About Me

Monday, November 23, 2020

MacBook Air (Early 2020): Final Results for macOS Big Sur

There have been some major software updates to macOS and benchmarking software, so I thought I'd update the benchmark results. As before, my MacBook Air has the combined wind channel + heat sink + heat pad modifications, and I ran the tests in Intel Power Gadget 3.6.0Geekbench 5.3.1, and Cinebench R23. I used the same set up as before, but also waited for the CPU to cool down to around 40℃ before running the next benchmark. Each benchmark was executed at least three times and I report the average.

When I run the stress tests in Intel Power Gadget, it seems that the max sustained frequency is 100MHz lower than before, but the CPU temperature plateaus at about 80ÂșC. I guess Big Sur is throttling the CPU even more?


Intel Power Gadget 3.6.0


Test TypeResult (GHz)
CPU (All Thread Frequency, Scalar)2.70
CPU (All Thread Frequency, AVX-256)2.60
CPU (All Thread Frequency, AVX-512)2.40
Intel Graphics Test (Max Frequency)1.00

Geekbench 5.3.1

Test TypeResults (Points)
CPU (Single-core)1,253​
CPU (Multi-core)3,974​
Compute (OpenCL)9,034
Compute (Metal)10,383

Cinebench R23

Test TypeResults (Points)
CPU (Single-core)1,051
CPU (Multi-core)3,089
MP Ratio2.94