AMD Zen 4 Outperforms Apple M2 in Linux Tests

In Linux testing conducted by Phoronix, AMD's Zen 4 processors outperformed the Apple M2 chip. This was noticed when comparing two mobile Zen 4 processors - the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and the Ryzen 7 7840U - with the M2 chip under various Linux benchmarks.

The Apple M2 chip, housed in the MacBook Air 2022, features an eight-core Arm-based design incorporating four high-performance "Avalanche" cores and four energy-efficient "Blizzard" cores. The Avalanche cores reach 3.5 GHz, while the Blizzard cores can hit 2.4 GHz.

On the other hand, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is a high-performance Zen 4 processor from AMD designed for handheld gaming devices like the ROG Ally. It has an octa-core, 16-thread configuration with a 5.1 GHz boost clock. Another AMD processor, the Ryzen 7 7840U, used in the Acer Swift Edge 16 laptop, has a similar eight-core, 16-thread design with a peak frequency of 5.1 GHz.

According to the geometric means of the test results, the AMD Zen 4 processors significantly outperformed the Apple M2. In the balanced mode on the ROG Ally, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme delivered 28.7% higher performance compared to the Apple M2. The performance gap widens to 95.7% when switching the ROG Ally to performance mode. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 7840U outperformed the Apple M2 by 75.8%.

Despite the impressive results, there are several reasons why the comparison might not be entirely fair. In particular, there is a difference in cooling and the fact that the Apple M2 was running on Asahi Linux instead of its native macOS, which is better optimized for the M2 chip.