New Mac mini with emulated Windows 10 outperforms 2019 Intel iMac running natively
As the Geekbench 5 results below show, the 2020 Mac mini outperforms a 2019 iMac that runs Windows natively using the Bootcamp Utility, which is to be expected. But here’s the catch — the Mac mini isn’t running Windows 10 natively, since Microsoft hasn’t released a version of Windows for ARM to the public as of now.
Instead, it’s running an emulated version on a Virtual Machine, with only 4GB of RAM and 4 dedicated cores. That’s half the specs the Mac mini has to offer. If it was running natively, it would have at least 8GB of RAM and 8 cores — and even with such limited hardware it outperforms the most popular desktop Mac.
The test was done using QEMU, a popular open source machine emulator and virtualizer. However, it’s still unclear which of the 8 cores were used, since the M1 has 8 cores with a big-LITTLE layout. This is because it has 4 power efficient cores and 4 high performance cores, which macOS manages automatically depending on the task — but nonetheless, it was still able to outperform a more expensive intel iMac.
One thing is clear, this transition is going relatively well so far — and as most apps get native support, we’ll truly start to see all the benefits of this new generation - a leapfrog in the history of the Mac.
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Published to Apple Scoop on 4th December, 2020.
