The library of native titles on macOS is slowly expanding, but the number of games available on the platform is always expected to be less than what Windows supports. However, this disparity didn’t stop ASUS from comparing its Zenbook A16, which is kitted with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, to the M5, and that too in a gaming comparison surrounding a title that’s not even natively available on Apple’s macOS. Even worse, ASUS’s marketing team doesn’t understand what unified memory bandwidth is and has instead implied that its Zenbook A16 has a higher transfer rate than the M5 MacBook Pro.
Diablo IV framerate is 1.31x faster on the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme than the M5, but the latter is running the game using emulation
The comparisons have been illustrated in slides on the Zenbook A16 product page, with ASUS claiming that its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme-powered machine is 1.31x faster than the M5 MacBook Pro in Diablo IV. This would have been an impressive feat if the comparison were fair because Diablo IV isn’t available on macOS and can only be played using emulation software like CrossOver, which operates as a compatibility layer.
Unfortunately, as one would expect, running games through emulation means you will leave performance on the table, which can be a lot more or a lot less, depending on the emulation layer’s optimizations. Of course, ASUS didn’t consider this major factor when it was churning out the performance slides of its Zenbook A16. Also, the company appears to believe that unified memory bandwidth is the same thing as HyperSpeed transfer.
Judging by the terms used by ASUS, unified memory bandwidth is the same as data transfer, but the reality is that these are vastly different. Apple first began marketing unified memory bandwidth, which is the speed at which the CPU, GPU, and other parts in the SoC can read or write to a single shared pool of memory. It needs to be understood that the M5’s 153GB/s memory bandwidth is a theoretical maximum rather than a real-world result.
In short, programs cannot come close to this figure due to several limitations, but ASUS still believes the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is significantly superior. Also, if the Taiwanese firm wanted to draft a fair comparison, it would have pitted Apple’s M5 Pro against the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, but we all know that’s not going to happen because.
In Geekbench 6, which is one of the benchmarks used in one of the slides above, Apple’s ‘middle of the pack’ chipset is only slightly slower than the M5 Max, meaning that it beats the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme as well. Notebooks powered by the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme have yet to arrive, but Apple’s M5 MacBook Pro is already oozing better value, as the 16GB unified memory and 512GB SSD version is available for $200 off on Amazon, starting from $1,399.99.
News Source: ASUS
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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