MBA M1, Surface Pro X and Ryzen 4650U Comparison

[mi7chy]

Fortunate to have some cool tech to play with, MBA M1, Surface Pro X and Lenovo Yoga 6 with Ryzen 4650U. Since they all have great battery life wanted to see how they compare in performance with 7zip v19.0 built-in benchmark. All devices charged up and running off of battery. Since Ryzen 4650U has wide CPU clock range from base 2.1GHz to 4GHz boost I set the BIOS to battery saving mode to make it run closer to base 2.1GHz. All running native version of 7zip v19.0 except for MBA M1 which doesn't have native version and has to run 7zip v19.0 32-bit through Rosetta/Crossover (64-bit version doesn't install). I let the devices run for a bit to warm up so focus on 'current speed' in KB/s.

MBA M1

Surface Pro X

Ryzen 4650U

 

[sdz]

What does it mean. Surface Pro X CPU also very fast it seems

 

[mi7chy]

What does it mean. Surface Pro X CPU also very fast it seems

File compression and decompression throughput in KB/s (higher the better). MBA M1 should be faster once it gets native 7zip version but in every day use they all feel about the same. Differences are in hardware features.

 

[sdz]

Are you pleased with what you see?

 

[Krevnik]

What does it mean. Surface Pro X CPU also very fast it seems

Couple things to note here:

* M1 was running x86, Surface was running arm64. So the M1 in this test is fighting with an arm tied behind its back.
* This is a single specific use case, so hard to extrapolate out to wider trends. It would be better to use a set of benchmarks rather than a single one. There’s a reason Geekbench uses a suite of performance tests in their CPU test.

That said, some things do show up. First, when looking at the Resulting rows, the Surface Pro comes in last. This isn’t surprising or new. The Ryzen comes in first, also not surprising or new. The M1’s efficiency cores are not performance beasts, being around 20-25% as fast as a performance core. So being generous to the M1, it’s got ~5 performance cores worth of power in total. So eking out a small win for compression isn’t unexpected when competing against Rosetta.

That doesn’t explain the difference on decompress though. I’d have to dig into the 7-zip code to understand more, but it looks like there’s possibly some SIMD at work on x86 during decompress? SIMD isn’t available in Rosetta, and ARM SIMD in general is in a state of catch-up with x86 here, which would explain the 2x difference in decompress while compress is very close.

 

[mi7chy]

Are you pleased with what you see?

They're all fine for every day use with multi-day battery life.

MBA M1 is a step in the right direction with MacOS running on ARM for someone who needs a full desktop browser with extension support that iPadOS doesn't provide.

Surface Pro X has best hardware and form factor versatility. Transforms from light weight 1.7# tablet with convenient kickstand to 2.3# laptop with keyboard cover+pen. Has the best webcam with WWAN for video conferencing on the go. Storage is user upgradable.

Lenovo Yoga 6 is best bang for the buck at $500 when on sale. 0.1# heavier than MBA M1 but can flip the screen over for tablet mode with touch and pen inputs (pen sold separately) along with fingerprint login. Has wide configurable CPU performance and full software compatibility with Windows, Linux, etc. Looking forward to testing version with Ryzen 5000U APU.

All depends on your use case.