Passmark and Geekbench are decent CPU benchmarks for general performance and indeed both show about a 2X multi-threaded difference:

* https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-1185G7-vs-Inte...

* https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4354735?baselin...

These are short tests too, so would be a best case. In real life, laptop performance is probably significantly worse due to thermal throttling.

You also have to watch out for the powersupply of the laptop. Some companies give you a 70-90 W even though your computer needs 120 W at high load, counting on the battery giving the extra juice for the short bursts. If you do long processor intensive work, the computer just might shut down on you or if you are lucky, start throttling.

Yeah, this seems to be an unfortunate recent trend in some gaming laptops, presumably in a bid to save some weight and/or cost, but luckily, it still seems rare enough that any time it happens, the manufacturers still get called out on it in reviews. Usually, the power drain is when CPU+GPU are maxed out, not one or the other. I suppose if you did manage to get into a situation where this was an issue, you could find a bigger power supply. Up to about 180W these tend to be common and reasonably priced, then size and weight start going up dramatically.

While we're mentioning other minor gotchas, another one is memory latency and bandwidth. While desktop systems commonly have XMP and 1.35V support, very few laptops do (typically running at JEDEC timings at 1.2V). While there's diminishing returns, the difference between JEDEC 2933 CL21 or 3200 CL22 and say 3800 CL16 can actually be noticeable in certain workloads and is often effectively "free" (one-click in the BIOS) extra performance on the desktops.

A MacBook Pro can have an i9 and 8 cores, isn't that better than the i7-1185G7?

MacBooks have terrible thermals. They will thermal throttle before most laptops, much less even compared to a desktop.

Also, laptops generally have CPUs that pull 15 watts. Whereas desktops have CPUs that can pull 95 watts or higher (sometimes up to 150). The difference is astounding.

The 15/16" MBPs have a 45W CPU TDP; they can run CPU continuously at at least 45W as long as your ambient temperature is normal-ish and the airflow isn't obstructed, and can do 60W+ if thermals are cooperative.

See: https://evanmccann.net/blog/2020/5/13-inch-macbook-pro-revie...

I guess you haven't tried connecting to external monitor during that.

40, 100, 29 in pmset -g thermlog instantly.

Ooh, you're right, I retract. A few minutes for me, though, not "instantly".

Not necessarily. Intel is still putting out i3's with better performance than their i5 or i9 models. It's all about the specs, not the model number.

Depends on what the workload is.

CAD, for example, barring new geometry work in progress now, is single threaded.

People working on high surface count models want these things:

Big, fat, fast cache

Sustained sequential compute performance

Sustained I/O

GPU that focuses on geometry and precision. This is not generally an issue today, but can be on laptops.

Desktop machines with active cooling are where it is at.

i3/i5/i7/i9 aren’t actually different processors, they make a handful of desktop/laptop/server... variants for each generation of Core architecture CPU and differentiate down the line by binning and restrictions added at time of production. So mobile i5 might have nothing to do with desktop i5, or i7 and Xeon can be taken from the same batch.