I will repeat:
"On Geekbench I gave up after scrolling a few pages."
SPEC doesn't seem to have easily browsable results, but we can find the Cinebench 2024 ones easy and guess what? Apple isn't at the top. Not even close: https://www.cgdirector.com/cinebench-2024-scores/
For Apple you need to go to https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
Then compare numbers by hand I assume.
Though what I would love is compile-time vs. $ (as mentioned, I'm a software developer). The 7950x is $500 and a very fast SSD is $400, fast 64gb is $200, very good board is $400 so I get a very fast dev machine for ~$1700.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024)
Processor: Intel Core Ultra 9 185
Memory: 32GB
Cargo Build: 31.85 seconds
Cargo Build --Release: 1 minute 4 seconds
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024)
Processor: AMD Ryzen 8945HS / Radeon 780M
Memory: 32GB
Cargo Build: 29.48 seconds
Cargo Build --Release: 34.78 seconds
ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024)
Processor: Intel Core i9 14900HX
Memory: 64GB
Cargo Build: 21.27 seconds
Cargo Build --Release: 28.69 seconds
Apple MacBook Pro (M3 Pro 11 core)
Processor: M3 Pro 11 core
Cargo Build: 13.70 seconds
Cargo Build --Release: 21.65 seconds
Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3 Max)
Processor: M3 Max
Cargo Build: 12.70 seconds
Cargo Build --Release: 15.90 seconds
Firefox Mobile build:
M1 Air: 95 seconds AMD 5900hx: 138 seconds Source: https://youtu.be/QSPFx9R99-o?si=oG_nuV4oiMxjv4F-&t=505
Javascript builds
Here, Alex compares the M1 Air running Parallels emulating Linux vs native Linux on AMD Zen2 mobile. The M1 is still significantly faster. https://youtu.be/tgS1P5bP7dA?si=Xz2JQmgoYp3IQGCX&t=183
Docker builds
Here, Alex runs Docker ARM64 vs AMD x86 images and the M1 Air built the image 2x faster than an AMD Zen2 mobile. https://youtu.be/sWav0WuNMNs?si=IgxeMoJqpQaZv2nc&t=366
Anyways, Alex has a ton more videos on coding performance between Apple, Intel and AMD.
Lastly, this is not M1 vs Zen2 but it's M2 vs Zen4.
LLVM build test
M2 Max: 377 seconds Ryzen 9 7940S: 826 seconds
Would love to see a 7950x/64gb/SSD5 comparison, perhaps (see https://www.octobench.com/ for SSD impact on Go compilation) he will create one in the future (channel bookmarked). But would I still need to use a laptop, I would probably switch back to Apple (have an iMac Pro as decoration standing in the shelf, was my last Apple dev machine).
The $5000 16 Pro looks great as a machine. When still working at eBay, the nice thing was one always got the max specced machine as a developer back in the days - so that would probably be it. Real nice one.
[Edit]
Someone suggested looking at Geekbench Clang, which brought some insights for my desktop usage:
(it looks like top CPUs are more or less the same, ~15% difference)
"Randomly" picking
M2 Ultra 233.9 Klines/sec
7950x 230.3 Klines/sec
14900K 215.3 Klines/sec
M3 Max 196.5 Klines/secSpeed vs. $ is of course a different story than pure speed; kinda hard to capture in a number I guess.
Most Go projects compile more than fast enough even on my 7 year old i5, although there are exceptions (mostly crummy hyper-overengineered projects).
Note: M3 Max is a 40w CPU maximum, while 7950x is a 230w CPU maximum. The stated 170w max is usually deceptive from AMD.
Source for 7950x power consumption: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17641/lighter-touch-cpu-power....
Note that the M3 Max leads in ST in Cinebench 2024 and 2-3x better in perf/watt. It does lose in MT in Cinebench 2024 but wins in GB6 MT.
Cinebench is usually x86 favored as it favors AVX over NEON as well as having extremely long dependency chains, bottlenecked by caches and partly memory. This is why you get a huge SMT yield from it and why it scales very highly if you throw lots of "weak" cores at it.
This is why Cinebench is a poor CPU benchmark in general as the vast majority of applications do not behave like Cinebench.
Geekbench and SPEC are more predictive of CPU speed.
Here's a content creation benchmark (note that for some tasks a GPU is also used):
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/mac-vs-pc-for-con...
Meanwhile, Geekbench does run real world workloads using real world libraries. You can look at subtest scores to to see "real world" results.
Pugetsystem benchmarks are pretty good. It shows how Apple SoCs punch above their weight in real world applications over benchmarks.
Regardless, they are comparing desktop machines using as much as 1500 watts vs a laptop that maxes out at 80 watts and Apple is still competing well. The wins in the PC world are usually due to beefy Nvidia GPUs that are applications have historically optimized for.
That's why I originally said ARM is leading AMD - specifically Apple ARM chips.