Comment by varispeed
11 hours ago
Why people are excited about Intel barely matching already outdated CPUs of the competition?
Shouldn't we be concerned that the company instead of aiming for the leap is producing legacy hardware destined for landfill?
Wake me up when Intel produces something groundbreaking.
Comments like this one remind me of all the people saying "China can't invent things, they can only copy the US" 20 years ago.
Like, we're comparing a new Dell to a Mac released only 4 months ago. How did you feel about the Mac Neo then, and now? Is it also legacy hardware destined for the landfill?
Not only that, the efficiency (FP64, HPL) is also beating all the M4/M3/M2/M1 systems I've tested besides the M4 Mac mini: https://github.com/geerlingguy/top500-benchmark#results
I think the bigger news is Intel's made a chip that isn't just pushing clocks to hit some performance number, they've actually tuned clocks for efficiency... which also leads to much better battery life.
And the fan on the system in the original article[1] also allows the Intel system to run substantially faster for longer tasks (where the Neo thermally saturates and has to stay throttled).
(The iGPU is another matter... sadly still a bit lacking.)
I'm hoping Intel makes a follow-up to the N100-series chips with just four of their newer low power E-cores.
[1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/excited-for-intel-eff...
Efficiency is one thing.
Efficiency and performance is another.
We've long known that pushing clock speeds results in diminishing efficiency, so it's about time we see Intel stop pushing the clocks (and power) so hard that the chip melts down and the battery drains quickly.
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Ok so Intel managed to make a 20W TDP chip that gets 6.x Gflops/W. Call me back when they’ve got a chip that still gets 6.x Gf/W with a 200W 1,200Gflop package like the M3 next on your list. This little fellow is only 50% more efficient than my aging M1 Max!
It’s great that they are making progress. Competition is good. They certainly need good news right now. I have exactly one intel cpu in my house in a NUC I got off eBay and it’s about to be replaced by my M4 mini. My other x86 are Zen (threadripper, 5800x3d, 5950s).
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I don’t think it’s completely unfair to say that the Neo is based on a chip that was first announced in Sep 2024 while the Intel chip is from Apr 2026.
Also, I think the battery life most people are practically interested in is more like running (close to) idle and less like the number of Watts spent when running maxed out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Arm chips still win on that metric…
Plus it’s a phone chip. Yeah it’s used in the Neo but it’s no M5.
It’s good Intel got to this point, but you can’t declare them tied with Apple. They qualified for the real race, which us great, but they're not going to win with that chip.
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> Comments like this one remind me of all the people saying "China can't invent things, they can only copy the US" 20 years ago.
We still get these comments. Now about AI. China can only distill and are still years behind. Well well...
Really curious to see how ByteDance’s 10T model works out.
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If Intel is competitive with Apple again, this should be good for the customer.
"competing" is not the same thing as "competitive". Apple is 1-2 years ahead. If they remain so indefinitely into the future then Intel is not competitive.