> And that's with the M1 having 4 slow cores for better battery life / consumption (with 8 full speed cores it would obliterate the 5850U).
It's not really that simple. An M1 with 8 full speed cores would also consume significantly more power and would no longer work in something like the MacBook Air. On paper these CPUs are both targeting the same power budget, so if AMD can put 8 full-speed CPUs in the same power budget that Apple can "only" put 4 full-speed and 4 low-power then why shouldn't AMD get a win from that?
It's not really that simple. An M1 with 8 full speed cores would also consume significantly more power and would no longer work in something like the MacBook Air. On paper these CPUs are both targeting the same power budget, so if AMD can put 8 full-speed CPUs in the same power budget that Apple can "only" put 4 full-speed and 4 low-power then why shouldn't AMD get a win from that?