AMD CPUs typically have a very accurate SoC power measurements that's within 95% of reality. Obviously that is not the case for the M1 Max, which is not abnormal. This is probably because of the offsetting Apple does to avoid counting RAM power consumption, storage power consumption, etc..., that on the M1 Mac Mini amounts to something like 5W.
On the other hand, using wall minus idle also has some advantages - you don't take into account the baseline power consumption of the memory controller, the baseline power consumption of the GPU, or the PCI/storage controllers, or the baseline power consumption of the USB controllers, and so on and so forth - that's easily 2-4W even on an M1, on a Ryzen chip this is included in package power, whereas it's not for the M1 Max.
Because of that I judged the two numbers to be the closest to each other, and the minimal power consumption losses are more than offset by excluding a fair amount of power consumption that is reflected in the package for an AMD chip (and indeed any chip).
I didn't explain and justify all of this because I didn't have the time to do so and I don't think it was necessary to clutter up the text this much. I'm not cherry-picking either. There is a reason why wall-power is included for Intel and M1 reviews but very rarely for AMD, including in AnandTech's reporting, and it's obvious from reading the Apple data on idle power usage for the M1 Mac Mini, from everything that the M1 chip does on-package and from the 7.2W idle, from which only the screen, fans and NAND chips (not controller) are outside the package, that this is not a package power reading, but an estimate of what on the PC World would be called "Core+SOC", which is typically significantly lower than actual package power. If there was a Core+SOC number provided for the 5980HS I'd compare that but I don't have one and I didn't find any. In either case in the real world the two measurements are going to be at most 1-2W apart and I'm not sure if it advantages the M1 Max or the 5980HS.
> There is a reason why wall-power is included for Intel and M1 reviews but very rarely for AMD, including in AnandTech's reporting,
So now you're casting aspersions, too? The AnandTech article you've referred to numerous times explains exactly why wall power measurements were not included for the AMD chip, and the reason is not what you're trying to insinuate.
As for your point about charger efficiency: there's more than one step of voltage conversion to get from AC wall power to the CPU die. The losses at each step add up.
Yes, using wall power masks the efficiency of the charger. That said, the charger is >94% efficient : https://www.chargerlab.com/apple-87w-usb-c-power-adapter-a17.... VRM efficiency at the middle-power range is generally >95%.
On the other hand, using wall minus idle also has some advantages - you don't take into account the baseline power consumption of the memory controller, the baseline power consumption of the GPU, or the PCI/storage controllers, or the baseline power consumption of the USB controllers, and so on and so forth - that's easily 2-4W even on an M1, on a Ryzen chip this is included in package power, whereas it's not for the M1 Max.
Because of that I judged the two numbers to be the closest to each other, and the minimal power consumption losses are more than offset by excluding a fair amount of power consumption that is reflected in the package for an AMD chip (and indeed any chip).
I didn't explain and justify all of this because I didn't have the time to do so and I don't think it was necessary to clutter up the text this much. I'm not cherry-picking either. There is a reason why wall-power is included for Intel and M1 reviews but very rarely for AMD, including in AnandTech's reporting, and it's obvious from reading the Apple data on idle power usage for the M1 Mac Mini, from everything that the M1 chip does on-package and from the 7.2W idle, from which only the screen, fans and NAND chips (not controller) are outside the package, that this is not a package power reading, but an estimate of what on the PC World would be called "Core+SOC", which is typically significantly lower than actual package power. If there was a Core+SOC number provided for the 5980HS I'd compare that but I don't have one and I didn't find any. In either case in the real world the two measurements are going to be at most 1-2W apart and I'm not sure if it advantages the M1 Max or the 5980HS.