The performance of running Windows 10 through Apple M1 chip is higher than that of the Microsoft SQ2 chip

Recently, the developer Alexander Graff successfully ran Windows 10 on a MacBook based on the M1 chip through the QEMU virtualization project.

Now more developers have used Graf’s method to virtualize and run Windows 10, and use benchmark software for testing in virtual machines.

Theoretically speaking, running through virtualization will definitely reduce the performance of the operating system, but Graf’s solution allows the code to be executed as a guest on the M1.

The result is that Windows 10 runs directly on the M1 chip instead of virtualization, so the performance seems to be better than other virtual machines.

Benchmark tests show that the native single-core score of the M1 chip can reach 1737 points, and the multi-core score can reach 7549 points. This result is better than many mainstream chips.

When tested through a virtualized Windows 10 system, the single-core performance score of 1288 points and the multi-core performance score of 5449 points actually declined.

This means that the single-core and multi-core performance of the processor will drop by about 25% after the virtualized operation. Of course, this situation is inevitable since it is virtualized.

It’s just that the performance of the M1 chip itself is excellent, so the user has a low probability of encountering a stuck condition, so the actual experience will not be greatly reduced.

The benchmark test data to compare with Microsoft Surface Pro X, which is equipped with the SQ2 processor customized by Microsoft through Qualcomm.

The SQ2 processor is also based on the ARM architecture so it can be compared with the M1 chip, and the Geekbench 4 used is all x86 running through the simulator.

The test results show that using the x86 emulator to run Geekbench 4 on the Surface Pro X, the single-core performance score is 799 and the multi-core performance score is 3089.

The Geekbench 4 scores of virtualized running Windows 10 ARM 64 on the M1 through the x86 emulator are 1288 and 5499 respectively.

This means that even if the performance of the virtualized M1 chip is still much higher than the Qualcomm SQ2 processor, then users might as well buy the M1 version of the MacBook directly.

Via: mspoweruser