Apple M1 processor turned out to be faster than Intel Core i9 even in tests run via x86 emulator
The first test results for the new Apple M1 chipset began to appear last week, and they turned out to be really impressive. Today the results of testing Apple M1 in Geekbench for the x86 platform, launched through the Rosetta 2 emulator, were published on the web. Even in such conditions, the chipset easily bypassed the Intel Core i9-10910 in single-core performance.
In the Geekbench x86 benchmark, launched through Rosetta 2, the Apple M1 chip in the MacBook Air scored 1,313 points in a single-core and 5888 points in a multi-core test. Here, the Apple processor clocks in at up to 2.8 GHz, while in the MacBook Pro and Mac mini it boasts a frequency of 3.2 GHz. This is probably due to the use of an active cooling system. It’s worth noting that application emulation in Rosetta 2 reduces performance by about 21-22 percent compared to native code execution.
Despite the performance degradation when running the benchmark through the emulator, the MacBook Air with M1 still outperforms all Intel-based Apple computers in the single-core test, including the 2020 27-inch iMac based on the 3.6GHz 10-core Core i9-10910 and Turbo frequency up to 5.0 GHz. This chip achieves 1251 points in single-core mode.
These tests once again confirm that Apple’s “first pancake” was not lumpy at all. And those who do not really believe in “synthetics” can try out the new product and find out the level of performance of the M1 chip tomorrow, when the first MacBook Air, Pro, and Mac mini fall into the hands of buyers.
