Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
A comparative review of the Dell XPS 13 and the MacBook suggests that Intel's latest x86 chips are finally matching Apple Silicon in power efficiency. Benchmarks indicate that the Core 5 320 chip performs competitively with ARM-based processors in energy-per-gigaflop metrics.
Why it matters
This challenges the long-standing narrative that ARM architecture is inherently more power-efficient than x86, potentially shifting the landscape of mobile computing.
With a title like “ Intel Just Matched Apple Silicon. Seriously. “, the latest video from [Jeff Geerling] makes some pretty bold claims. But as we’d expect from [Jeff], he’s got the benchmarks up on GitHub for both the MacBook Neo and Dell’s latest XPS 13 to back it up.
We’ve embedded the full video below, which has [Jeff]’s comparative review of the two laptops. The Mac wins on iGPU, sound, and not shipping Windows, while the Dell gets points for being able to load Linux and having a backlit keyboard. But the figure we were hoping to see is the efficiency . After all, it’s ARM’s ability to crank out gigaflops on fewer watts that won them the mobile market and got Apple interested in that architecture in the first place. If Intel is catching up, that’s news.
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