Intel recently announced their new Core i9 processors for laptops. They claim the i9 chips to be faster than the M1 Max chip used in MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The new i9 processors come with 14-cores where six are performance cores and eight are efficiency cores. The M1 Max chip has eight performance cores and two efficiency cores.
While the power output of the i9 chips are better than found in the M1 chips, it requires 115 watts to run, which is much higher than the M1 Max chips ever use. The i9 chips also need more cooling and can be boosted up to 5.0GHz Turbo frequency.
Intel put up a performance vs power chart while marketing the processor. In the chart, they mentioned in fine print that the performance was measured based on compiling binaries with the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark suite. The chart claims that the new laptop core i9 achieved better performance-per-watt than the M1 Max chip. Although the i9 performs better than the Macbook Air and Pro, the M1 Max chip can operate at much lower wattages.
The charts aside, it is impossible to know the real performance of the chip until it is released and tested by a non baised source. The new chips by Intel do seem perform quite well, Apple seems to have no regrets for switching to using its own custom silicon for the efficiency of its chips. Apple has stated that they are working on M2 chips which will be a huge leap forward in performance-per-watt for them.