Question Apple's A12 outperforming desktop processors

[eggyrepublic]

According to benchmarks, an A12 performs similar to an i7 7700K. People often say benchmarks aren't accurate, but why? In the end, didn't the A12 manage to perform calculations as fast as an i7 7700K?

Anyways, if I were to run a Blender animation render on the A12 and the i7 7700K, would the time be similar?

The main thing is that the A12 is 5 watts, while the i7 7700K is 95 watts. That is a difference of 19 times. That is ridiculous, considering the A12 has 6.9 billion transistors, more than most desktop processors. How is this possible?

 

[jimmysmitty]

The biggest issue in comparing these is things such as OS, you can't run iOS on an i7 7700K, which alone invalidates results. Especially since the A12 lives in an enclosed environment with hardware and software built around it.

The performance results would really depend too. While the A12 may be able to perform as well in certain situations there are others I doubt it would be able to handle. The biggest benefit to the i7 would be multitasking. With the A12 it handles one task at a time. When you switch apps it typically puts them to sleep allowing the CPU to focus on the application at hand.

As for the temps, look at the clock speeds of the CPUs and the designs. The A12 has 2 complex cores with 4 high efficiency cores, those are mainly for power benefits. The i7 has 4 high powered cores with SMT that are focused on performance over efficiency.

 

[hang-the-9]

According to benchmarks, an A12 performs similar to an i7 7700K. People often say benchmarks aren't accurate, but why? In the end, didn't the A12 manage to perform calculations as fast as an i7 7700K?

Anyways, if I were to run a Blender animation render on the A12 and the i7 7700K, would the time be similar?

The main thing is that the A12 is 5 watts, while the i7 7700K is 95 watts. That is a difference of 19 times. That is ridiculous, considering the A12 has 6.9 billion transistors, more than most desktop processors. How is this possible?

With current tech, a 5 watt CPU will not out-perform an i7, even one 2 generations old. What benchmarks did you look at? Are they comparing off the shelf software available for both platforms or just how long some calculation takes to do? There are often times where specialized processors can do some things better than other processors that are more general and work on non-optimized programs, but only in specific things.