> Why haven’t AMD/Intel been able to catch up? Is x86 just not able to keep up with the ARM architecture? When can we expect a x86 laptop chip to match the M1 in efficiency/thermals?!
AMD kind of has, the "Max 395+" is (within 5% margin or so) pretty close to M4 Pro, on both performance and energy use. (it's in the 'Framework Desktop', for example, but not in their laptop lineup yet)
AMD/Intel hasn't surpassed Apple yet (there's no answer for the M4 Max / M3 Ultra, without exploding the energy use on the AMD/Intel side), but AMD does at least have a comparable and competitive offering.
M4 Pro was a massive step back in perf/watt over M3 Pro. To my knowledge, there aren't any M4 die shots around which has led to speculation that yields on M4 Max were predicted to be really bad, so they made the M4 Pro into a binned M4 Max, but that comes with tradeoffs like much worse leakage current.
That said Hardware Canucks did a review of the 395 in a mobile form factor (Asus ROG Flow F13) with TDP at 70w (lower than the max 120w TDP you see in desktop reviews). This lower-than-max TDP also gets you closer to the perf/watt sweet spot.
The M4 Pro scores slightly higher in Cinebench R24 despite being 10P+4E vs a full 16P cores on the 395 all while using something like a 30% less power. M4 Pro scores nearly 35% higher than the single-core R24 benchmark too. 395 GPU performance is than M4 Pro in productivity software. More specifically, they trade blows based on which is more optimized in a particular app, but AMD GPUs have way more optimizations in general and gaming should be much better with an x86 + AMD GPU vs Rosetta 2 + GPU translation layers + Wine/crossover.
M4 Pro gets around 50% better battery life for tasks like web browsing when accounting for battery size differences and more than double the battery life per watt/hr when doing something simple like playing a video. Battery life under full load is a bit better for the 395, but doing the math, this definitely involves the 395 throttling significantly down from it's 70w TDP.
I've got an AMD Ryzen 9 365 processor on my new laptop and I really like it. Huge autonomy and good performance when needed, it's comparable to the M3 version (not the Max).
I just recently was trying to buy a laptop and was looking at that chip, but like you said, not available in anything except framework desktops and a weird tablet thats 2.5x expensive as a macbook. Its competitive on paper, but is still completely infeasible at the moment.
There is only the HP ZBook Ultra G1a.
Some Chinese companies have also announced laptops with it coming out soon.
Also, you don't realize until you try them out that other issues make running models on the AMD chip ridiculously slow compared to running the same models on an M4. Some of that's software. But a lot is how the chip/memory/neural etc are organized.
Right now, AMD is not even in the ballpark.
In fact, the real kick in the 'nads was my fully kitted M4 laptop outperforming the AMD. I just gave up.
I'll keep checking in with AMD and Intel every generation though. It's gotta change at some point.
There there a few mini PCs using the 395+. Checkout the Beelink GTR9 Pro AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and GMKtec EVO-X2.
The AI just made it to their laptop lineup today. The Framework 16 has either the AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370 or the AI 7 350.
https://frame.work/laptop16?tab=whats-new
you can find that processor in the 14" HP Zbook Ultra G1A (which is also Ubuntu certified). There is also the Asus Z13, though I'm not certain it's working well with Linux
This is not even a remotely accurate characterization of the relative performance of the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and the Apple M4. I have both an expensive implementation of the former and the $499 version of the latter, and my M4 Mac mini beats the Ryzen by 80% or more in many single-threaded workloads, like browser benchmarks.