Alder Lake reviews are
out, and given recent
discussions on the topic I though it would be interesting to revisit this, this time with proper numbers in hand.
The bottom line is: yes, Alder Lake performance cores are faster than M1 performance cores... barely (by ~ 10%)... while consuming more than 10 times more power. In multi-core performance, the top of the line desktop i9 (8+8 cores, 24 threads) is up to 50% faster in integer workloads than M1 Max/Pro (8+2 cores, 10 threads), while consuming 6x as much power... and no performance advantage on SPEC fp workloads. But hey, Intel has overtaken Zen3... slightly... while still consuming 2x power on desktop. Thermally constrained i9 laptops will probably have 5% higher scores in single core compared to M1 chips (while revving up the fans like crazy) and likely at least 20% in sustained workloads. Or maybe even more, if the 45W TDP is a hard sustained ceiling (which is probably not going to be).
This again illustrates that Apple did the right thing switching. There is no meaningful innovation happening in x86 world. Intel CPUs run hotter than ever and the promises that the new E-cores perform like Skylake at much lower power consumption levels were of course greatly exaggerated. Intel is squeezing out some more performance by literally cranking up the burner. And let's hope your workflow is parallel enough to properly schedule 24 asymmetric hardware threads...