Windows 10 Runs Faster on Mac Than Microsoft's Own Surface Pro X

Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5 benchmarks prove that the dedicated ARM version of Windows 10 works very well on a Mac equipped with an M1 processor developed by Apple. The hardware performs better than the Surface X Pro from Microsoft.

IN A NUTSHELL:

Windows 10 version dedicated to ARM processors works very well on a computer equipped with the new M1 CPU from Apple;
The Mac clearly beat Microsoft Surface Pro X laptop in Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5.

Virtualization engineer at Amazon Web Services, Alexander Graf, decided to install the dedicated ARM (CPUs used in mobile devices such as smartphones) version of Windows 10 on a computer equipped with Apple's new M1 CPU. He used the QEMU virtualization platform.

It turned out that OS not only works on this hardware, but also performs exceptionally well. This was proved by Twitter user imbushuo, publishing M1's results in Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5. In the former, Apple's computing unit achieved a result of 5891 / 20568 points and 2553 / 8917 points (single- / multicore in two versions of the app - Geekbench 4.4.4 Tryout for Windows AArch64 and Geekbench 4.4.4 Tryout for Windows x86 32-bit).

In Geekbeench 5, the Apple's processor scored 1288 and 5449 points (again, single- and multicore). For comparison, in the same benchmark, the portable Microsoft Surface Pro X with an SQ2 CPU (an ARM unit created by the Redmond giant in cooperation with Qualcomm) scored 799 and 3089 points. This suggests that there is a huge gap in performance between the two CPUs.

It's worth noting that while technically speaking there is nothing to prevent the use of Windows 10's ARM version on an Apple computer, in practice this is not possible - Microsoft licenses this variant of OS only to partners who cooperate with the company on Surface Series computers, such as HP, Lenovo and Asus. Given these benchmark scores, the situation is unlikely to change - the fact that Windows runs faster on a Mac than on Redmond giant's hardware certainly doesn't look good in terms of image.