> x86 chips can surpass the M series cpus in multithreaded performance, but are still lagging in singlethreaded performance

Nodding along with the rest but isn't this backwards? Are M series actually outperforming an Intel i9 P-core or Ryzen 9X in raw single-threaded performance?

Not in raw performance, no, but they're only beat out by i9s and the like, which are very power hungry. If you care even a little bit about performance per watt, the M series are far superior.

Have a look at Geekbench's results.[1] Ignore the top ones, since they're invalid and almost certainly cheated (click to check). The iPads and such lower down are all legit, but the same goes for some of the i9s inbetween.

And honestly, the fact that you have to go up to power hungry desktop processors to even find something to compete with the chip that goes in an (admittedly high-end) iPad, is somewhat embarrassing on its face, and not for Apple.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore

Yes, the M4 is still outperforming the desktop 9950X in single-threaded performance on several benchmarks like Geekbench and Cinebench 2024 [1]. Compared to the 9955HX, which is the same physical chip as the 9950X but lower clocked for mobile, the difference is slightly larger. But the 16 core 9950X is obviously much better than the base M4 (and even the 16 core M4 Max, which has only 12 P cores and 4 E cores) at multithreaded applications.

However, the M2 in the blog post is from 2022 and isn't quite as blazingly fast in single thread performance.

[1] https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-8-cores-vs-am...