Apple MacBook Air 2020 M1 Benchmarks: Should you get 7 or 8 GPU cores?

[Redaktion]

The new MacBook Air 2020 is equipped with Apple's own M1 processor by default, but there are two GPU versions with 7 or 8 cores. We have both units in our editorial office and had the chance to compare the two iGPUs. Is the 8-core model worth the additional price?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-M1-Benchmarks-Should-you-get-7-or-8-GPU-cores.506105.0.html

[miran]

please include comparison between m1 pro and m1 air (8 gpu)
i am interested into how much does a fan contribute to real game performance in the case of m1.
i am guessing the air is severely limited by the estimated 10w tdp passive cooling, while the pro will have estimated 20-24w tdp based on anandtech mac mini article.
then i am also interested if 20-24w on the pro is still a bottleneck for the m1

[uk]

Can you please devote a section to the performance of emulated x86/x64 apps, and how they perform. Perhaps even try some old applications /games to see backward compatibility and performance.
Thank you.

[Faiq]

please include comparison between m1 pro and m1 air (8 gpu)
i am interested into how much does a fan contribute to real game performance in the case of m1.
i am guessing the air is severely limited by the estimated 10w tdp passive cooling, while the pro will have estimated 20-24w tdp based on anandtech mac mini article.
then i am also interested if 20-24w on the pro is still a bottleneck for the m1

max tech had compared them , go check his youtube channel

[John Brown]

please compare with the ThinkPad T14 AMD top end version for a variety of real world tasks, not just benchmarks, e.g. encoding, productivity workflows, gaming, etc.

[sunsetlandset]

Max Tech compared the Air 7 core vs the Pro 8 core. I am also curious to see the 8 core Air vs the 8 core Pro.

[Rick]

You should definitely run as many tests as possible in emulated mode. Also, being this unit passively cooled, I expect there will be a huge difference between peak and sustained performance, worth to check it.

[vrdev]

An early native version of Blender was posted on Twitter by @stefan_3d, a primary contributor to that version.

Rendering a common test scene using the GPU would be a good way to test both relative power and sustained performance. I can't remember if you can render using CPU+GPU with Blender, but that'd be the ultimate test.

[RolandRoy]

Can you comment about previously mentioned BigSur privacy/spying issues?

[SnappyJoe]

In your macbook air review please conclude with suggestions as to whether to get the 8core 512 gb macbook air or the 256gb pro?Having never used the touch bar I am not sure if it is useful or a problem which is prone to hanging, accidental touches so recommendations on that would help.
Please also comment on the difference for those looking at ms office productivity tasks with plenty of word, excel, ppts, chrome tabs and pdfs open at the same time. Most reviews focus on video editing which is only a very small portion of actual buyers

[miran]

please include comparison between m1 pro and m1 air (8 gpu)
i am interested into how much does a fan contribute to real game performance in the case of m1.
i am guessing the air is severely limited by the estimated 10w tdp passive cooling, while the pro will have estimated 20-24w tdp based on anandtech mac mini article.
then i am also interested if 20-24w on the pro is still a bottleneck for the m1

max tech had compared them , go check his youtube channel

well I only found this video:
v=CmMOJTs7Pu8
which is not exactly what i'm looking for

they both perform great in designed benchmarks, but we can see in this topic, that while in the benchmark it's performing extremly well, the actual game of borderlands then is below radeon pro 560x. While this is still impressive, I am wonder if the m1 pro can do alot more.
Designed benchmarks are probably designed to not stress the cpu at all, and i'm wondering if now an actual game starts to limit the gpu more due to required cpu load.
Also metal seems to be very favorable for the M1.

[Gunnarol]

Hi!

Question :
Please test external displays / preferably 2 monitors, preferably at least 2k res / how them works.

Thanks!

[_MT_]

Also metal seems to be very favorable for the M1.

Which isn't surprising given that Metal is Apple's API. Interestingly, M1 (8 core) managed to match the 560X on high settings. The higher the settings, the smaller the gap. Of course, it's not playable on those settings. Who knows what's going on there. The game was emulated which is far from ideal. You can definitely expect better performance from native applications.

[Robin_From_The_Hood]

What's the point of this article if you didn't include any power draw measurements & temps of the whole SoC? Well, measuring the temp seems kinda impossible right now but as of power draw, you can do it in 2 ways:

• Either subtract every component's max power draw (besides the SoC, of course) - when almost every component is at 100% use - from the total power draw of the whole laptop and you'll end up with only SoC's power draw when the cpu, igpu and ram are being simultaneously 100% used. This is how i ended up with ~20W on the whole SoC.


• From running that terminal command (look it up from those biased-reviewers that others already mentioned here), which gave results that were pretty close to my calculations. From a video on youtube, the MBP 13 was drawing ~30W from the wall socket during CBR23. From another video, just the cpu was drawing ~13W (with that command), the i-gpu (8core version) around 8W. The ram (depending a bit on the amount) ~2-3W. In total you're getting ~22W on the whole SoC.

Please confirm this somehow, or just measure the power draw and add it in your full review. I hope that your review will stand out from those weak "reviews" that youtube has been plagued with. Those are straight up terrible.

[Rick]

Would love to know as I'm working out which spec to buy: My 2019 base model MacBook Pro 13 (8GB RAM / 8th gen Core i5 1.4GHz) regularly freezes due to memory pressure with my workflow which is: all Office 356 apps open, several Safari Tabs, several Chrome tabs Acrobat Reader & MS Teams video calls on top. I was going to buy a 16GB one of these, the internet seems full of videos about how much this machine manages to run in just 8GB. Before I blow the extra £200, could I manage in 8GB?