but can the A11 chip drive MacOS?

 

[eyoungren]

Two different animals that do different things, unfortunately people think Apple made a huge breakthrough that will replace an actual desktop/laptop...

Right, two different animals.

But some people seem to think that because one *might* be faster than the other you'd use that instead of the other.

No way in hell am I getting 28-32 page newspapers out the door to our printer using whataver app that may or may not be equivalent to InDesign on an iPhone no matter how fast the iPhone processor.

 

[RiddlaBronc]

Lulz people been eating this bs since way before the a11. Guellible folks are out there.

 

[ronincse]

So how are they not valid comparisons? We're talking about chips that process 1s and 0s here. Chances are if the A11 is faster in benchmarks than an i5 it could run a desktop just fine and there's no reason adding extra monitors and multitasking would change that. The only reason the a11 might not do multiple monitors out of the box is due to the gpu not being designed for that but that is easily fixed by changing the gpu for that usage or pairing it with an AMD or nVidia gpu. Other changes for a larger computer would include making it more powerful and changing it's power saving features.

If this a11 is faster than an i5 then yes it would get out a 30 page newspaper faster.

Let's not forget that Apple is most likely planning on switching all their computers to in house chips in the near future as well so this is probably just the start of that.

 

[adcx64]

So how are they not valid comparisons? We're talking about chips that process 1s and 0s here. Chances are if the A11 is faster in benchmarks than an i5 it could run a desktop just fine and there's no reason adding extra monitors and multitasking would change that. The only reason the a11 might not do multiple monitors out of the box is due to the gpu not being designed for that but that is easily fixed by changing the gpu for that usage or pairing it with an AMD or nVidia gpu. Other changes for a larger computer would include making it more powerful and changing it's power saving features.

If this a11 is faster than an i5 then yes it would get out a 30 page newspaper faster.

Let's not forget that Apple is most likely planning on switching all their computers to in house chips in the near future as well so this is probably just the start of that.

Thank you. Geekbench IS a real benchmark to see scores across different platforms. Direct comparisons are fine because this is literally the same test ran on both systems.

The A11 Bionic IS faster than the mobile i5.

If you had a desktop version of an A11 you CAN produce serious work. Performance wise this phone does in fact beat the i5

 

[heov]

So... back to my initial question... No one has comparisons, other than various benchmarks?

I fully understand what a desktop class CPU brings to the table. My question is, can an iPhone 8 encode a video while being in a Skype call faster than a MacBook can, for example?

I'm looking for numbers! Will the thermals kick in on the iPhone 8? How comparable are they, for at least these specific, limited tasks.

I'm not saying the A11 is "faster." I get desktop CPUs have advantages other than brute calculations. But I think it'd be worthwhile to see where and when the iPhone actually CAN hang with a desktop CPU, other than synthetic benchmarks.

 

[FelixDerKater]

Thank you. Geekbench IS a real benchmark to see scores across different platforms. Direct comparisons are fine because this is literally the same test ran on both systems.

The A11 Bionic IS faster than the mobile i5.

If you had a desktop version of an A11 you CAN produce serious work. Performance wise this phone does in fact beat the i5

Exactly! That's the whole purpose of the benchmarking systems.

 

[rui no onna]

The A11 chip most likely has hardware-accelerated HEVC encoding. Would probably need a laptop that's at most 1-2 years old to match the speed of the A11. Anything older and doing brute force/software encoding (unless it's like a multi-core monster or something), the A11 would probably win.

 

[bopajuice]

Interesting comparison, but lopsided. I have to ask would you rather use a computer while squinting at a 5" screen, or enjoy the content on a 4k 32" curved screen?

I am certainly not going to edit in FCP using my phone.

 

[Feenician]

It’s a perfectly legitimate benchmark. No matter what platform it’s run on it does the same work, the same calculations, comes up with the same answers. People telling you otherwise just don’t like the answer. There’s really only two things you could pick on. You could say (without having any evidence for it) that it may be more optimized for ARM and you could point out that mobile form factors can’t sustain that speed for as long as laptops or desktops (but you’d be ignoring the fact that if versions of these processor were put in laptops and desktops they wouldn’t be either)

Comments from the founder of geekbench in this article.
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-8-benchmarks-fastest-phone,review-4676.html

 

[mwhals]

There is no way any smartphone can come close to my 6 core Intel CPU with 64 GB of RAM in the machine. It is just laughable.

 

[Feenician]

There is no way any smartphone can come close to my 6 core Intel CPU with 64 GB of RAM in the machine. It is just laughable.

Who said it did?

For one thing those benchmarks don’t really stress ram so “MUH RAM IS BIGGER” isn’t really relevant. For another they’re passively cooled in a tiny case so if you want to compare let’s see how your processor fares in an iPhone case.

 

[mwhals]

Who said it did?

For one thing those benchmarks don’t really stress ram so “MUH RAM IS BIGGER” isn’t really relevant. For another they’re passively cooled in a tiny case so if you want to compare let’s see how your processor fares in an iPhone case.

It would not fit in an iPhone case, nor does an iPhone have enough power to run it, LOL. Apples and oranges.

 

[Feenician]

It would not fit in an iPhone case, LOL.

Yes, quite. Not with a whacking great heatsink and fan on it especially. Kinda puts this results into an even starker perspective.

 

[rui no onna]

What about FPS with the same video? Can't 3DMark play the same video and benchmark it? Or the same game could be played, if such a cross platform game exists.

GFXBench GL, I wouldn't be surprised if the A11 trounces Intel's integrated graphics here. However, adding a discrete graphics card is an available option and I doubt the A11 is competitive with NVIDIA's and AMD's mid-range or faster.

Quite frankly, web browsing on the 2017 iPad Pro 9.7 is faster than on a Core i5-3570 using Firefox. On Chrome, they're comparable.

 

[orthorim]

There is no way any smartphone can come close to my 6 core Intel CPU with 64 GB of RAM in the machine. It is just laughable.

Famous last words...

A11 has 6 cores and is optimized for a small package and ultra low TDP. Even at that, it's not that much slower than the Intel monster.

If Apple decided to do it, they could make an XL version with 30W TDP and larger caches and it'd probably already even with no other changes outperform the Intel chips. My guess is not by all that much, but still. And this is today. A12 might be a different story still, if they don't hit the 3GHz barrier.

Processor speed of the A ... series chips still follows Moore's law, while Intel processors have stagnated at least since 2012. My MacBook Pro from 2012 is still faster than some lower end configuration MacBook Pros shipping in 2018 - that's not moore's law, that's gradual and very small improvements over the years. So overlay the curves and there can only be one outcome.

I am guessing once Apple gets wind of a performance delta large enough, say 30%, they will dump Intel and switch notebooks to their own chips. They've done it before and iOS is already running on ARM and sharing lots of code with OS X, so switching processor architecture will not be as big of a deal as it was switching Mac OS from PowerPC to Intel way back when (I'm old enough to remember!)

 

[JPack]

The reason you won’t see Apple switch to ARM for Mac is because x86 has 40 years of software development history and Apple still has less than 10% market share. Programs are developed for x86 first and foremost.

The performance penalty is about 50% when ARM emulates x86. There are already Qualcomm notebooks that run Windows ARM. They don’t sell well nor perform well.

ARM would need to perform twice as fast as x86 just to make up for that penalty. It makes no sense for Apple to switch if performance is only equal.

One of the reasons why Apple application processors catch up so fast to Intel is becuase Apple used to be behind in process technology. Now that Apple is on the leading edge process 7nm, the gains will be architectural alone. IPC gains will be down to 10% or so with each new generation unlike the A4 through A10 boom.

 

[Janichsan]

Quite frankly, web browsing on the 2017 iPad Pro 9.7 is faster than on a Core i5-3570 using Firefox. On Chrome, they're comparable.

That actually tells more about Firefox's performance than about the CPU's.

Processor speed of the A ... series chips still follows Moore's law, while Intel processors have stagnated at least since 2012.

That's because Apple's CPUs came from very far behind. The A11 has about the same transistor count as a four year old Intel CPU.

The main reason why Intel's (and not only theirs) processors stagnated in the last years is because they are closing in to the limit of what the laws of physics allow. ARM CPUs will hit the same limitations soon enough.

 

[rui no onna]

That actually tells more about Firefox's performance than about the CPU's.

True. That was posted prior to upgrading to Firefox Quantum. Latest version of Firefox is much faster.

Granted, part of the issue was my work PC (4GB RAM, 32-bit Win7). On a PC with similar CPU, 16GB RAM and 64-bit Win7, it didn't suffer the same slowdown and crashing.

 

[DNichter]

I would imagine it would be comparable to a base MacBook if the OS was optimized for an Apple chip. That may bring me back to a laptop/macOS if they make major changes to it.

 

[barjam]

It all all comes down to thermal dissipation. The iPhone chip is in fact faster than many intel chips, the benchmarks don’t lie. The phone can’t keep up that level of performance very long because it would get too hot.

If you put the chips on equal footing dissipation wise the arm chip would more than hold’s own. An Intel chip without a fan and large heat sink would crash almost instantly!

As far as Apple switching to arm on the desktop I don’t think it will happen. There are plenty of folks out there like me who require Intel compatibility. If they switched to ARM I would have no choice but to abandon the platform.