Intel's New Chip Matches Apple Silicon in Efficiency—Dell's XPS 13 Proves It
Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
In a surprising turn, Intel's Core 5 320 chip in Dell's XPS 13 has matched Apple's M-series in energy efficiency, according to benchmarks by Jeff Geerling. The Dell scored 6.21 Gflops/W on Linpack, beating the MacBook Neo's 5.38, and even outperformed M4 and M3 Mac Studios. This challenges the notion that ARM's architecture is inherently more power-efficient, suggesting that chip design matters more than instruction set. The XPS also matches the MacBook in idle and browsing efficiency, marking a significant milestone for x86.
Some people have been saying for a few years now that ARM’s observed advantages in power consumption have more to do with the chips themselves than the instruction architecture, and it looks like the Core 5 320 chip in this Dell proves them right when it comes to x86.
- anticorporate
Rather than the Hackaday article, which doesn't add anything to the original, here's Jeff's actual video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2B7oI0FYqo
and post:
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/excited-for-intel-eff...
- 3eb7988a1663
> no headphone jack
I am fully old man screaming at the clouds here, but what does this cost for Dell to include? I insist on a wired headset - telecommunications already barely works, I don't want to add wireless+battery problems into the mix.
- therealmarv
In Germany the Dell XPS 13 2026 is 56% more expensive (over 1000 Euros) than the MacBook Neo (below 700). So the claim does not hold World wide, maybe only in US on local prices.
- bhouston
The improved efficiency is great!
The Apple Neo was still 2x faster for graphics and around 1.4x faster for single core cpu. And remember the Apple Neo is running an iPhone CPU that is much slower than the M series.
It is strange that this chip is so crazy efficient though. I would love to know the details of exactly why it is? It seems like some new tech or process?
I do want 1.5x battery life for free out of my next laptop. Who wouldn’t?
- dimask
Nice and organised work!
My only reservation wrt the core of it is that it tests the cpus on a matrix operations task, and power efficiency in this case refers specifically to doing matrix operations. This is fine if that's the kind of task one wants to optimise for, but it does not necessarily translate to general energy efficiency for a broader spectrum of tasks that most people may do most of the time.
And thus, if one wants to optimise for matrix operations, wouldn't it make sense to use apple's accelerate framework instead of blis/openblas (I think you used blis?)? I compiled hpl to use accelerate [0] on my m1 max (macbook), and ran it with settings almost identical to the original m1 max settings [1]. I get 422 Gflops vs 264 Gflops in m1 max mac studio (docker) [2]. My average draw (using a wall power meter, but not interfaced with computer to keep a log, just me looking at it) is around 55-57W (probably less because it peaked at 57W but the last half was getting around 52W). With the most conservative estimate of 57W, this gave a 7.4 Gflops/W which is second place, just below the m4 mac mini in the benchmark table. The m1 max in the original did 4 Gflops/W (at 66W).
So tbh I do not really trust the conclusion of the benchmark page, except if I miss sth. It is quite nice, organised work anyway.
[0] https://github.com/tycho/hpl/blob/master/setup/Make.MacOSX_A...
[1] I just fixed the p:q ratio, which was prob not really meant to be 1:10 there, I assume, also judging from […]
- JSR_FDED
Does it maintain the same performance when running only on battery?
- miladyincontrol
Intel wins, in HPL FP64.
Its a stretch to take a single metric and apply it's outcome broadly to the chip's general functionality. Especially when by large the A18 chip with half the power requirement beats it in almost every other benchmark.
- bearjaws
Depends on whether the OS actually puts the laptop or sleep or not.