Apple M1 vs AMD Ryzen 7 4800H

The CPU comparison between the Apple M1 and the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H is certainly not entirely fair.

Because the Apple M1 is a processor with a TDP of 15 watts, while the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H is designed for 3 times the TDP (45 W). Nevertheless, with the Apple M1, Apple shows that it can also take the 15 watt processor with a 45 watt processor. In the benchmarks, the Apple M1 is up to 30 percent ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H in single-core load scenarios.

If all CPU cores are used to full capacity, the two processors are on the same footing. Both processors have a completely different structure. The Apple M1 relies on a big.LITTLE structure in which 4 small and very efficient CPU cores are combined with 4 large and powerful CPU cores. Smaller background tasks are completely calculated by the small cores, while at full load these can also join the large cores in a cluster when processing the resulting computing load.

This structure is typical of modern ARM processors. The Apple M1 clocks its CPU cores with 3.2 GHz, but the processor does not have a "turbo mode" for increasing the clock frequencies again. In the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H, however, AMD still relies on a classic CPU concept with 8 CPU cores of the same size.

These clock at 2.9 GHz and can dynamically increase their clock frequency up to 4.2 GHz (single core load) using a so-called "turbo mode". Both mobile processors have a powerful iGPU. The manufacturer uses a 7-core and an 8-core version in the Apple M1, which accordingly differ slightly in terms of performance (2.3 to 2.6 TFLOPS).

The AMD Radeon 7 Graphics (Renoir) of the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H has 7 execution units and 448 shaders. The computing power is lower at 1.4 TFLOPS, but it is also able to play older games smoothly in medium resolutions.