AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS vs Apple M3 Pro: Which is the better laptop CPU?
The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and Apple M3 Pro are two of the most powerful processors in the laptop market under the $2000 market. The former is found in Windows laptops, while the latter belongs to MacBooks. These processors are vastly different from each other, and the laptops powered by them also vary in price point. Therefore, it is natural that users are confused about which CPU they should choose for their next laptop.
This article does an in-depth comparison to find which is the best laptop CPU.
Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and solely reflect the writer's opinions.
AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS vs Apple M3 Pro
The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS is based on an x86 processor capable of delivering the best gaming performance. On the contrary, the Apple M3 Pro is an ARM CPU that is designed to provide the best performance in every type of workload. But before you compare the two chips, let's look at their specs.
Specs comparison
Here are the specs of AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and Apple M3 Pro:
The Apple chip has a higher core count and lower power consumption, but the AMD processor has a clock speed of over 5 GHz. The Ryzen 9 8945HS also has a faster RAM speed, which should give it some boost in performance, but there's a caveat.
The Ryzen processor's RAM modules are located in the motherboard PCB and away from the actual CPU die, which increases the latency. However, the Apple M3 Pro has both the processor die and the memory module on the same interconnect. It decreases latency and increases the potential performance of Apple's chip.
Performance comparison
It's time we put the specs and the theories away and check the actual performance differences between AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and Apple M3 Pro. Here's how the two CPUs perform in popular benchmarks like Geekbench and Cinebench:
On average, the Apple M3 Pro is 21.7% faster in single-core benchmarks than the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, even though it has a higher clock speed. This shows that a higher clock speed doesn't always mean better performance. In multi-core benchmarks, the Apple CPU is about 27.5% faster than the Ryzen chip.
Apple's processor is better for general performance, but can we say the same for its gaming performance? Let's check it out.
Gaming performance
Since AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and Apple M3 Pro run on two different architectures and operating systems, a direct game comparison cannot be done to analyze the gaming potential of their integrated graphics. Therefore, we will rely on the theoretical performance of the two GPUs:
As you can see, the integrated graphics inside the Apple M3 Pro is 46.6% faster than the Radeon 780M inside the Ryzen 9 8945HS. However, that's just a theoretical performance. The reality is quite different since most games are not available on MacOS, so the higher performance of the Apple chip's graphics won't matter much in gaming.
You will have better luck with the Radeon 780M iGPU since it is capable of running most games decently well on Windows if you keep the graphics low.
Final verdict of AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS vs Apple M3 Pro
The Apple M3 Pro laptop CPU is quite better and scores about 20 - 27% higher than the Ryzen chip. Even the integrated graphics performance of the Apple chip is a lot better.
However, the pricing plays a big factor here. The cheapest MacBook Pro with Apple M3 Pro costs $1,699, which increases with higher RAM and storage variants, but this base variant only has the 14-core GPU. The MacBook Pro with Apple M3 Pro 18-core graphics variant costs even more.
On the contrary, the laptops powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS are available for $1,199 to $1,600, and they come with dedicated graphics chips, such as an Nvidia RTX 4060 or RTX 4070. These video cards are far superior to the integrated 14 or 18-core Apple GPU.
Essentially, you will get more gaming performance from AMD/RTX laptops at a lower cost. However, the MacBook with Apple M3 Max will be better if CPU performance is critical for your workloads. On top of that, the battery life of the MacBook will be a lot better as well.