M1 vs intel looks to be a 1.5x to 2x improvement on the air in synthetic benchmarks.
MBA 2020 (early) i3, i5, i7 are scoring 972, 1048 and 1113 respectively.
MBA 2020 (late) M1 scores 1707.
thats 175% of 972 and 150% of 1113.
Am I wrong?
Thats a huge leap in performance for the high end, but even more so for the entry level.
Yes. And you're making it overly complicated. Look at the benchmarks[1] for one single model, the 13" mid-2020 MBP, single core performance is 1213. Now look at the very next generation of that machine, the 13" late-2020 MBP M1, single core performance is 1708. What percentage of 1213 would you need to add to 1213 to make it equal 1708? About 40% of 1213 then added to 1213 would give you 1708, so the increase in performance in single core for this model jumping from Intel to Apple Silicon M1 is a 40% increase, not 150% or whatever.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-retina-intel-...
This benchmark shows the difference in performance of the M2 devices when you run them for a long period:
https://wccftech.com/m2-macbook-air-throttling-problem-under...
The success of the M1 is not just raw performance numbers but its efficiency.
This is where we disagree. I see a smooth slope of performance increases generationally. You see some kind of chasm opening up.
Incorrect. The Late 2020 M1 MacBook Air has just under a 35% performance increase in single core performance over the Early 2020 i7 MacBook Air, though nearly a 2.5x increase in multicore performance[1] (because it has more cores). That doesn't make it 2-3 times faster as the single core performance is a bottleneck, but its multicore performance increase is certainly impressive, it just means the Air's small formfactor was hamstrung by Intel multicore and got to breath a little in the platform switch with more cores, not that the last Intel models are 2-3 times slower than the first Apple Silicon models. That's absurd. The MBP has much less impressive performance increases in the platform switch compared to Air. Looking at the last and fastest intel MBP, the 13-inch mid-2020, and comparing to the first M1, the 13-inch Late-2020, the performance increased[2] about 30% in single core performance and increased 40% in multicore performance, which is typical of the performance increases between the last Intel and first Apple Silicon selections of most other Mac models.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/17
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-retina-intel-...