There are plenty 12900K entries on GB5 with single-core scores over 2152. The Raptor Lake entry with 2133 does not look too impressive here. GB5 on Windows shows extreme fluctuation in scores. I am still not 100% sure whether it's overclocking, incompetent benchmarking or just the OS being crappy. Mac scores have much lower variance.
I looked at a few hardware review sites for the 12900K and averaged their GB5 scores together. Presumably, they're less likely to monkey around when compared to enthusiasts who obsesses over every fractional percentage and employ exotic cooling solutions. Also, the leak matches up with the more reliable rumors of a small bump in single-core performance for Raptor Lake. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up against Zen 4.
For the overall PC industry, they're going to need any advances they can eke out.
According to Gartner, Apple is the only computer manufacturer to have grown shipments last quarter, with the overall market suffering its worst decline in nine years.
Worldwide PC shipments declined by -12.6% YOY, meanwhile Apple's Mac shipments grew by 9.3% worldwide, and 19.5% in the U.S. Assuming Gartner's numbers aren't wildly inaccurate, this speaks volumes about the reception of Apple Silicon Macs in the general market. These aren't just Mac users replacing old Intel Macs, but customers that are new to the platform which now comprise
50% of Mac sales.
While useful, Geekbench numbers only matter so much. Even if Intel were to design the fastest CPU in living memory, it doesn't matter if the space heaters it goes in don't sell. As impressive as Apple Silicon is, people don't buy Apple's SoC, but the integrated product we call a Mac. The PC apostles like to wave Geekbench scores around to compensate for poor metrics in thermals, power efficiency, noise levels, and software and hardware inefficiencies that are fundamentally ineradicably ingrained within all Windows PCs.
PC partisans are always going to find obscure chess benchmarks that show that their favorite company's dad can beat up Apple's dad, but the overall trend clearly favors Apple. There was a lot of skepticism, much of it warranted, when Apple announced the switch from x86 to their own designs. Decades of ancient technological battlefields are littered with the corpses of superior designs that were business failures. The Mac is in a unique position, in that not only does it feature demonstrably superior technology at every level, but it's also a tremendous financial success. Despite a looming global recession, consumers are choosing a flight to quality, and the Mac is the beneficiary.
wccftech.com
