Apple M4 Mac Mini With macOS vs. Intel / AMD With Ubuntu Linux Performance
Compiling FFmpeg on the Apple M4 Mac Mini yielded similar performance to the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K Arrow Lake desktop processor and just ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Keep in mind especially for the code compilation tests that it's macOS vs. Ubuntu Linux at play as well with their default toolchains for each given that most developers are sticking to the default toolchains in production. In any event it was nice seeing the M4 Mac Mini working out so well for code compilation tasks...
The M4 showing was all the more impressive when looking at the CPU power consumption exposed by powermetrics compared to the Intel/AMD RAPL/PowerCap results on Linux.
When compiling the massive LLVM codebase, the M4 Mac Mini 10-core performance was just behind the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D desktop performance but with much greater power efficiency.
In the case of 7-Zip compression built from source the Intel/AMD CPUs on Linux were much faster but the M4 did leap out in front for delivering the best performance per Watt.
The Apple M4 Mac Mini was also interesting with Zstd compression for its standout power efficiency compared to the Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktops on Linux.