Home > CPU Comparison > Apple M1 or Ryzen 5 3600: what's better?

Apple M1 vs AMD Ryzen 5 3600

53 out of 100
Apple M1
VS
40 out of 100
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Apple M1
AMD Ryzen 5 3600

We compared two CPUs: the 3.2 GHz Apple M1 (laptop) with 8-cores against the 3.6 GHz AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (desktop) with 6-cores. On this page, you'll find out which processor has better performance in benchmarks, games and other useful information.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Performance
  4. Specs
  5. Comments

Review

General overview and comparison of the processors
Single-Core Performance
Performance in single-threaded apps and benchmarks
Multi-Core Performance
Measure performance when all cores are involved
Power Efficiency
The efficiency score of power consumption
The "iGPU" and "Power Efficiency" have a minor impact on the NanoReview Score for desktop CPU.
NanoReview Final Score
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Value for money (Beta)

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Currency
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Key Differences

What are the key differences between 3600 and M1
Advantages of Apple M1
  • 45% faster in a single-core Geekbench v6 test - 2410 vs 1662 points
  • More modern manufacturing process – 5 versus 7 nanometers
  • Around 20.57 GB/s (43%) higher theoretical memory bandwidth
  • Has 2 more physical cores
  • Newer - released 1 year and 4 months later
  • Includes an integrated GPU Apple M1 GPU
Advantages of AMD Ryzen 5 3600
  • Supports up to 128 GB DDR4-3200 RAM
  • Unlocked multiplier

Test in Benchmarks

Comparing the performance of CPUs across various tasks
CPU:
Apple M1
vs
Ryzen 5 3600

Cinebench

Reputable cross-platform benchmark for high-performance processors
Cinebench 2024 (Single)
Apple M1 +51%
110
Ryzen 5 3600
73
Cinebench 2024 (Multi)
Apple M1 +2%
525
Ryzen 5 3600
516
Cinebench 2026 (Single) - 388
Cinebench 2026 (Multi) - 2039
Submit your benchmark results

GeekBench v6

The new version of this benchmark emulates common operations often used in real-world apps
Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)
Apple M1 +45%
2410
Ryzen 5 3600
1662
Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)
Apple M1 +18%
8547
Ryzen 5 3600
7249
File compression 941 MB/sec 660.6 MB/sec
Clang compilation 68.2 Klines/sec 59 Klines/sec
HTML 5 Browser 192.4 pages/sec 146 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 211.9 Mpixels/sec 207.8 Mpixels/sec
Text processing 250.8 pages/sec 143.3 pages/sec
Background blur 34.1 images/sec 37 images/sec
Photo processing 60.9 images/sec 54.2 images/sec
Ray tracing 9.74 Mpixels/sec 12.9 Mpixels/sec
Sources: GeekBench [1], [2] – 760 & 1134 samples

PassMark

Synthetic test that focuses on raw computational performance for low-level functions
Passmark CPU (Single-Core)
Apple M1 +44%
3673
Ryzen 5 3600
2559
Passmark CPU (Multi-Core)
Apple M1
14123
Ryzen 5 3600 +25%
17667
Integer math 33.2 GOps/sec 48.5 GOps/sec
Floating point math 35.5 GOps/sec 28.6 GOps/sec
Find prime numbers 141M Primes/sec 109M Primes/sec
Random string sorting 21M Strings/sec 23.6M Strings/sec
Data encryption 8.5 GBytes/sec 13.9 GBytes/sec
Data compression 168 MBytes/sec 219.6 MBytes/sec
Physics 1359 Frames/sec 1146 Frames/sec
Extended instructions 7B Matrices/sec 14.4B Matrices/sec
Sources: PassMark [3], [4] – 10702 & 37442 samples

Blender

3D rendering test that measures CPU performance in 3D modeling tasks (uses all cores)
Blender CPU
Apple M1
95.27
Ryzen 5 3600 +42%
135.61

Performance Per Watt

Shows the score you get per each watt of PL1 TDP
Cinebench 2024 / Watt 37.5 PPW 7.9 PPW
Geekbench 6 Multi / Watt 610.5 PPW 111.5 PPW
Passmark CPU Mark / Watt 1008.8 PPW 271.8 PPW
Blender / Watt 6.81 PPW 2.09 PPW
These are rough calculations, as most CPUs surpass PL1 TDP wattage even in multicore workloads.

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
Apple M1
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-25 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU2273 / 7967
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-24 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU2420 / 8793
πŸ“˜ 2026-03-06 (gaR)Geekbench 6 CPU2396 / 8763
πŸ“˜ 2025-04-11 (Ario)Geekbench 6 CPU2395 / 8820
πŸ“˜ 2025-04-11 (Ario)Cinebench 2024110 / 465
Add View all (8)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-07-16 (abdou)Cinebench 2026388 / 2039
πŸ“˜ 2026-03-31 (Ike)Cinebench 202470 / 517
πŸ“˜ 2025-12-16 -> JeromeneilCinebench 202471 / 511
πŸ“˜ 2025-11-02 (BeastAsLow)Cinebench 202464 / 479
πŸ“˜ 2025-10-17 (RandomStorm)Cinebench 202472 / 419
Add View all (15)

Specifications

Full technical specification of Apple M1 and AMD Ryzen 5 3600

General

Vendor Apple Amd
Released November 20, 2020 July 7, 2019
Type Laptop Desktop
Instruction Set ARMv8 x86-64
Codename Apple M1 Zen 2 (Matisse)
Integrated GPU Apple M1 GPU No
Successor - Apple M5 (10-Core) - AMD Ryzen 5 7600
AMD Ryzen CPU ranking (#163rd place)

CPU

Performance Cores
P-Cores 4 6
P-Threads 4 12
Base Frequency (P) 3.2 GHz 3.6 GHz
Turbo Boost Frequency (P) - 4.2 GHz
Efficient Cores
E-Cores 4 -
E-Threads 4 -
Base Frequency (E) 2.1 GHz -
Total
Total Cores 8 6
Total Threads 8 12
Bus Frequency - 100 MHz
Multiplier - 36x
L1 Cache 192K (per core) 64K (per core)
L2 Cache 12MB (shared) 512K (per core)
L3 Cache - 32MB (shared)
Unlocked Multiplier No Yes

Package

Transistors 16 billions 3.8 billions
Fabrication Process 5 nm 7 nm
TDP (PL1) 14 W 65 W
Socket Apple M-Socket AM4
Peak Temperature - 95Β°C
Desktop CPU ranking (#152nd place)

iGPU

Integrated Graphics Apple M1 GPU -
GPU Base Clock 450 MHz -
GPU Boost Clock 1278 MHz -
Shading Units 1024 -
TMUs 64 -
ROPs 32 -
Execution Units 128 -
TGP 15 W -
iGPU FLOPS
Apple M1
2.6 TFLOPS
Ryzen 5 3600
n/a
See: Apple M1 GPU (8-core) benchmarks

Memory Support

Memory Types - LPDDR4X-4266 - DDR4-3200
Max. Memory Size 16 GB 128 GB
Memory Channels 8 2
Max. Memory Bandwidth 68.25 GB/s 47.68 GB/s
ECC Support No Yes

Misc

Official Site - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 official page
PCI Express Version 4.0 4.0
PCI Express Lanes - 16

Cast your vote

Choose between two processors
76 (43.7%)
98 (56.3%)
Total votes: 174

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Comments

So which CPU will you choose: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Apple M1?
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