Depends on the workload. Compilers are famous for being branch heavy and random lookups... something that people have reported excellent performance on the M1. Parsing is hard as well (like say javascript).

Of course for any CPU workload it's going to be harder on the memory system when you have video going on. Doubly so for a video conference (compression, decompression, updating the video frames, streaming the results, network activity, reading from the camera, etc).

Seems like the apple memory system wouldn't have received as much R&D as it did unless Apple though it was justified. Clearly the speed, performance, and price show that Apple made quite a few good decisions.