> Those curves also apply to Intel & AMD. As in, you can drop frequency on AMD to also achieve significant improves in perf/watt. That's not a unique aspect of the A12. That curve is more "this is how TSMC's 7nm transistors behave" type of thing. Geekbench only measures perf, not perf/watt. It does not try to achieve maximum perf/watt, nor has Apple tuned to the A12/A13 to achieve maximum perf/watt in Geekbench either. Geekbench's single thread numbers where it "competes with Intel & AMD" are also these ~5W per core power figures.

While similar curves also apply to Intel and AMD, their mobile parts are drawing 10-20 watts per core to acheive the very top results. When you're using all the cores together under a 6W TDP (as apple is doing), Apple is able to achieve a much higher Geekbench result than Intel or AMD parts set to a comparable TDP, or even 3x the TDP. Compare multi-core Geekbench scores of Apple's parts running at a 6W TDP to Intel or AMD's most efficient parts running at a 15W TDP, and you'll see that Apple outperforms them while drawing 1/3 the power. Similar curves apply, but Apple can achieve far morea at 1W per core than any x86 competitors.