[HN Gopher] Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score
        
       Author : mv9
       Score  : 270 points
       Date   : 2021-10-20 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (browser.geekbench.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (browser.geekbench.com)
        
       | diebeforei485 wrote:
       | I'm in the situation where I really want to pre-order a 14", but
       | I have no idea if going with the base model would be a mistake.
       | 
       | Would upgrading to 32GB RAM make Xcode faster? Or would it be a
       | waste of $400?
        
         | nunez wrote:
         | hard to tell given that m1's address and page memory completely
         | differently from how x86 does it. My 8GB M1 MacBook Air
         | performs extremely well even when memory pressure is high...and
         | it never seems to hit swap space.
         | 
         | Anecdotal example: I could have several Firefox tabs with
         | active workers in the background (WhatsApp, Slack, etc.), a
         | Zoom meeting with video conferencing on, with audio and video
         | being routed via OBS (native), a Screen Sharing session over
         | SSH going, and a Kubernetes cluster in Docker running, and that
         | won't even make the MacBook hot. Nothing slows down. I could
         | get maybe five hours out of the battery this way. Usually six.
         | 
         | Doing that on a maxed out Intel MacBook Pro will make it sound
         | like a jet engine and reduce my battery life to two or three
         | hours. It will also slow to a crawl.
         | 
         | I'm guessing buying a machine with 32GB of RAM is an investment
         | into the future where workloads on m1 machines are high enough
         | to actually give the memory a run for its money.
        
         | thebean11 wrote:
         | 16GB of RAM seems so low in 2021. OTOH, hard drives are so fast
         | on these things that maybe 16 is good enough with the SSD as
         | overflow.
         | 
         | I ended up shelling out the extra $400 for 32GB, but didn't
         | feel great about it!
        
           | bluedays wrote:
           | On the other hand I've been running 16GB of ram for a while
           | and I can't conceive of a reason why I would need more. 32GB
           | seems like overkill. What would you do with all of that ram?
           | Open more tabs?
        
             | t-writescode wrote:
             | Compilation, graphics work, heavy-weight IDEs
             | 
             | And, if you're spinning on 16GB ram on an M1, you might be
             | eating through the SSD powering your swap space and not
             | know it.
        
               | EugeneOZ wrote:
               | indeed. From my experience, I see that my MBA uses swap
               | sometimes, but I can't notice it. Still, I want to avoid
               | it.
        
             | thebean11 wrote:
             | Looking at activity monitor, I'm currently using ~19GB,
             | doing nothing special (IntelliJ, 15 chrome tabs, Spotify,
             | Slack). Docker Desktop was using 8GB before I killed it.
             | And this is on an Intel Mac so it doesn't include GPU
             | memory usage I believe, which is shared in M1 Macs.
             | 
             | This likely isn't a perfect metric, if I were closer to the
             | limit I think MacOS would get more aggressive about
             | compression and offloading stuff to disk but still.
        
               | Tagbert wrote:
               | Browsers generally allocate RAM with abandon but any one
               | process is not necessarily memory bound. It just means
               | that they are using that as page cache.
        
           | josephpmay wrote:
           | I've heard from people with M1 laptops that they perform
           | surprisingly better than Intel laptops with less RAM (on the
           | Mac). I imagine the same will hold with the Pro and Max,
           | although it will depend a lot on what type of work you're
           | doing.
        
             | EugeneOZ wrote:
             | I have m1 air with 8Gb and I see that had to take 16Gb at
             | least. Not sure about 32GB, but 16 is the minimum. Profile:
             | JS, TS, Rust, sometimes Java.
        
             | johnboiles wrote:
             | I am one of those people. I bought an 8gb M1 Air last month
             | for a project (while I waited for the new models to be
             | released). It baffles me how well this little computer
             | performs with less RAM than I've had in a computer since
             | 2009. I'd love an explanation of how that works. Maybe the
             | SSD is so fast that swapping isn't a big deal?
        
               | runako wrote:
               | I looked into this angle recently. The SSDs in the new
               | MBPs are roughly 3x as fast as the one in my 2015 MBP
               | (7.4GB/s vs 2GB/s). To contextualize, the new MBPs have
               | roughly half as much SSD bandwidth as my MBP does memory
               | bandwidth.
               | 
               | Which is to say the SSD is much closer to being as fast
               | as RAM, which would explain why is subjectively can make
               | better use of less memory.
        
               | johnboiles wrote:
               | Neat!
        
         | azinman2 wrote:
         | Unlikely to make Xcode any faster. Just look at your ram usage
         | now and then forecast a bit to know.
        
         | pbowyer wrote:
         | Same situation as you, looking at 14". Need to see what the
         | Xcode benchmarks are like for the variety of M1 Pro processors
         | on offer, to see if any upgrades from the base model are
         | worthwhile.
         | 
         | If I was sticking with 16GB RAM I think I'd get a M1 Air
         | instead. The smaller screen is the downside, but 300g lighter
         | and substantially cheaper are good points.
        
           | rvanmil wrote:
           | I'm upgrading from an M1 Air (16GB) to a 14" Pro base model
           | just for the display. Extra M1 pro performance is bonus but
           | the M1 has already been amazing for development work past
           | year.
        
             | pbowyer wrote:
             | Is it the resolution you've found limiting on the M1 Air?
             | My eyesight is slowly getting worse so I'm assuming I'll
             | have to run both at 200%. Which makes the Air a 1280x800
             | screen - something I last had on my 2009 13" MBP!
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | M1 only allows one external monitor (you can run 2 with
               | some docks if you turn off the laptop screen). This isn't
               | such a problem for me as I have an ultra-wide, but lots
               | of people with dual/triple monitor setups haven't been
               | super thrilled.
        
               | rvanmil wrote:
               | I'm lucky enough to still have good eyesight so it's not
               | limiting for me personally. Most of the time when working
               | I've got it hooked up to a big 4K display though. My
               | expectation is I'll appreciate the new XDR display for
               | the times I'm not on an external monitor.
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | My opinion: the jump from 16GB to 32GB probably won't make a
         | huge difference today, especially if your workload is already
         | running alright in 16GB. I think it'll greatly extend the
         | useful life of the laptop, though. For example, I wouldn't want
         | to be using an 8GB laptop today.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | hajile wrote:
           | When I start up kubernetes, my usage for that alone goes up
           | to 6+GB. Swapping to SSD is terrible for it's lifecycle. 32GB
           | should have you going for quite a while unless you need/want
           | lots of vRAM in which case I'd go with 64GB.
        
         | danieldk wrote:
         | I wouldn't go for the base model, since it has 6 performance
         | cores, rather than 8.
        
         | rgbrenner wrote:
         | Ram is ram. Don't fall for marketing hype and think M1 means
         | you need less ram. If you think you need it, you still need it
         | on M1... and I say that as someone who owns an M1 Mac.
        
           | EricE wrote:
           | Yes - I wish people would stop implying that the M1 magically
           | doubles RAM and other such nonsense. I found the same. I have
           | a game that requires at least 32GB (Cities:Skylines - mainly
           | because of my self inflicted steam workshop asset addiction)
           | and ended up returning the Air to wait for the next round.
           | Decided to go all out - have a 16" 64GB M1 Max with 2TB of
           | storage on the way.
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | Consider that you always can download more ram:
           | https://downloadmoreram.com/
           | 
           | /s
        
         | busymom0 wrote:
         | Depends upon your workflow but I use xcode and android studio
         | and 16gb isn't enough if I run a simulator or emulator.
         | Definitely get the 32gb imo.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | wolrah wrote:
         | RAM is something where you either have enough or you don't.
         | When you have enough, adding more doesn't really get you
         | anything. When you don't have enough, performance tanks.
         | 
         | The integrated nature of the M1 Macs gives them a much better
         | ability to predictively swap unused content to SSD and make the
         | most of the available RAM when things get tight while
         | multitasking, but if you have a single task that needs 17GB and
         | you have 16GB it's going to suffer a lot compared to if you had
         | 32GB.
         | 
         | I wish Apple (and everyone else) would give up on the ultra-
         | thin crap and make a real Pro machine that returns to
         | upgradability at the cost of a few extra millimeters, but for
         | now since you're stuck with what you start with I'd recommend
         | always going at least one level above what you think you might
         | ever need during its expected useful life.
        
         | stocknoob wrote:
         | Figure out your hourly wage, how many hours a day you use your
         | laptop, and whether $400 amortized over the life of the device
         | is worth the "risk".
        
       | robertwt7 wrote:
       | Is that supposed to be fast guys?
       | 
       | Isn't that still slower than some ryzen 5 5600x? (my pc uses this
       | but below is not my benchmark)
       | 
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/8238216
       | 
       | I'm not sure how fast or good is that number.. But i've heard
       | good things about m1 and planning to probably upgrade.
        
         | mciancia wrote:
         | > Base Frequency 4.72 GHz
         | 
         | > Maximum Frequency 6.03 GHz
         | 
         | This was seriously overclocked, wouldn't be surprised if with
         | liquid nitrogen. So probably poor comparison to laptop CPU ;)
        
           | jjcon wrote:
           | We're also seeing slower m1max benchmarks though
           | 
           | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10476727
        
           | robertwt7 wrote:
           | Ah yes that's true, didn't realise it was overclocked.
           | 
           | Probably good to compare to those ryzen in laptop..
        
       | maxpert wrote:
       | Site not loading for me :(
        
       | e0m wrote:
       | Wow does much better than Geekbench's prior top processor
       | (https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks) the Intel
       | Core i9-11900K (https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-
       | core-i9-11900...).
       | 
       | 10,997 for Intel i9
       | 
       | vs
       | 
       | 12,693 for M1 Max
        
         | systemvoltage wrote:
         | Per core performance is the most interesting metric.
         | 
         | Edit: _for relative_ comparison between CPUs, per core metric
         | is the most interesting unless you also account for heat, price
         | and many other factors. Comparing a 56-core CPU with 10-core M1
         | is a meaningless comparison.
        
           | 5faulker wrote:
           | Just when you think things hit the top, another kid's out of
           | the town.
        
           | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
           | Not when building large software projects.
        
             | gchokov wrote:
             | Like... everyone builds large projects all the time?
        
               | akmarinov wrote:
               | If you don't then you don't really need the top end do
               | you?
        
               | ajuc wrote:
               | Most people who buy fast cars don't need them and it's
               | the same with computers.
        
             | YetAnotherNick wrote:
             | By that logic you could build an array of mac mini if you
             | don't care about price/heat.
        
             | semicolon_storm wrote:
             | What compiler could even make use of 10 cores? Most build
             | processes I've run can't even fully utilize the 4 cores.
        
               | pornel wrote:
               | Rust (Cargo) does, and always wants more.
        
               | destitude wrote:
               | Xcode has no issues taking advantage of all cores.
        
               | ukd1 wrote:
               | Just running the tests in our Rails project (11k of them)
               | can stress out a ton; we're regularly running it on 80+
               | cores to keep our test completion time ~3 minutes. M1 Max
               | should let me run all tests locally much faster than I
               | can today.
        
               | andy_ppp wrote:
               | Wow, what is the system doing to have 11000 tests?
        
               | throwawaywindev wrote:
               | C++ compilers probably will.
        
               | spacedcowboy wrote:
               | I can stress out a 32+32 core 2990WX with 'make -j' on
               | some of my projects, htop essentially has every core
               | pegged.
        
               | jlmorton wrote:
               | Often a single compiler won't make use of more than a
               | core, but it's generally easy to build independent
               | modules in parallel.
               | 
               | For example, make -j 10, or mvn -T 10.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | Compilers typically don't use multiple cores, but the
               | build system that invokes them do, by invoking them in
               | parallel. Modern build systems will typically invoke
               | commands for 1 target per core, which means that on my
               | system for example, building my software uses all 16
               | cores more or less until the final steps of the process.
               | 
               | The speed record for building my software is held by a
               | system with over 1k cores (a couple of seconds, compared
               | to multiple minutes on a mid-size Threadripper).
        
             | ur-whale wrote:
             | > Not when building large software projects.
             | 
             | Or run heavy renders of complex ray-traced scenes.
             | 
             | Or do heavy 3D reconstruction from 2D images.
             | 
             | Or run Monte-Carlo simulations to compute complex
             | likelihoods on parametric trading models.
             | 
             | Or train ML models.
             | 
             | The list of things you can do with a computer with many,
             | many cores is long, and some of these (or parts thereof)
             | are sometimes rather annoying to map to a GPU.
        
               | Someone wrote:
               | It seems Apple thinks it _can_ map the essential ones to
               | the GPU, though. If they didn't, there would be more CPUs
               | and less powerful other hardware.
               | 
               | 'Rather annoying' certainly doesn't have to be a problem.
               | Apple can afford to pay engineers lots of money to write
               | libraries that do that for you.
               | 
               | The only problem I see is that Apple might (and likely
               | will) disagree with some of their potential customers
               | about what functionality is essential.
        
         | concinds wrote:
         | I wish there were laptop-specific Geekbench rankings because
         | right now it seems impossible to easily compare devices in the
         | same class
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | The M1 Pro/Max are effectively H-class chips so you can
           | search for 11800H, 11950H, 5800H, 5900HX, etc.
        
             | zsmi wrote:
             | Your comment got me wondering if there was actually a
             | method to Intel's naming madness, and it turns out there
             | is!
             | 
             | https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processo
             | r...
             | 
             | 11800H = Core i7-11800H -> family=i7 generation=11 sku=800
             | H=optimized for mobile
             | 
             | 11950H = Core i9-11950H -> family=i9 generation=11 sku=950
             | H=optimized for mobile
             | 
             | I didn't look up the AMD names.
             | 
             | So, now that I know the names, why not use Core i9-11980HK?
             | 
             | family=i7 generation=11 sku=800 HK=high performance
             | optimized for mobile
             | 
             | It seems like it exists
             | https://www.techspot.com/review/2289-intel-core-i9-11980hk/
             | 
             | P.S. General rant: WTF Intel. I'm really glad there is a
             | decoder ring but does it really have to be that hard? Is
             | there really a need for 14 suffixes? For example, option T,
             | power-optimized lifestyle. Is it really different from
             | option U, mobile power efficient?
        
         | alpha64 wrote:
         | You sorted by single core performance, then compared multi core
         | performance. Sort by multi core performance, and you will see
         | that the i9-11900K is nowhere near the top spot.
         | 
         | For example, the Ryzen 9 5950X has single/multi core scores of
         | 1,688/16,645 - which is higher in multi core score than the M1
         | Max, but lower in the single core.
        
           | 28933663 wrote:
           | Perhaps they were referencing the highest 8C chip. Certainly,
           | a 5950X is faster, but it also has double the number of cores
           | (counting only performance on the M1; I don't know if the 2
           | efficiency cores do anything on the multi-core benchmark).
           | Not to mention the power consumption differences - one is in
           | a laptop and the other is a desktop CPU.
           | 
           | Looking at a 1783/12693 on an 8-core CPU shows about a 10%
           | scaling penalty from 1 to 8 cores - suppose a 32-core M1 came
           | out for the Mac Pro that could scale only at 50% per core,
           | that would still score over 28000, compared to the real-world
           | top scorer, the 64-core 3990X scoring 25271.
        
             | eMSF wrote:
             | M1 Max has 10 cores.
        
               | andy_ppp wrote:
               | But the two efficiency cores are less than half a main
               | core thought right?
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | 1/3 the performance, but 1/10 the power. Not adding more
               | was a mistake IMO. Maybe next time...
        
               | andy_ppp wrote:
               | Really? I mean if it gets me 10-14h coding on a single
               | charge that's awesome...
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | The A15 efficiency cores will be in the next model. They
               | are A76-level performance (flagship-level for Android
               | from 2019-2020), but use only a tiny bit more power than
               | the current efficiency cores.
               | 
               | At that point, their E-cores will have something like 80%
               | the performance of a Zen 1 core. Zen 1 might not be the
               | new hotness, but lots of people are perfectly fine with
               | their Threadripper 1950X which Apple could almost match
               | with 16 E-cores and only around 8 watts of peak power.
               | 
               | I suspect we'll see Apple joining ARM in three-tiered
               | CPUs shortly. Adding a couple in-order cores just for
               | tiny system processes that wake periodically, but don't
               | actually do much just makes a ton of sense.
        
               | thenthenthen wrote:
               | Stil 8 more than my desktop pc :p
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | lostmsu wrote:
           | Which is still not that much higher. Of the "consumer" CPUs
           | only 5900X and 5950X score higher. And their stress power
           | draw is about 2X of speculated M1 Max's.
        
           | tedunangst wrote:
           | That's maybe not a bad way to sort? Most of the time I'm
           | interacting with a computer I'm waiting for some single
           | thread to respond, so I want to maximize that, then look over
           | a column to see if it will be adequate for bulk compute tasks
           | as well.
        
           | GeekyBear wrote:
           | Interestingly, the iPhone's A15 SOC did get a newer version
           | of Apple's big core this year.
           | 
           | >On an adjacent note, with a score of 7.28 in the integer
           | suite, Apple's A15 P-core is on equal footing with AMD's
           | Zen3-based Ryzen 5950X with a score of 7.29, and ahead of M1
           | with a score of 6.66.
           | 
           | https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-
           | perfo...
           | 
           | On floating point, it's slightly ahead. 10.15 for the A15 vs.
           | 9.79 for the 5950X.
        
         | DeathArrow wrote:
         | What about this? https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7421821
        
           | andy_ppp wrote:
           | That's a strangely shaped laptop, what is the battery like on
           | it?
        
             | mcphage wrote:
             | It's actually compatible with a tremendous range of third
             | party external batteries like so:
             | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004918MO2
             | 
             | And forget about fast charging--you can charge this battery
             | up from 0% to 100% in less than a minute just by pouring
             | some gasoline in the thing!
             | 
             | It's the very pinnacle of portability!
        
         | erk__ wrote:
         | I really wonder how a single z/Architecture core would fare on
         | this benchmark, though I imagine it's never been ported
        
           | LASR wrote:
           | Probably not as good as you might expect. Z machines are
           | built for enterprise features like RAS, and performance on
           | specific workloads.
           | 
           | The ultra-high-clocked IBM cpus are probably significantly
           | faster at DB loads, and less than the best at more general
           | benchmarks like Geekbench.
        
         | mrtksn wrote:
         | The single core is second to Intel's best but the multicore is
         | well below in the scale, comparable to Intel Xeon W-2191B or
         | Intel Core i9-10920X, which are 18 and 12 core beasts with TDP
         | of up to 165W.
         | 
         | Which means, at least for Geekbench, Apple M1 Max has a power
         | comparable to a very powerful desktop workstation. But if you
         | need the absolute best of the best on multicore you can get
         | double the performance with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X at
         | 280W TDP!
         | 
         | Can you imagine if Apple released some beast with similar TDP?
         | 300W Apple M1 Unleashed, the trashcan design re-imagined, with
         | 10X power of M1 Max if can preserve similar performance per
         | watt. That would be 5X over the best of the best.
         | 
         | If Apple made an iMac Pro with similar TDP to the Intel one,
         | and keeps the performance per watt, that would mean multicore
         | score of about 60K, which is twice of the best processor there
         | is in the X86 World.
         | 
         | I suspect, these scores don't tell the full story since the
         | Apple SoC has specialised units for processing certain kind of
         | data and they have direct access to the data in the memory and
         | as a result it could be unmatched by anything but at the same
         | time it can be comically slow for some other type of processes
         | where X86 shines.
        
           | moreira wrote:
           | Interestingly, the M1 Max is only a 10 core (of which only 8
           | are high performance). I wonder what it will look like when
           | it's a 20-core, or even a 64-core like the Threadripper.
           | Imagine a 64-core M1 on an iMac or Mac Pro.
           | 
           | We're in for some fun times.
        
             | spacedcowboy wrote:
             | John Siracusa - no the chart isn't real, but maybe qualify
             | that with "yet"...
             | 
             | https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1450202454067400711
        
               | kzrdude wrote:
               | Hm, related to that reply https://twitter.com/lukeburrage
               | /status/1450216654202343425
               | 
               | Is this a yield trick, that one is the "chopped" part of
               | another? So they'll bin failed M1Max ones as M1Pro, if
               | possible?
        
             | GeekyBear wrote:
             | Bloomberg's Gurman certainly has shown that he has reliable
             | sources inside Apple over the years.
             | 
             | >Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac
             | Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core
             | variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-
             | performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores.
             | The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core
             | options for graphics.
             | 
             | https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/18/bloomberg-mac-
             | pro-32-hi...
             | 
             | So right in line with the notion of the Mac Pro getting an
             | SOC that has the resources of either 2 or 4 M1 Pros glued
             | together.
        
           | sudhirj wrote:
           | John Siracusa had a diagram linked here that shows the die
           | for M1 Max, and says the ultimate desktop version is
           | basically 4 M1 Max packages. If true, that's a 40 core CPU
           | 128 core GPU beast, and then we can compare to the desktop
           | 280W Ryzens.
        
       | lvl100 wrote:
       | I was dead set on getting a new Mac but I think I will opt for
       | Alder Lake. It appears Apple Silicon for desktop will be pretty
       | much constrained to mobile designs and limitations. Perhaps I
       | will revisit if they decide to release M1 Max inside a Mac Mini
       | but I highly doubt that will happen.
        
       | jccalhoun wrote:
       | Is geekbench seen as a valid score? It seems that on the pc
       | hardware sites and youtube channels I frequent that they don't
       | seem to mention it. The only time I seem to see it is for mac
       | stuff.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Not really. It's nice to run the same benchmark on all
         | platforms but most hardware sites run a game demo that's easily
         | repeatable and take an fps reading or run Cinebench which
         | renders a scene.
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | It is one of the few cross-platform benchmarks that can be run
         | on both PCs and Macs, as well as iOS, Android, and Linux.
        
       | parhamn wrote:
       | Anyone know how this compares to the M1 Pro? Curious if it's
       | worth the additional $400. The search doesn't seem to allow exact
       | matches.
        
         | SegOnMyFault wrote:
         | Should be the same as the difference between the max and the
         | pro lies in the GPU core count.
        
           | ivalm wrote:
           | Memory bandwidth as well.
        
           | meepmorp wrote:
           | No, the Max has twice the memory bandwidth as well - 200GB/s
           | vs 400 GB/s, which will have a big impact on anything memory
           | bound.
        
             | danieldk wrote:
             | We have to see how much it matters in practice, since the
             | M1 Max has roughly the same single threaded score as the
             | M1.
        
             | InvaderFizz wrote:
             | How much and on what is the question. I'm not in the market
             | for a laptop, so I can wait and see.
             | 
             | That said, if Apple releases a MacMini M1 Max, I'll
             | probably buy it.
        
               | meepmorp wrote:
               | Yeah, I would've already ordered a MaxMini if it existed.
               | Maybe next year.
        
         | czbond wrote:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10479712
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | Overall only 5-15% increase.
           | 
           | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10496766?baseli.
           | ..
        
       | metahost wrote:
       | This is the comparison to a mid 2015 15" MacBook Pro for anyone
       | who is curios:
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10513492?baseli...
       | 
       | Summary: single core performance gain is 2x whereas multi-core
       | performance gain is 4x.
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | Ha I couldn't stand the order that was, so here's the reverse:
         | 
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10496766?baseli...
         | 
         | 3.1% increase in single core, and 69.4% increase in multi-core.
        
           | karmelapple wrote:
           | Sorry, I think you meant to reply to this post with it:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28935095
        
         | hazeii wrote:
         | Over 6 years, 2x the performance in single-core and 4x (for
         | 2.5x the cores, depending how you count) seems surprisingly low
         | compared to stuff I've read (not experienced yet) with the M1.
        
           | klelatti wrote:
           | Well the 2019 16 inch i9 MacBook Pro scores are 1088 and 6821
           | so you can see the massive uplift over just two years.
        
           | r00fus wrote:
           | The vast majority of that 6 years is very gradual or minimal
           | improvements. Then M1.
        
           | jermaustin1 wrote:
           | I think a lot of the perceivable speedup in M1 Macs is less
           | to do with these benchmarks and more to do with optimizing
           | the OS and Apple software for the M1 and the various
           | accelerators on the SoC (video encoding and ML).
        
             | klelatti wrote:
             | Don't really understand this argument - Apple has had 13
             | years to optimise Mac OS for Intel and only a couple of
             | years for M1 / can't see how a video encoding accelerator
             | affects responsiveness.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | Also remember that a lot of apple customers stick with
             | absolutely ancient laptops and are then amazed when a
             | modern one is much faster e.g. I had to explain what an
             | NVME drive is to someone who is a great developer but just
             | not a hardware guy.
        
             | larrik wrote:
             | I think you are on the right track, but I think the
             | performance gain really comes from the RAM being on the
             | chip itself, which raw number crunching won't make use (but
             | actual usage will make great use of)
        
               | destitude wrote:
               | I've used both M1 Macbook Air for work and 2019 16" with
               | 32GB of RAM and the M1 Macbook Air feels as fast if not
               | faster then the 16"..
        
             | giantrobot wrote:
             | My M1 MBA is measurably faster than the i9 MBP it replaced
             | in several purely software tasks. At the very least it
             | performs _on par_ with the i9.
             | 
             | There's plenty of ARM-specific optimization in macOS that
             | gives boosts to M1s over Intel but the chips are just
             | faster for many tasks than Intel.
        
               | spfzero wrote:
               | Since Apple has been relying on Intel processors for many
               | years now, I'd bet they've spent more time optimizing
               | MacOS for Intel at this point. On the other hand, iOS has
               | given them a quick way to transfer optimization
               | knowledge.
        
       | boopmaster wrote:
       | This is the first bench I believe might be real. i saw 11542
       | multi core spammed across news sites a couple days back, but it
       | didn't align with a 1.7x boost to performance (which this result
       | actually does). The single core was 1749 which also didn't make
       | sense as I'd imagine there's maybe a tiny bit more TDP per core
       | in the MBP 14 and 16 than the OG 13" M1 mbp. That and it was on
       | macOS v 12.4... which is maybe nonexistent and thus fake? This
       | score here is believable and incredible.
        
       | icosahedron wrote:
       | I'm not exactly proficient with GeekBenchery, but what I see here
       | is that the M1 Max per core barely outperforms the M1?
       | 
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10496766?baseli...
        
         | GeekyBear wrote:
         | Tick - New cores; Tock - Scaling up the number of those same
         | cores
         | 
         | I think most of the work went into the uncore portions of the
         | SOC this time.
        
           | sydthrowaway wrote:
           | uncore?
        
             | als0 wrote:
             | Parts of the SoC that are not the main CPUs e.g. power
             | management controllers, display controllers, etc.
        
           | als0 wrote:
           | FYI it's the reverse. "Tock" is a new microarchitecture, and
           | "tick" is a process shrink.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-tock_model
        
         | hbOY5ENiZloUfnZ wrote:
         | The larger part of the upgrade comes from the GPU rather than
         | the CPU.
        
         | bichiliad wrote:
         | I think this kinda makes sense to me -- the M1 Max has the same
         | cores as the M1, just more of them and more of the performant
         | ones, if I understand it right. The fastest work on the fastest
         | core, when only working on a single core, is probably very
         | similar.
        
           | klelatti wrote:
           | Maybe a little surprised - presumably the thermal limitations
           | on a 16 inch laptop are potentially less limiting than on a
           | 13 inch one so that single core could be pushed to a higher
           | frequency?
        
             | tedunangst wrote:
             | For how long? Longer than it takes to run the benchmark?
        
             | floatingatoll wrote:
             | Does the core speed of an M1 core change at all? I thought
             | they used the low/high power cores at fixed-limit clock
             | speeds.
             | 
             | It sounds crazy to consider, but maybe they'd rather not
             | try to speed up the individual cores in M1 Max, so that
             | they can keep their overhead competitively low. That
             | certainly would simplify manufacturing and QA; removing an
             | entire vector (clock speed) from the binning process makes
             | pipelines and platforms easier to maintain.
        
             | hajile wrote:
             | M1 uses TSMC high-density rather than high-performance.
             | They get 40-60% better transistor density and less leakage
             | (power consumption) at the expense of lower clockspeeds.
             | 
             | Also, a core is not necessarily just limited by power.
             | There are often other considerations like pipeline length
             | that affect final target clocks.
             | 
             | The fact is that at 3.2GHz, the M1 is very close to a 5800X
             | in single-core performance. When that 5800X cranks up 8
             | cores, it dramatically slows down the clocks. Meanwhile the
             | M1 should keep its max clockspeeds without any issue.
             | 
             | We know this because you can keep the 8 core M1 at max
             | clocks for TEN MINUTES on passive cooling in the Macbook
             | air (you can keep max clocks indefinitely if you apply a
             | little thermal pad on the inside of the case).
        
               | klelatti wrote:
               | Thanks - some very good points. Presumably this opens the
               | possibility of higher single core performance on a future
               | desktop design unless limited by pipeline length etc?
        
           | icosahedron wrote:
           | I thought I remembered that in the presentation they had
           | souped up the individual cores too. Must be I'm
           | misremembering.
        
             | sliken wrote:
             | They didn't. However the cores enjoy more main memory
             | bandwidth.
        
         | andy_ppp wrote:
         | The A15 chips has core improvements, I suspect this is what
         | we'll see every year from now on 15-20% performance increase
         | yearly for the next few years assuming no issues with TSMC...
        
       | jmartrican wrote:
       | Anyone know the score for Intel 12th gen Alder Lake?
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | I can't check for you due to hug but the 12900K was clocking in
         | at about 1900 ST IIRC
         | 
         | Edit: Leaving this up so I can be corrected, don't think I have
         | the right figure.
        
           | gigatexal wrote:
           | If true I'd be interested to see what that is in points per
           | watt.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | The points per watt is probably going to be crap but
             | equally I don't care all that much.
             | 
             | One thing as well is that there are always headlines
             | complaining about power usage, but the figures are nearly
             | always from _extreme_ stress tests which basically fully
             | saturate the execution units.
             | 
             | Geekbench is slightly different to those stresses so not
             | sure.
        
               | gigatexal wrote:
               | Sure but I'm only asking for Points per watt to use as a
               | baseline for testing Apple's claims.
        
               | mhh__ wrote:
               | Peak wattage is apparently 330W on a super heavy test,
               | not really sure how to extrapolate that to geekbench.
        
               | jeffbee wrote:
               | Wow, there's a power virus for Alder Lake _client_ that
               | can make it draw 330W? Reference?
        
               | gigatexal wrote:
               | Bitcoin? ;)
        
         | marricks wrote:
         | 1834 ST / 17370 MT [1]
         | 
         | But that's also for something which has a TDP of 125W [2],
         | unsure if that's the right number for a mobile chip? Also no
         | clue what M1 Max's TDP is either.
         | 
         | [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9510991
         | 
         | [2] https://cpu-benchmark.org/cpu/intel-core-i9-12900k/
        
           | runeks wrote:
           | The Intel CPU is pretty underwhelming. It has twice the
           | number of high performance cores (16 vs 8) but is only 37%
           | faster for multi-core tasks.
        
             | colinmhayes wrote:
             | I guess that's what happens when Apple's process is a
             | generation ahead of Intel's.
        
           | ribit wrote:
           | M1 Max TDP will be around 30-40 watt for the CPU cluster and
           | 50-60 watt for the GPU cluster. Note that unlike x86 CPUs
           | (which can draw far more than their TDP for brief periods of
           | time), this is maximal power usage of the chip.
           | 
           | M1 needs about 5W to reach those signs-core scores, Tiger
           | Lake needs 20W
        
       | websap wrote:
       | Looks like Geekbench just got the HN bug of death.
        
       | tambourine_man wrote:
       | Site is under heavy load:
       | 
       | 1783 Single-Core Score
       | 
       | 12693 Multi-Core Score
        
         | YetAnotherNick wrote:
         | For comparison, M1 results:
         | 
         | 1705 Single core, 7382 multi core
        
           | M4R5H4LL wrote:
           | For comparison, Mac Pro (Late 2019) 16-core: 1104 Single-Core
           | Score, 15078 Multi-Core Score
        
       | starfallg wrote:
       | Pretty underwhelming from a pure performance standpoint after all
       | the hype from the launch.
       | 
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore
        
       | petersellers wrote:
       | Pretty impressive, all things considered. Looks like it's roughly
       | on par with an AMD 5800X, which is a Desktop CPU with 8C/16T and
       | a 105W TDP.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | Impressive but unbelievably expensive considering what will
         | actually be run on it.
         | 
         | I kind of want one, but the 5800x for example is about 10x less
         | expensive than a specced out MacBook Pro
        
           | jchw wrote:
           | People are probably going to be reading your comparison as an
           | objective comparison rather than an opportunistic one. For
           | example, if you are choosing between upgrading AM4 processors
           | on your desktop versus buying a new Macbook Pro, then of
           | course it makes sense to compare the cost in those terms.
           | However, the price of the M1 chip is obviously probably not
           | that bad. Since you can't meaningfully buy it on its own, I
           | guess there is no fair comparison to make here anyways.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | The M1 chip is actually probably extremely expensive. The
             | top of the line one is literally 60 BILLION transistors!
             | 
             | My current machine has like 10 billion (GPU + CPU)
        
               | jchw wrote:
               | 60 billion is obviously a metric ton, but 10 billion is
               | not that ridiculous for an SoC to clear; there are
               | snapdragons at higher transistor counts. The AMD 5950X
               | clears 19 billion, and it is just a CPU with no GPU or
               | integrated RAM. I've got to guess the M1 transistor count
               | is inflated a fair bit by RAM.
               | 
               | I suppose it's not likely we'll know the actual price of
               | the M1, but it would suffice to say it's probably a fair
               | bit less than the full laptop.
        
               | smiley1437 wrote:
               | Not sure if these numbers can believed, but apparently a
               | 300mm wafer at the 5nm node costs about $17000 for TSMC
               | to process
               | 
               | https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmcs-wafer-prices-
               | reveale...
               | 
               | Since the M1 is 120 mm2 and a 300mm wafer is about 70695
               | mm2, you could theoretically fit 589 M1 chips on a wafer.
               | 
               | Subtract the chips lost at the edge and other flaws, you
               | might be able to get 500 M1 off a wafer? (I know nothing
               | about what would be a reasonable yield but I'm pretty
               | sure a chip won't work if part of it is missing)
               | 
               | Anyways, that would be $17000/500, or $34 per M1 chip -
               | based just on area and ignoring other processing costs.
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | The M1 Max is slightly off-square and 432mm^2. 19.1 x
               | 22.6 seems like a decent fit.
               | 
               | TSMC has stated that N7 defect density was 0.09 a year
               | ago or so. They have also since stated that N5 defect
               | density was lower than N7.
               | 
               | Let's plug that in here https://caly-
               | technologies.com/die-yield-calculator/
               | 
               | If we go with a defect density of 0.07, that's 94 good
               | dies and 32 harvest dies. At 0.08, it's 90 and 36
               | respectively.
               | 
               | If we put that at 120 dies per wafer and $17,000 per
               | wafer, that's just $141 per chip. That's probably WAAAYY
               | less than they are paying for the i9 chips in their 2019
               | Macbook Pros.
               | 
               | For comparison, AMD's 6900 GPU die is 519mm^2 and
               | Nvidia's 3080 is 628mm^2. Both are massively more
               | expensive to produce.
        
           | ribit wrote:
           | Workstation laptops are expensive. These new Macs are priced
           | quite competitively. E.g. the 14" with the full M1 Pro is
           | $2.5k and is faster, more portable and has a much better
           | display than a 2.7k Dell Precision 5560...
        
             | TheBigSalad wrote:
             | Aren't Dells usually pricer than retail because they
             | include some kind of service plan?
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | Very True although I note that I wouldn't be able to
             | actually work on one for the day job because of windows.
             | 
             | Still might buy one, I want an arm box to test my work on
             | compilers on.
        
               | ribit wrote:
               | For me it's going to be a massive improvement. Already
               | the base M1 builds software faster than my Intel i9...
               | and given that these new chips have 400GB/s bandwidth it
               | will be a ridiculous improvement for my R data analysis
               | code...
        
           | megablast wrote:
           | Are you comparing the price of a chip to a laptop??
        
             | LegitShady wrote:
             | can't really get it any other way.
             | 
             | The issue to me is that because apple is the only one who
             | can put these in computers this will have no real effect on
             | PC component pricing. Apple makes, apple puts in apple
             | computers, can't run windows, if you're in another
             | ecosystem it's not even a real option.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | Yes. If I bought one of these it would never actually move
             | so I don't actually mind the comparison all that much for
             | my personal use case, obviously it isn't apples to oranges
             | but my point is that this performance is not free.
        
               | whynotminot wrote:
               | What is it with the M1 series of chips that causes people
               | to bring completely disingenuous comparisons to the fray
               | with a straight face.
        
               | vinculuss wrote:
               | A boxed CPU is an odd comparison without considering
               | motherboard, ram, GPU, cooler, SSD, display in that
               | calculation as well.
        
               | hwita wrote:
               | Then perhaps you may want to wait for Apple to release a
               | desktop-class processor to make the comparison, perhaps
               | early next year?
        
               | yazaddaruvala wrote:
               | Its not clear to me that Apple will make a desktop-class
               | processor. The unit economics likely don't make sense for
               | them.
               | 
               | All of Apple's innovation seems to be towards better and
               | cheaper AR/VR hardware. Desktop-class processors would be
               | a distraction for them.
               | 
               | And with all of the top cloud players building custom
               | silicon these days, there is little room for Apple to
               | sell CPUs to the server market even if they were inclined
               | (which they are not).
               | 
               | The only strategic Apple vertical that might align with
               | desktop-class CPUs is the Apple Car initiative and
               | specifically self-driving. Dedicated audio/image/video
               | processing and inference focused hardware could better
               | empower creatives for things like VFX or post-processing
               | or media in general. However, its not clear to me that is
               | enough of a market for Apple's unit economics compared
               | with more iDevice / MacBook sales.
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | At worst, wait until they release these in the iMac Pro
               | and maybe even the Mac Mini. Both easily have the
               | headroom for these chips.
        
               | xbar wrote:
               | Can you explain your unit economic analysis?
               | 
               | They have made a Mac Pro desktop for several decades. I
               | am trying to follow your reasoning for Apple to sunset
               | that category of workstation as a result of transitioning
               | to Apple silicon, but it is not working out for me.
               | 
               | My logic leads to a cheaper-to-produce-than-Macbook
               | workstation in an updated Mac Pro chassis with best-
               | binned M1X Max parts in the Spring followed by its first
               | chiplet-based Apple silicon workstation using the same
               | chassis in the Fall, followed by an annual iteration on
               | Apple silicon across its product line, on about the same
               | cadence as A/A-x iOS devices.
               | 
               | Part of my reasoning is based on the assumption that Mac
               | Pro sales generate more Pro XDR sales displays at a
               | higher rate than Macbook Pro sales. I think the total
               | profit baked into an Apple silicon Mac Pro + Pro XDR is
               | big and fills a niche not filled by any thing else in the
               | market. Why leave it unfilled?
        
               | Closi wrote:
               | IMO it's obvious that there will need to be a desktop
               | version - and all the rumours are pointing towards a Mac
               | Pro release with silly specs - i.e. an SOC with something
               | like 40/64+ cores. Why would Apple want to give up their
               | portion of the high-power desktop market to Windows?
               | 
               | What's the alternative? That they release another Mac Pro
               | with intel, despite their stated intention to move
               | everything away from x86, or that they release a Mac Pro
               | with just a laptop chip inside?
               | 
               | Let's remember that Apple has an annual R&D budget of
               | c$20 billion, so it won't be totally shocking if they
               | diverted a small fraction of that to build out a desktop
               | processor.
        
               | xbar wrote:
               | Quite right.
        
               | lostmsu wrote:
               | Perhaps. AMD should also release 5nm processors by then
               | too.
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | The 10-core (8 performance) M1 Max starts around $2700 in the
           | 14" form factor.
           | 
           | It's hard to compare to laptops, but since we started the
           | desktop comparison, a Ryzen 7 5800X is $450 MSRP, or about
           | $370 current street price. Motherboards can be found for
           | $100, but you'll more likely spend $220-250 for a good match.
           | 32GB RAM is $150, 1TB Samsung 980 Pro is a bit under $200.
           | Let's assume desktop RTX 3060 for the graphics (which is
           | probably slightly more powerful than the 32-core GPU M1 Max)
           | for MSRP $330 but street price over $700.
           | 
           | So we're at about $1670 for the components, before adding in
           | case ($100), power supply ($100) and other things a laptop
           | includes (screen, keyboard...).
        
             | jshier wrote:
             | M1 Pro has the same CPU cores as the M1 Max, just half the
             | GPU cores (and video coding cores). So you can get the same
             | CPU performance in the 14" for as little as $2499.
        
         | Thaxll wrote:
         | 5800x seems 20% faster for single core:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/5874365 so def not on
         | part.
        
           | tbob22 wrote:
           | That's certainly overclocked or very high PBO offsets, at
           | stock the 5800x gets around 1700-1800 ST.
        
           | YetAnotherNick wrote:
           | This is the official score:
           | https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x
        
           | hajile wrote:
           | But if you run TWO single-threaded workloads at once, the
           | clocks dial WAY back. Meanwhile, the M1 can keep all cores at
           | 3.2GHz pretty much indefinitely.
        
       | munro wrote:
       | Here's the link to the MacBookPro18,2 OpenCL benchmark:
       | 
       | * M1 Max OpenCL https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/3551790
       | [60,167 OpenCL Score]
       | 
       | Comparing to my current MacBook Pro (16-inch Late 2019) & my
       | Hetzner AX101 server:
       | 
       | * MacBook Pro (16-inch Late 2019) vs M1 Max - CPU
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10496766?baseli...
       | [single 163.6%, multi 188.8%]
       | 
       | * MacBook Pro (16-inch Late 2019) vs M1 Max - OpenCL
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/compare/3551790?bas...
       | [180.8%]
       | 
       | * Hetzner AX101 vs M1 Max - CPU
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10496766?baseli...
       | [single 105.0%, multi 86.4%]
       | 
       | * NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 vs M1 Max - OpenCL
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/compare/3551790?bas...
       | [80.7%]
       | 
       | * NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 vs M1 Max - OpenCL
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/compare/3551790?bas...
       | [29.0%, boo]
       | 
       | I'm surprised the MacBook holds its own against the Hetzner
       | AX101's AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core CPU! The multi-core SQLite
       | performance surprises me, I would think the M1 Max's NVMe is
       | faster than my server's SAMSUNG MZQL23T8HCLS-00A07.
        
         | keymone wrote:
         | > * NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 vs M1 Max - OpenCL
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/compare/3551790?bas...
         | [29.0%]
         | 
         | 30% performance for ~15% of power use in laptop form factor?
         | that's not boo, that seems like a clear win for apple.
        
           | muro wrote:
           | Performance doesn't go down linearly with power. I don't have
           | that card to try, but maybe it would do even better at 15% of
           | power.
        
             | keymone wrote:
             | i doubt it'll even initialize.
        
             | r00fus wrote:
             | There is a floor below which it will go straight to 0 (ie,
             | nonfunctional).
             | 
             | The M1 Max is well below that floor at max wattage.
        
         | klelatti wrote:
         | Thanks - interesting on OpenCL - presumably running on GPU? All
         | that memory opens up some interesting possibilities.
         | 
         | Also I thought Apple was deprecating OpenCL in favour of Metal?
        
           | 58028641 wrote:
           | OpenCL and OpenGL have been deprecated in favor of Metal.
           | Geekbench also has a Metal compute benchmark.
        
             | bredren wrote:
             | Is there a metal benchmark? This is the score I've been
             | most interested in.
        
               | munro wrote:
               | Nay, there isn't one for the new M1 Max, but FWIW it's
               | pretty comparable, but OpenCL is a bit faster than Metal.
               | 
               | * MacBook Pro (16-inch Late 2019) - Metal
               | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/3139776 [31,937
               | metal score] * MacBook Pro (16-inch Late 2019) - OpenCL
               | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/3139756 [33,280
               | OpenCL score]
        
         | m15i wrote:
         | Anyone know if that "Device Memory 42.7 GB" is fixed or can be
         | increased?
        
           | munro wrote:
           | The MacBook Pro M1 Max can be ordered with either 32 GB or 64
           | GB of unified memory. The geekbench report shows 64 GB of
           | memory (maxed), not sure why only 42.7 GB is usable by OpenCL
           | --so I guess we have to assume that's the max, unless there's
           | some software fix to get it up to 64 GB.
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | I wonder what Asahi Linux devs can show us.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | raylad wrote:
       | Compared to the late 2020 Macbook Air:
       | 
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10508178?baseli...
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | This confirms that single-core performance is essentially the
         | same as the basic M1.
        
       | jkeddo wrote:
       | One big thing to consider is that this is just the _first_ m1 Max
       | Geekbench score, compared against the world 's greatest 11900Ks.
       | Most 11900K's are nowhere near the levels of the top preforming
       | one.
       | 
       | Once Apple starts shipping M1 Max in volume, and as TSMC yields
       | get better, you will see "golden chips" slowly start to score
       | even higher than this one.
        
         | cauk wrote:
         | Golden chips?
        
           | spacedcowboy wrote:
           | In every manufacturing process there are always chips that
           | perform better than others. They all reach the "bin" that
           | they're designed for, but the _actual_ design is for higher
           | than that, so that even imperfect chips can perform at the
           | required level.
           | 
           | The corollary of that is that there are some chips that
           | perform better than the design parameters would have you
           | expect, they're easier to overclock and get higher speeds
           | from. These are the "golden" chips.
           | 
           | Having said that, it's not clear to me that the M1* will do
           | that, I don't know if Apple self-tune the chips on boot to
           | extract the best performance, or they just slap in a standard
           | clock-rate and anything that can meet it, does. I'd expect
           | the latter, tbh. It's a lot easier, and it means there's less
           | variation between devices which has lots of knock-on benefits
           | to QA and the company in general, even if it means users
           | can't overclock.
        
           | trenchgun wrote:
           | There are slight variations in materials, processes, etc.
           | 
           | End result: some chips just end up being better than others.
        
       | m15i wrote:
       | How will these chips do for training neural nets? The 64 GB RAM
       | would be awesome for larger models, so I'm willing to sacrifice
       | some training speed.
        
         | cschmid wrote:
         | I know this doesn't answer your question, but can I just ask
         | (out of curiosity) why you're training ML models on a laptop?
        
           | m15i wrote:
           | It's all about the RAM. 64GB would allow input of larger
           | image sizes and/or nets with more parameters. Right now, the
           | consumer card with the most RAM is the rtx 3090 which is only
           | 24GB, and in my opinion overpriced and inefficient in terms
           | of wattage (~350W). Even the ~$6000 RTX A6000 cards are only
           | 48GB.
        
             | cschmid wrote:
             | I don't think replacing a workstation with a Macbook
             | because of RAM makes too much sense: If running one
             | minibatch of your model already takes up all the memory you
             | have, where would the rest of your training data sit? In
             | the M1, you don't have a separate main memory.
             | 
             | Also, software support for accelerated training on Apple
             | hardware is extremely limited: Out of the main frameworks,
             | only tensorflow seems to target it, and even there, the
             | issues you'll face won't be high on the priority list.
             | 
             | I know that nvidia GPUs are very expensive, but if you're
             | really serious about training a large model, the only
             | alternative would be paying rent to Google.
        
       | bhouston wrote:
       | Where is the graphics test? The M1 Max versus an NVIDIA 3080 or
       | similar?
        
         | alfredxing wrote:
         | In the keynote Apple said the M1 Max should be comparable to
         | the performance of an RTX 3080 Laptop (the footnote on the
         | graph specified the comparison was against an MSI GE76 Raider
         | 11UH-053), which is still quite a bit below the desktop 3080.
        
         | akmarinov wrote:
         | No way it can get anywhere near 3080
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | I'm waiting to be corrected by someone who knows GPU
         | architecture better than me but as far as I can tell the
         | _synthetic_ benchmarks can trade blows with a 3070 or 80
         | (mobile), but the actual gaming performance isn 't going to be
         | as rosy.
         | 
         | Also recall that very few games needing that performance
         | actually work on MacOS
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | The gaming performance will be CPU-bottlenecked. Without
           | proper Wine/DXVK support, they have to settle for interpreted
           | HLE or dynamic recompilation, neither of which are very
           | feasible on modern CPUs, much less ARM chips.
        
           | schleck8 wrote:
           | Does someone know how much VRAM the M1X has? Because I bet
           | it's far less than a 3070 or 3080.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | The memory is unified, and very high bandwidth. No idea
             | what that means in practice, guess we'll find out.
        
               | pornel wrote:
               | It's very high bandwidth for a CPU, but not that great
               | for a GPU (400GB/s vs 440GB/s in 3070 and 980GB/s in
               | 3090).
        
               | artificialLimbs wrote:
               | >> ...not that great for a GPU _...
               | 
               | * almost equals the highest laptop GPU available_
        
               | coayer wrote:
               | But it's also a premium product, so it matching a 3070m
               | isn't really above what you'd expect for the cost (but
               | efficiency is another story)
        
               | oneplane wrote:
               | On the other hand, it's zero-copy between CPU and GPU.
        
               | minhazm wrote:
               | It's not quite apples to apples. The 3070 only has 8GB of
               | memory available, whereas the M1 Max has up to 64 GB
               | available. It's also unified memory in the M1 and doesn't
               | require a copy between CPU & GPU. Some stuff will be
               | better for the M1 Max and some stuff will be worse.
        
               | nottorp wrote:
               | Of course, with a 3070 and up you have to play with
               | headphones so you don't hear the fan noise.
               | 
               | This is the best feature of the new Apple CPUs if you ask
               | me: silence.
               | 
               | Now to wait for a decent desktop...
        
             | ribit wrote:
             | Up to 64GB...
        
             | jbverschoor wrote:
             | There's no vram. It's unified / shared memory. There's no
             | M1X. There's M1 Pro and M1 Max
        
               | akaij wrote:
               | I think we can safely shorten them to M1P and M1X.
        
             | amne wrote:
             | the memory is unified so whatever ram is on there
             | (16,32,64) can be allocated as vram.
             | 
             | That's why during the presentation they bragged about how
             | certain demanding 3d scenes can now be rendered on a
             | notebook.
        
               | EugeneOZ wrote:
               | I still didn't get their example about the 100Gb
               | spaceship model - max RAM supported is 64Gb...
        
             | f0rmatfunction wrote:
             | M1 Pro & Max (and plain M1 too for what it's worth) have
             | unified memory across both CPU and GPU. So depending on the
             | model it'd be up to 32gb or 64gb (not accounting for the
             | amount being used by the CPU). Put differently - far more
             | than 3070 and 3080.
        
           | labby5 wrote:
           | It's really hard to compare Apple and Nvidia, but a bit
           | easier to compare Apple to AMD. My best guess is performance
           | will be similar to a 6700xt. Of course, none of this really
           | matters for gaming if studios don't support the Mac.
        
             | neogodless wrote:
             | The mobile RTX 3080 limited to 105W is comparable to about
             | an RX 6700M, which is well behind the desktop RX 6700XT.
        
           | EricE wrote:
           | "Also recall that very few games needing that performance
           | actually work on MacOS"
           | 
           | But many Windows games do run under Crossover (a commercial
           | wrap of WINE - well worth the measly licensing fee for
           | seamless ease of use to me) or the Windows 10 ARM beta in
           | Parallels. I got so many games to run on my M1 MacBook Air I
           | ended up returning it to wait for the next round that could
           | take more RAM. I'm very, very happy I waited for these and I
           | fully expect it will replace my Windows gaming machine too.
        
           | ribit wrote:
           | Well, Apple G13 series are excellent rasterizers. I'd expect
           | them do very well in games, especially with that massive
           | bandwidth and humongous caches. The problem is that not many
           | games run on macOS. But if you are only interested in games
           | with solid Mac support, they will perform very well
           | (especially if it's a native client like Baldurs Gates 3).
        
             | Thaxll wrote:
             | "very well" 45 fps top at 1080p medium settings
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hROxRQvO-gQ
             | 
             | You take a 3 years old card you get 2x more fps.
        
               | ribit wrote:
               | Which other passively cooled laptop can do it? And what 3
               | year old card are you comparing it to? Hopefully
               | something with 20W or lower power consumption.
               | 
               | 45fps at medium Full HD is not far off a 1650 Max q
        
               | Thaxll wrote:
               | Apple compare themself to a 3080m, the perf from an M1 is
               | not even close to a 3 y/o card. I don't care if it takes
               | 10w if I can't even play at 60fps on "recent'ish" games.
        
             | mhh__ wrote:
             | What is the most intensive game you could actually run?
             | 
             | I was going to say Fortnite but I'm guessing that's not the
             | case anymore
        
               | ribit wrote:
               | Baldurs Gates 3, Metro Last Light, Total War...
        
         | tromp wrote:
         | Seems kind of unfair with the NVIDIA using up to 320W of power
         | and having nearly twice the memory bandwidth. But if it runs
         | even half as well as a 3080, that would represent amazing
         | performance per Watt.
        
           | throwawaywindev wrote:
           | I believe they compared it to a ~100W mobile RTX 3080, not a
           | desktop one. And the mobile part can go up to ~160W on gaming
           | laptops like Legion 7 that have better cooling than the MSI
           | one they compared to.
           | 
           | They have a huge advantage in performance/watt but not in raw
           | performance. And I wonder how much of that advantage is
           | architecture vs. manufacturing process node.
        
             | moron4hire wrote:
             | I am very confused by these claims on M1's GPU performance.
             | I build a WebXR app at work that runs at 120hz on the Quest
             | 2, 90hz on my Pixel 5, and 90hz on my Window 10 desktop
             | with an RTX 2080 with the Samsung Odyssey+ _and_ a 4K
             | display at the same time. And these are just the native
             | refresh rates, you can 't run any faster with the way VR
             | rendering is done in the browser. But on my M1 Mac Mini, I
             | get 20hz on a single, 4K screen.
             | 
             | My app doesn't do a lot. It displays high resolution
             | photospheres, performs some teleconferencing, and renders
             | spatialized audio. And like I said, it screams on
             | Snapdragon 865-class hardware.
        
               | astlouis44 wrote:
               | What sort of WebXR app? Game or productivity app?
        
               | moron4hire wrote:
               | Productivity. It's a social VR experience for teaching
               | foreign language. It's part of our existing class
               | structure, so there isn't really much to do if you aren't
               | scheduled to meet with a teacher.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | wtallis wrote:
             | The MSI laptop in question lets the GPU use up to 165W. See
             | eg. AnandTech's review of that MSI laptop, which measured
             | 290W at the wall while gaming:
             | https://www.anandtech.com/show/16928/the-msi-ge76-raider-
             | rev... (IIRC, it originally shipped with a 155W limit for
             | the GPU, but that got bumped up by a firmware update.)
        
             | fnordsensei wrote:
             | The performance right now is interesting, but the
             | performance trajectory as they evolve their GPUs over the
             | coming generations will be even more interesting to follow.
             | 
             | Who knows, maybe they'll evolve solutions that will
             | challenge desktop GPUs, as they have done with the CPUs.
        
             | moron4hire wrote:
             | A "100W mobile RTX 3080" is basically not using the GPU at
             | all. At that power draw, you can't do anything meaningful.
             | So I guess the takeaway is "if you starve a dedicated GPU,
             | then the M1 Max gets within 90%!"
        
           | wilde wrote:
           | Apple invited the comparison during their keynote. ;)
        
         | Thaxll wrote:
         | It's probably bad, the M1 could not get 60fps on WoW so ...
         | When I see Apple comparison I would take that with a grain of
         | salts because the M1 is not able to run any modern game at
         | decent fps.
        
           | williamtwild wrote:
           | "the M1 is not able to run any modern game at decent fps."
           | 
           | Do you have first hand experience with this? I do . We play
           | WoW on MacBook air M1 and it runs fantastic . Better than my
           | intel MacBook Pro from 2019
        
             | schleck8 wrote:
             | "Running fantastic" is what Apple would advertise, but what
             | matters is fps, utilisation and thermals when benchmarking
             | games
        
             | Thaxll wrote:
             | Defines fantastic because a 1080ti from 4 years ago run
             | faster than the M1. My 2070 could run wow at 144fps, and
             | it's a 2.5y/o card.
             | 
             | Yet most people can't get 60fps:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhcJzKCcpMQ
             | 
             | Edit: thanks for the dates update
        
               | windowsrookie wrote:
               | Comparing the M1 to a 1080ti is ridiculous. The 1080ti
               | draws 250+ watts. The M1 draws 10w in the MacBook Air.
               | 
               | In the current market you can buy a MacBook Air (an
               | entire laptop computer) for less than buying just a
               | midrange GPU.
        
               | Thaxll wrote:
               | Well Apple compared themself to a 3080m which is faster
               | than a 1080ti.
        
               | Zarel wrote:
               | No one has explained what you got wrong, so in case
               | anyone reading this is still confused, Apple compared an
               | M1 Max to a 3080m. An M1 Max's graphics card is ~4x as
               | fast as an M1.
        
               | danieldk wrote:
               | The 1080 Ti was made available in March 2017, so it's 4.5
               | years old. Not 6.
        
           | jbverschoor wrote:
           | My M1 cannot properly without stuttering show
           | https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/ (esp. the second
           | animation of opening and turning the laptop).
           | 
           | Both safari and chrome
        
             | garblegarble wrote:
             | That's because it's actually a series of jpegs rather than
             | a video(!!) - the same happens on my Intel Mac
        
           | wil421 wrote:
           | Are modern games built with Metal? Pretty sure Apple
           | deprecated OpenGL support. Macs have never been gaming
           | computers.
           | 
           | The GPUs in the M1 family of Macs are for "professional"
           | users doing Video Editing, Content creation, 3D editing,
           | Photo editing and audio processing.
        
             | lights0123 wrote:
             | MoltenVK is Vulkan's official translation layer to Metal,
             | and doesn't have too much overhead. Combine with dxvk or
             | d3vkd to translate from DirectX--DirectX before 12 is
             | generally faster with DXVK that Windows' native support.
        
           | plandis wrote:
           | That's not great especially because I believe WoW works
           | natively for the M1 and uses the Metal API.
           | 
           | My follow up would be what settings were you playing at?
        
       | varjag wrote:
       | Someone needs to come up with realistic Mac benchmarks. Like
       | 'seconds it takes for Finder beachball to disappear'. At this
       | metric my M1 sees no improvement over my MB12.
        
         | bborud wrote:
         | Beachball disappears when Apple's developers learn to write
         | asynchronous code. (You can't blaame the hardware for
         | programming decisions that are fundamentally slow or stupid).
        
       | ur-whale wrote:
       | How does that compare to top of the line AMD Ryzen latest gen
       | (site is dead for me right now)?
        
         | tbob22 wrote:
         | Single core is similar to the 5900x but multicore is more in
         | line with 3900x.
         | 
         | Quite impressive for a laptop, I'm sure the power consumption
         | will be much higher compared to the M1 but likely no where near
         | desktop parts.
        
       | EvgeniyZh wrote:
       | Top intel mobile processor appears to be
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10431820 M1 Max gives 9%
       | boost for single-core and 34% for multicore, with similar or
       | larger (?) TDP -- Intel is 35-45 W, M1 Max is 60W but I assume
       | some of it (a lot?) goes to GPU. Impressive, but probably
       | wouldn't be called revolution if came from Intel.
        
         | Weryj wrote:
         | At first glace yeah, but that's 45W at 2.5Ghz, but TDP isn't
         | the power rating of the CPU. That benchmark lists the Intel CPU
         | as up to 4.9Ghz, I would say it's actual power draw was closer
         | to the 100W mark for CPU only.
        
           | EvgeniyZh wrote:
           | 4.9 GHz should be single-core max freq, not applicable in
           | multicore benchmark. All-core turbo is lower, but also AFAIK
           | there is a limit on time it run on this freq (tau for PL2, i
           | think around half a minute by default).
        
             | klelatti wrote:
             | Is there any reason why the Intel CPU wouldn't run at 4.9
             | GHz for the single core benchmark though - whilst the M1
             | would be limited to a much lower frequency which it can
             | sustain for much longer?
        
               | EvgeniyZh wrote:
               | I think, but I'm not 100% sure, that limits are on
               | overall TDP, i.e., single-core workloaad can run on turbo
               | indefinitely. Then aalso I'd assume benchmarks are much
               | longer than any reasonable value of tau which means it
               | integrates out (i.e., Intel performance may be higher in
               | short-term). Edit: that is probably one of the reasons
               | single-core gap is smaller
        
               | klelatti wrote:
               | Thanks - this all highlights some of the interesting
               | trade offs in CPU design!
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | Just to throw AMD in the mix, Ryzen 9 5980HX (35-54W).
         | 
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10431820
         | 
         | M1 Max leading 17% single core, 50% multi-core.
         | 
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10496766?baseli...
        
         | foldr wrote:
         | If the TDP was really the same we'd be seeing Intel laptops
         | with 20 hour battery lives.
        
           | EvgeniyZh wrote:
           | Battery life is more about idle/low load TDP, not full load
           | TDP. It's not like MBP has 60*20=1200 Wh battery (100Wh is
           | FAA limit)
        
         | hajile wrote:
         | M1 only uses around 15-18w with all 8 cores active according to
         | Anandtech's review (with E-cores using 1/10 the power, that's
         | equivalent to just a little less than 4.5 big cores. I'd guess
         | 30w for all cores would be the upper-end power limit for the
         | cores.
         | 
         | Intel's "TDP" is a suggestion rather than reality. Their chips
         | often hit 60-80 watts of peak power before hitting thermals and
         | being forced to dial back.
        
       | badhombres wrote:
       | I'm curios on the difference between the 8 cores and 10 cores for
       | the M1 Pro. I'm definitely not going to get the Max, I'm just not
       | the user that needs the GPU's
        
       | ksec wrote:
       | I have seen far too many people making comments on MacPro "Pro"
       | Chip.
       | 
       | A hypothetical _32_ Core CPU and _64_ Core GPU is about the max
       | Apple could make in terms of die size reticle limit without going
       | chiplet and TDP limit without some exotic cooling solution. Which
       | means you cant have some imaginary 64 Core CPU and 128 Core GPU.
       | 
       | We can now finally have a Mac Cube, where the vast majority of
       | the Cube will simply be a heat sink and it will still be faster
       | than current Intel Mac Pro. I think this chip makes most sense
       | with the A16 design on 4nm next year [1].
       | 
       | Interesting question would be memory, current Mac Pro support
       | 1.5TB. A 16 Channel DDR5 would be required to feed the GPU, but
       | that also means minimum memory on Mac Pro would be 128GB at 8GB
       | per DIMM. One could use HBM on package, but that doesn't provide
       | ECC Memory protection.
       | 
       | [1] TSMC 3nm has been postponed in case anyone not paying
       | attention, so the whole roadmap has been shifted by a year. If
       | this still doesn't keep those repeating Moore's law has not died
       | yet I dont know what will.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | It's not hard to imagine that "Jade 2C-Die" mean two compute
         | die chiplets and "Jade 4C-Die" means four chiplets which makes
         | 40 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores about the same size as Sapphire
         | Rapids. It could have 256 GB RAM on a 2048-bit bus with 1,600
         | GB/s of bandwidth.
        
           | ksec wrote:
           | Chiplet isn't a silver bullet and without compromise. You
           | will then need to figure the memory configuration and NUMA
           | access. Basically the Jade 2C-Die on chiplet analogy doesn't
           | make sense unless you make some significant changes to
           | Jade-C.
           | 
           | Jade 4C-Die on a single die only make sense up to 40 Core (
           | 4x Current CPU Core or 32 HP Core and 8 HE Core ), unless
           | there are some major cache rework there aren't any space for
           | 128 GPU Core.
           | 
           | But then we also know Apple has no problem with _only_ 2 HE
           | Core on a MacBook Pro Laptop, why would they want to put _8_
           | HE Core on a Desktop?
        
         | lowbloodsugar wrote:
         | If someone had said in 2018 "Apple is going to release a
         | macbook pro with an ARM chip that will be faster at running x86
         | applications than an x86 chip while having a 20 hour batter
         | life", then a lot of people would have responded with a lot of
         | very clever sounding reasons why this couldn't possibly work
         | and what the limitations would be on a hypothetical chip and
         | how a hypothetical chip that they can imagine would behave.
         | 
         | I think the evidence is that Apple's chip designers don't care
         | about anyone's preconceived and very logical sounding ideas
         | about what can and can't be done.
         | 
         | So what we know is that there is going to be a Mac Pro, and
         | that whatever it is is going to absolutely destroy the
         | equivalent (i.e. absolute top of the range) x86 PC.
         | 
         | If you want to be right, take that as a fact, and work
         | backwards from there. Any argument that starts with " _I_ don
         | 't think it can be done" is a losing argument.
        
       | runeks wrote:
       | But does it support running x86 Docker images using hardware
       | emulation?
       | 
       | This is what's holding me off buying one since I don't know
       | whether to get 16 GB RAM (if it _doesn 't_ work) or 32 GB RAM (if
       | it _does_ work).
        
         | ArchOversight wrote:
         | There is no hardware in the M1's for x86 emulation. Rosetta 2
         | does on the fly translation for JIT and caches translation for
         | x86_864 binaries on first launch.
         | 
         | Docker for Mac runs a VM, inside that VM (which is Linux for
         | ARM) if you run an x86_64 docker image it will use qemu to
         | emulate x86_64 and run Linux Intel ELF binaries as if they were
         | ARM.
         | 
         | That means that currently using Docker on macOS if there is a
         | native ARM version available for the docker image, it will use
         | that, but it can and will fall back to using x86_64 docker
         | images.
         | 
         | That already works as-is. There is no hardware emulation
         | though, it is all QEMU doing the work.
        
           | giantrobot wrote:
           | Note that Docker Desktop for Mac has _always_ used a VM to
           | run a Linux instance. Same with Docker Desktop on Windows (I
           | don 't know if this has changed with WSL). The main
           | difference on M1 Macs is the qemu emulation when a Docker
           | image is only available as x86_64. If the image is available
           | in AArch64 it runs native on the M1.
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | > Same with Docker Desktop on Windows (I don't know if this
             | has changed with WSL).
             | 
             | Not really. On Windows you can choose if you want to run
             | Linux binaries in a VM or native Windows containers.
        
               | thesandlord wrote:
               | I feel Windows Containers are a whole separate thing. I
               | personally have never seen anyone use them, but then
               | again I have never worked on a Windows Server stack.
        
               | ArchOversight wrote:
               | Native Windows Containers run Native Windows Binaries.
               | You can't just launch your Linux docker containers using
               | Native Windows Containers.
        
             | ArchOversight wrote:
             | Oh yeah, I thought the whole VM thing was implied with the
             | fact that Docker is a Linux technology...
        
             | watermelon0 wrote:
             | WSL1 doesn't support cgroups and other pieces needed to run
             | containers, but Docker Desktop can use WSL2, which uses a
             | lightweight VM in the background, so you are correct.
        
           | nunez wrote:
           | That said, x86_64 images that require QEMU are much buggier
           | than pure arm64 images. Terraform's x86_64 image, for
           | example, will run into random network hangups that the ARM
           | image doesn't experience. It was bad enough for me to
           | maintain my own set of arm64 Terraform images.
        
       | IceWreck wrote:
       | Why does Apple not open up their hardware to other operating
       | systems like Linux. They will already get our money from the
       | hardware purchases, what more do they want.
       | 
       | I know Asahi Linux exists but without Apple's (driver) support it
       | will never reach macOS on M1 level performance.
       | 
       | (If someone disagrees, please compare Nouveau with proprietary
       | Nvidia drivers.)
        
         | oneplane wrote:
         | Because Apple intends to sell UX, not just some hardware.
        
         | klelatti wrote:
         | I'd like this but you make it sound like this would not require
         | significant effort from them.
         | 
         | I suspect they would say if you want to run Linux you can do it
         | in a VM and use the already debugged MacOS device drivers.
        
         | ctdonath wrote:
         | Apple's core competency is selling hardware, with a tightly
         | integrated ecosystem to optimize user experience with that
         | hardware.
         | 
         | There is no incentive to facilitate introducing that hardware
         | into an uncontrolled foreign ecosystem. Apple does not want
         | users looking at their computer while muttering "this sucks"
         | when "this" is an OS+UI famous for incomplete/buggy behavior.
         | 
         | (I've tried going all-in for Linux several times. The amount of
         | "oh, you've got to tweak this..." makes it unusable.)
        
         | basisword wrote:
         | As cool as that would be, why would they? I mean what do they
         | have to gain from it? Maybe a few more Linux users will buy
         | MacBook's but not enough to impact their bottom line. Plus
         | those users wouldn't be part of the Apple ecosystem and at
         | least since the iPod Apple's goal has been bringing you into
         | the ecosystem.
        
           | bilbo0s wrote:
           | More importantly, those users would complain and some would
           | even ask for support.
           | 
           | As horrible as this is going to sound, I'm thinking both
           | Apple and Microsoft file that under: "Some users are not
           | worth the trouble."
           | 
           | Probably OK for server users though? But Apple doesn't really
           | make servers.
        
           | someguydave wrote:
           | Apple could gain some trust and goodwill from the technical
           | user base they have been alienating for 10 years
        
             | spacedcowboy wrote:
             | _shrug_ doesn 't look like they need it. As long as they
             | keep churning out machines and devices that make people's
             | wallets reflexively open, they don't have to pander to the
             | tiny minorities...
             | 
             | Not a particularly _nice_ situation to be in, if you 're
             | not in the Apple ecosystem, but there's the world we live
             | in, and the world we wish it to be. Only sometimes do those
             | worlds overlap.
        
             | LASR wrote:
             | I bet the number of people within the technical user base
             | for whom the lack of linux support is a deal-breaker is
             | significantly smaller than the number of people who don't
             | care.
             | 
             | So while it's a nice boost in goodwill, it's probably small
             | enough for Apple to safely ignore.
        
         | walls wrote:
         | Nobody wants the Linux desktop experience associated with their
         | brand.
        
           | masterof0 wrote:
           | ^ I agree, and also the support burden of N distros, for N ->
           | inf.
        
           | PUSH_AX wrote:
           | Steam hardware?
        
             | ctdonath wrote:
             | Operative word: "want".
             | 
             | There was no other viable option.
        
         | jzb wrote:
         | They have some of your money, but they want more of it.
         | 
         | Mac owners are more likely to buy iPads and iPhones and become
         | embedded in the Apple ecosystem. That draws people into the app
         | stores, which Apple gets a cut of, and into Apple Music and
         | Apple TV...
         | 
         | If they're very successful they get you to sign up for Apple
         | Pay and the Apple Card and get a chunk of your spend for things
         | entirely unrelated to Apple.
         | 
         | If they just sell you the hardware and you can easily run Linux
         | on it, you might not run macOS and move further into their
         | ecosystem.
        
           | jzb wrote:
           | Also - even if they only wanted your hardware money, if you
           | run Linux on Apple hardware, there's less chance your next
           | purchase will be Apple hardware. Linux is portable, macOS
           | isn't (legally, easily -- Hackintoshes notwithstanding, but
           | even those are going to go away when Apple ditches Intel
           | hardware for good).
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | >Hackintoshes notwithstanding, but even those are going to
             | go away when Apple ditches Intel hardware for good
             | 
             | Maybe people will find a way to build ARM hackintoshes. :)
        
         | kitsunesoba wrote:
         | Nouveau is a bit of a special case because Nvidia actively
         | blocks third party drivers from fully leveraging the
         | capabilities of their cards. While Apple isn't officially
         | supporting any particular third party OS on M-series hardware,
         | they're also not obstructing the creation of high performance
         | third party drivers for it.
        
         | gumby wrote:
         | > Why does Apple not open up their hardware to other operating
         | systems
         | 
         | It's extra effort they don't want to go to. They spent a lot of
         | engineering and support time working with MS on boot camp,
         | handling (what are to them) special cases and back
         | compatibility. They really needed it at the time, but no longer
         | need it so make no effort in making it happen. And Apple never
         | did linux support, it's simply that linux runs on most hardware
         | that runs windows.
         | 
         | Among other things, here's a major reason why it's hard: Apple
         | supports their hardware and software for quite a long time, but
         | is happy to break back compatibility along the way. MS
         | considers back compatibility critical, despite the cost. I
         | respect both positions. But getting windows running on intel
         | Mac hardware wasn't automatic, and required developing support
         | for bits of code designed (by MS) for all sorts of special
         | cases. They simply needed it, so did the work, with the
         | cooperation of MS.
        
       | spitfire wrote:
       | What am I missing here? The marketing presentations spoke about
       | 200GB/sec and 400GB/sec parts. Existing CPU's generally have 10s
       | of GB/sec. But I see these parts beating out existing parts by
       | small margins - 100% at best.
       | 
       | Where is all that bandwidth going? Are none of these synthetic
       | benchmarks stressing memory IO that much? Surely compression
       | should benefit from 400GB/sec bandwidth?
       | 
       | This also raises the question how are those multiple memory
       | channels laid out? Sequentually? Stripped? Bitwise, byte wise or
       | word stripped?
        
         | hajile wrote:
         | They have 5.2 and 10.4 TFLOPS of GPU power to feed in addition
         | to 10 very wide cores.
        
       | jb1991 wrote:
       | Would like to see the Metal benchmark too, but doesn't appear yet
       | on the Geekbench Metal page. That would be interesting to see how
       | Geekbench scores it against many discreet GPUs.
        
       | amatecha wrote:
       | You can find more results at
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=Apple+M1+Max
       | 
       | (it does, broadly, appear to be pretty comparable to Intel
       | i9-11900K
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=Intel+Core+i9-... )
        
         | newfonewhodis wrote:
         | i9-11900K is 125W TDP, and the M1 is probably nowhere near that
         | (M1 is 10-15W TDP)
        
       | Flatcircle wrote:
       | How does this compare to a Mac Pro for video editing
        
         | vineyardmike wrote:
         | Should be better. The discussed how it was even better than
         | MacPro with afterburner.
        
       | JohnTHaller wrote:
       | Looks like it's somewhere between my AMD Ryzen 5800X desktop
       | (paid about $800) and a 5900X.
        
       | blakesterz wrote:
       | I just can't figure out what I'm missing on the "M1 is so fast"
       | side of things. For years I worked* on an Ubuntu desktop machine
       | I built myself. Early this year I switched to a brand new M1 mini
       | and this this is slower and less reliable than the thing I built
       | myself that runs Ubuntu. My Ubuntu machine had a few little
       | issues every no and then. My Mini has weird bugs all the time.
       | e.g. Green Screen Crashes when I have a thumbdrive plugged in.
       | Won't wake from sleep. Loses bluetooth randomly. Not at all what
       | I'd expect from something built by the company with unlimited
       | funds. I would expect those issues from the Ubuntu box, but the
       | problems were small on that thing.
       | 
       | *Work... Docker, Ansible, Rails apps, nothing that requires
       | amazing super power. Everything just runs slower.
        
         | PragmaticPulp wrote:
         | > I just can't figure out what I'm missing on the "M1 is so
         | fast" side of things.
         | 
         | Two reasons:
         | 
         | 1. M1 is a super fast _laptop_ chip. It provides mid-range
         | desktop performance in a laptop form factor with mostly fanless
         | operation. No matter how you look at it, that 's impressive.
         | 
         | 2. Apple really dragged their feet on updating the old Intel
         | Macs before the transition. People in the Mac world (excluding
         | hackintosh) were stuck on relatively outdated x86-64 CPUs.
         | Compared to those older CPUs, the M1 Max is a huge leap
         | forward. Compared to modern AMD mobile parts, it's still faster
         | but not by leaps and bounds.
         | 
         | But I agree that the M1 hype may be getting a little out of
         | hand. It's fast and super power efficient, but it's mostly on
         | par with mid-range 8-core AMD desktop CPUs from 2020. Even
         | AMD's top mobile CPU isn't that far behind the M1 Max in
         | Geekbench scores.
         | 
         | I'm very excited to get my M1 Max in a few weeks. But if these
         | early Geekbench results are accurate, it's going to be about
         | half as fast as my AMD desktop in code compilation (see Clang
         | results in the detailed score breakdown). That's still mightily
         | impressive from a low-power laptop! But I think some of the
         | rhetoric about the M1 Max blowing away desktop CPUs is getting
         | a little ahead of the reality.
        
           | VortexDream wrote:
           | The fact that this beats AMDs top laptop CPU is actually a
           | huge deal. And that's before considering battery life and
           | thermals.
           | 
           | I'll never buy an Apple computer, but I can't help but be
           | impressed with what they've achieved here.
        
             | PragmaticPulp wrote:
             | Don't get me wrong: It's impressive and I have huge respect
             | for it. I also bought one.
             | 
             | However, it would be surprising if Apple's new 5nm chip
             | _didn 't_ beat AMD's older 7nm chip at this point. Apple
             | specifically bought out all of TSMC's 5nm capacity for
             | themselves while AMD was stuck on 7nm (for now).
             | 
             | It will be interesting to see how AMD's new 6000 series
             | mobile chips perform. According to rumors they might be
             | launched in the next few months.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | This definitely is a factor. Another thing that people
               | frequently overlook is how competitive Zen 2 is with M1:
               | the 4800u stands toe-to-toe with the M1 in a lot of
               | benchmarks, and consistently beats it in multicore
               | performance.
               | 
               | Make no mistake, the M1 is a truly solid processor. It
               | has seriously stiff competition though, and I get the
               | feeling x86 won't be dead for another half decade or so.
               | By then, Apple will be competing with RISC-V desktop
               | processors with 10x the performance-per-watt, and once
               | again they'll inevitably shift their success metrics to
               | some other arbitrary number ("The 2031 Macbook Pro Max XS
               | has the highest dollars-per-keycap ratio out of any of
               | the competing Windows machines we could find!")
        
           | LDataReady wrote:
           | I think people are missing the fact that it's performance +
           | energy efficiency where M1 blows regular x86 out of the
           | water.
        
           | NovemberWhiskey wrote:
           | > _Apple really dragged their feet on updating the old Intel
           | Macs before the transition. People in the Mac world
           | (excluding hackintosh) were stuck on relatively outdated
           | x86-64 CPUs._
           | 
           | Maybe my expectations are different; but my 16" MacBook Pro
           | has a Core i9-9880H, which is a 19Q2 released part - it's not
           | exactly ancient.
        
           | camillomiller wrote:
           | You need to consider the larger target group of
           | professionals. It's really GPU capabilities that blow
           | everything away. If you don't plan to use your MacBook Pro
           | for video/photo editing or 3D modeling, then a M1 Pro with
           | the same 10-core CPU and 16-core Neural Engine has all you
           | need and costs less. Unless I'm missing something I don't
           | think there much added benefit from the added GPU cores in
           | your scenario, unless you want to go with the maximum
           | configurable memory.
        
             | eecc wrote:
             | Well, the MAX has double the memory bandwidth of a PRO, but
             | I cannot see workloads other than the ones you mentioned
             | where it would make a significant improvement.
             | 
             | Perhaps ML but that's all proprietarized on CUDA so it's
             | unlikely.
             | 
             | Perhaps Apple could revive OpenCL from the ashes?
        
               | johnboiles wrote:
               | https://developer.apple.com/metal/tensorflow-plugin/
        
               | alexcnwy wrote:
               | Pro only supports 2 external displays which is why I
               | ordered max
        
             | jjcon wrote:
             | > GPU capabilities that blow everything away
             | 
             | Compared to previous macs and igpus - an nvidia gpu will
             | still run circles arounnd this thing
        
               | jachee wrote:
               | In a quiet laptop?
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | If you are trying to do hardcore video editing or
               | modeling then 'quiet laptop' likely comes second to speed
        
               | mataug wrote:
               | > Compared to previous macs and igpus - an nvidia gpu
               | will still run circles arounnd this thing
               | 
               | True, but the point here is that M1 is able to achieve
               | outstanding performance per watt numbers compared to
               | Nvidia or Intel.
        
               | KptMarchewa wrote:
               | Are you really rendering in a cafe that you need on the
               | go GPU performance?
        
               | alwillis wrote:
               | GPUs are no longer special purposes components; certainly
               | in macOS, the computation capabilities of the GPU are
               | used for all sorts of frameworks and APIs.
               | 
               | It's not just about rendering any more.
        
               | zsmi wrote:
               | For the content creator class that needs to
               | shoot/edit/upload daily, while minimizing staff, I can
               | see definite advantages to having a setup which is both
               | performant and mobile.
        
               | kylemh wrote:
               | Besides what the other person commented, also consider
               | creatives that travel. Bringing their desktop with them
               | isn't an option.
        
               | ArchOversight wrote:
               | Editing photos or reviewing them before getting back home
               | to know if you need to re-shoot, reviewing 8K footage on
               | the fly, applying color grading to get an idea of what
               | the final might look like to know if you need to re-
               | shoot, re-light or change something...
               | 
               | There are absolutely use-cases where this is going to
               | enable new ways of looking at content and give more
               | control and ability to review stuff in the field.
        
               | PostThisTooFast wrote:
               | It has been a long time since editing photos has required
               | anything more than run-of-the-mill performance.
        
               | mataug wrote:
               | Adding to all the usecases listed by other commenters.
               | 
               | Having a higher performance per watt numbers also implies
               | less heat from M1's perspective. This means that even if
               | someone isn't doing CPU/GPU heavy tasks, they are still
               | getting better battery life since power isn't being
               | wasted on cooling by spinning up the fans.
               | 
               | For some perspective, My current 2019, 16inch i7 MBP gets
               | warm even if I leave it idling for 20 - 30 mins and I can
               | barely get ~4hrs of battery life. My wife's M1 macbook
               | air stays cool despite being fanless, and lasts the whole
               | day with similar usage.
               | 
               | The point is performance per watt matters a lot in a
               | portable device, regardless of its capabilities.
        
               | FractalHQ wrote:
               | I am often rendering and coding while traveling for work
               | a few months out of the year. Even when I'm home, I
               | prefer spending my time in the forest behind my house, so
               | being able to use Blender or edit videos as well as code
               | and produce music anywhere I want is pretty sweet.
        
               | whynotminot wrote:
               | Why would you even buy a laptop if you don't need to be
               | mobile?
        
               | gtirloni wrote:
               | Fewer cables is one reason.
        
               | monkmartinez wrote:
               | Yes, Nvidia GPU's are a major reason I switched to PC
               | about 3 years ago. That and I can upgrade RAM and SSD's
               | myself on desktops and laptops. The power from
               | professional apps like Solidworks, Agisoft metashape, and
               | some Adobe products with a Nvidia card and drivers is
               | like night and day with a Mac at the time I switched.
               | 
               | Does Apple have any ISV certified offerings? I can't find
               | one. I suspect Apple will never win the Engineering crowd
               | with the M1 switch... so many variable go into these
               | systems builds and Apple just doesn't have that business
               | model.
               | 
               | Even with these crazy M1's, I still have doubts about
               | Apple winning the Movie/Creative market. LED walls,
               | Unreal Engine, Unity are being used for SOOOO much more
               | than just games now. The hegemony of US centric content
               | creation is also dwindling... budget rigs are a heck of
               | lot easier to source and pay for than M1's in most parts
               | of the world.
        
               | DCKing wrote:
               | Not so sure about that "running circles around". While
               | the M1 Max will not beat a mobile RTX 3080 (~same chip as
               | desktop RTX 3070), Apple is in the same ballpark of its
               | performance [1] (or is being extremely misleading in
               | their performance claims [2]).
               | 
               | Nvidia very likely has leading top end performance still,
               | but "running circles around this thing" is probably not a
               | fair description. Apple certainly has a credible claim to
               | destroy Ampere in terms of power per watt - just limiting
               | themselves in the power envelope still. (It's worth
               | noting that AMD's RDNA2 already edges out Ampere in
               | performance per watt - that's not really Nvidia's strong
               | suit in their current lineup).
               | 
               | [1]: https://www.apple.com/v/macbook-
               | pro-14-and-16/a/images/overv... - which in the footnote
               | is shown to compare the M1 Max to this laptop with mobile
               | RTX 3080: https://us-
               | store.msi.com/index.php?route=product/product&pro...
               | 
               | [2]: There's _a lot_ of things wrong with in how vague
               | Apple tends to be about performance, but their unmarked
               | graphs have been okay for general ballpark estimates at
               | least.
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | Definitely impressive in terms of power efficiency if
               | Apples benchmarks (vague as they are) come close to
               | accurate. Comparing the few video benchmarks we are
               | seeing from the M1Max to leading Nvidia cards I'm still
               | seeing about 3-5x the performance across plenty of
               | workloads (Id consider anything >2x running circles).
               | 
               | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/3551790
        
               | spacedcowboy wrote:
               | Anything that _can_ run rings around it is unlikely to be
               | running on a battery in a laptop, at least for any
               | reasonable length of time.
        
               | derefr wrote:
               | > an nvidia gpu will still run circles arounnd this thing
               | 
               | Not for loading up models larger than 32GB it wouldn't.
               | (They exist! That's what the "full-detail model of the
               | starship Enterprise" thing in the keynote was about.)
               | 
               | Remember that on any computer _without_ unified memory,
               | you can only load a scene the size of the GPU 's VRAM. No
               | matter how much main memory you have to swap against, no
               | matter how many GPUs you throw at the problem, no magic
               | wand is going to let you render a _single tile of a
               | single frame_ if it has more texture-memory as inputs
               | than one of your GPUs has VRAM.
               | 
               | Right now, consumer GPUs top out at 32GB of VRAM. The M1
               | Max has, in a sense, 64GB (minus OS baseline overhead) of
               | VRAM for its GPU to use.
               | 
               | Of course, there is " _an_ nvidia gpu " that can bench
               | more than the M1 Max: the Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPU,
               | with 80GB of VRAM... which costs $149,000.
               | 
               | (And even then, I should point out that the leaked Mac
               | Pro M1 variant is apparently 4x larger _again_ -- i.e. it
               | 's probably available in a configuration with _256GB_ of
               | unified memory. That 's getting close to "doing the
               | training for GPT-3 -- a 350GB model before optimization
               | -- on a single computer" territory.)
        
               | jjcon wrote:
               | Memory != Speed
               | 
               | You could throw a TB of memory in something and it won't
               | get any faster or be of any use for 99.99% of use cases.
               | 
               | Large ML architectures don't need more memory, they need
               | distributed processing. Ignoring memory requirements,
               | GPT-3 would take hundreds of years to train on a single
               | high end GPU (on say a desktop 3090 which is >10x faster
               | than m1) which is why they aren't trained that way (and
               | why NVidia has the offerings set up the way they do).
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | spacedcowboy wrote:
             | I'm looking forward to playing BG3 on mine :)
        
               | ryanjodonnell wrote:
               | Is it optimized for mac?
        
               | spacedcowboy wrote:
               | There's a native ARM binary :) You can choose the x86 or
               | ARM binary when you launch, and they're actually separate
               | apps. That's how they get around the Steam "thou shalt
               | only run x86 applications" mandate.
        
           | fnord77 wrote:
           | > Compared to those older CPUs, the M1 Max is a huge leap
           | forward.
           | 
           | Is it, though? Its single-core score is roughly 2x that of
           | the top CPU Apple put in the mid-2012 macbook pro. 2x after
           | 10 years doesn't seem that great to me.
           | 
           | Maybe that's more of an indictment against intel
        
           | baybal2 wrote:
           | > were stuck on relatively outdated x86-64 CPUs.
           | 
           | We came to a point when X86 is faster to emulate, than to run
           | on a more modern microarchitecture.
           | 
           | One point is clear: per-transistor performance of X86 is
           | dimishing with each new core generation, and it is already
           | losing to M1.
           | 
           | X86 makers will not be able to keep up for long. They will
           | have to keep releasing bigger, and hotter chips to keep
           | parity, until they cannot.
        
           | e40 wrote:
           | Really curious to see what chips will go into the Mac Pro
           | line next year (year after?). Will they be faster than the
           | AMD desktop/workstation chips when they come out?
        
         | lewantmontreal wrote:
         | Has there been any research to OS response times between Macos,
         | Windows and Linux?
         | 
         | Ive wanted to switch to Mac many times, most recently to M1 Mac
         | Mini, but cant get over the frustrating slowness. Every action,
         | like opening Finder, feels like it takes so long compared to
         | Windows even with reduce animation on. I always end up
         | returning the mac.
        
         | factorialboy wrote:
         | M1 is, compared to precious editions of Macbooks, much better.
         | 
         | My two year old Linux desktop is a beast compared to my M1
         | Macmini. But I love the Macmini compared to my 2019 MBP.
        
         | jokethrowaway wrote:
         | This is easily explained. Linux distributions don't make money
         | if you buy a new laptop.
        
         | zitterbewegung wrote:
         | I have had the opposite experience. Whenever a update to a
         | kernel comes out for Ubuntu my machine apparently forgets which
         | kernel to choose and boots up incorrectly. My M1 MacBook Air
         | drives a Pro Display XDR without any hiccups. Its completely
         | silent when I work with it. But, performance wise the M1 Pro
         | and Max don't seem like they would be worth it for me to
         | upgrade from the M1 at all. I just want a completely silent
         | laptop and it makes a huge difference to me.
         | 
         | But, my workflows and workloads are slowly changing from local
         | compilation of code to one where I will probably just SSH and
         | or possibly figure out how to configure RDP into my
         | Threadripper when I do actual builds and have my Macbook Air M1
         | with 16GB of Ram and the synergy with other Apple devices is a
         | huge plus.
         | 
         | Have you talked with Apple to get a replacement?
        
         | littlestymaar wrote:
         | I share the same feeling, and I'm glad to learn I'm not alone:
         | earlier this year I worked for a (really) sort time with a
         | company who gave me a Macbook M1, which I was pretty excited
         | about.
         | 
         | Over the course of the two weeks I worked there, I faced:
         | 
         | - frequent glitches when unplugging the HDMI adaptor (an Apple
         | one, which costed an arm and a leg).
         | 
         | - non-compatible software (Docker, Sublimetext)
         | 
         | - and even a Kernel Panic while resuming from hibernation
         | 
         | It was like working with Linux in the 2000's, but at least with
         | Linux I knew it was gonna be a bit rough on the edges. Given
         | the hype found online, I wasn't at all prepared for such an
         | experience.
        
         | markdown wrote:
         | M1 is hardware. Ubuntu is software.
         | 
         | Your comparison makes no sense.
        
         | babypuncher wrote:
         | The Mac Mini isn't super impressive, because you're comparing
         | it to desktops where TDP is far less of a concern.
         | 
         | The M1 is getting a lot of attention because it's Apple's first
         | laptop chip, and it is the fastest chip in that category by a
         | fairly significant margin. Chips from Intel and AMD only
         | compete with it on performance when drawing considerably more
         | power.
        
         | pgib wrote:
         | I went from a 2016 top-of-the-line MacBook Pro to an M1 Mac
         | mini, and I can't believe how much faster things are-including
         | Docker with Rails, PostgreSQL, etc. Out of curiosity, are you
         | running native (arm64) containers? Aside from an issue now and
         | then with my secondary HDMI display, my machine has continued
         | to blow me away. My development environment is almost on par
         | with our production environment, which is a nice change.
        
         | jinto36 wrote:
         | Not particularly defending the M1, but it might be that much of
         | what you're using so far isn't available native and is going
         | through Rosetta2? The other issues could be OS issues, but
         | maybe it would be worth doing a RAM test?
        
         | vineyardmike wrote:
         | Disclaimer, I don't have an M1 Mac, but I do have a buggy
         | ubuntu desktop and used Macs my whole technical life.
         | 
         | It seems that you're heavily in the minority with this. Even
         | the weird bugs you mention are very unexpected. I've used a Mac
         | for 15 years and never heard of an issue related to thumb
         | drives. You may just have a lemon. See if you can just replace
         | it (warranty, etc, not just spending more money).
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | It's hardly unheard of for a Mac to pick up weird issues. My
           | wife's Macbook has a thing where the mouse cursor will just
           | disappear when she wakes the thing up from sleep. Poking
           | around on the internet finds other people with the same
           | problem and no good solution (zapping PRAM doesn't help,
           | neither did a full OS reinstall). It's just a live with it
           | affair. The only fix is to close the lid and open it again,
           | which isn't too bad but the issue crops up multiple times in
           | a day and is quite annoying.
           | 
           | I manage a bunch of Ubuntu desktops at work and the most
           | common issue seems to be that if you leave a machine alone
           | for too long (a week or two), then when you log back in the
           | DBUS or something seems to get hung up and the whole
           | interface is mostly unusable until you log out and log back
           | in. It can be so bad you can't even focus a window anymore or
           | change the input focus. Next most common issue is DKMS
           | randomly fucking up and installing a kernel without the
           | nVidia or VirtualBox modules leaving the machine useless.
        
           | thenthenthen wrote:
           | Well if you actually do 'work' with the device, like
           | installing software thats not in the appstore you might run
           | into some troubles...i love my 2013 macbook air for most
           | daily tasks, but never was there a time where i couldnt do
           | with having a windows and linux device on hand. But yeah,
           | thats just life. Happy to see sobering comment here that the
           | m1 is a 'mobile' processor, my 12 year old pc agrees. Another
           | question that came to mind is; what professional is gonna
           | edit ProRes video while commuting? Is this the ultimate
           | precarious labour creative industry machine?!
        
           | jacurtis wrote:
           | I have both, and use both everyday.
           | 
           | I use an M1 MacBook Pro (16Gb Ram) for personal projects and
           | as my standard home/travel computer. It is amazing and fast.
           | 
           | I use a Lenovo Carbon X1 Laptop with similar specs (i5, 16Gb
           | Ram, m.2 ssd) for work that runs RHEL 8 (Red Hat Enterprise
           | Linux). It's insanely fast and stable.
           | 
           | The overhead to run RHEL is so small it would blow your mind
           | at the performance you get from almost nothing. Mac or
           | Windows are crazy bloated by comparison. I know I am sparking
           | an eternal debate by saying this, but I personally have never
           | found Ubuntu to be as stable for a workstation (but ubuntu
           | server is great) as RHEL is.
           | 
           | With that being said, I still think the M1 mac is the best
           | computer I have ever owned. While linux is great for work, I
           | personally enjoy the polished and more joyful experience of
           | Mac for personal use. There are a million quality of life
           | improvements that Mac offers that you won't get in Linux. The
           | app ecosystem on mac is incredible.
           | 
           | When most people make comparisons for the M1 Mac, they are
           | comparing windows PCs (generally Intel-based ones since Mac
           | previously used Intel) and they compare intel-based Macs. I
           | have never seen someone comparing it to linux performance.
           | The speed of the M1 mac is far better than Windows and far
           | better than old Macs. There is no question. Before my M1 mac
           | I used a MacBook Pro with an i7, 16Gb RAM, and the upgraded
           | dedicated graphics card. The little M1 MacBook outshines it
           | at least 2 to 1. Best of all, the fans never turned on, and
           | my old MacBook Pro had constant fan whine which drove me
           | crazy.
           | 
           | The other incredible feat of the M1 Mac is the battery life.
           | I run my laptop nearly exclusively on battery power now. I
           | treat it like an iPad. You plug it in when it gets low, but I
           | can use it for about a week between charges (I use it for 2-3
           | hours each day). I don't turn the screen down or modify my
           | performance. I keep the screen fairly bright and just cruise
           | away. I love it.
           | 
           | While Linux might be able to outshine on performance, it
           | doesn't outperform with battery. My Lenovo laptop is worth
           | about 2x my MacBook Pro. It is a premium laptop and yet
           | running RHEL I will be lucky to get 6 hours. Compare that to
           | ~20 hours of my MacBook.
        
             | jandrese wrote:
             | Downside of RHEL is the package repo is anemic and out of
             | date. Sometimes horribly out of date. It's hardly uncommon
             | to run into some issue with an application and then look it
             | up online and find out that the fix was applied 8 versions
             | after the one that's in the repo.
             | 
             | Worse is when you start grabbing code off of Git and the
             | configure script bombs out because it wants a library two
             | versions ahead of the one in the repo. But you don't want
             | to upgrade it because obviously that's going to cause an
             | issue with whatever installed that library originally. So
             | now you're thinking about containers but that adds more
             | complication...
             | 
             | Like everything it is a double edged sword.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | My colleague has an M1 Mac. I have a Ubuntu desktop. My
           | colleague always asks me to transcode videos on my machine
           | because on her MacBook it is too slow.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | Just my N=1 anecdata, but I'm in the same boat. I got a
           | Macbook Air from work, and I have a hard time using it
           | compared to my Linux setup (which is saying something, since
           | I'm using a Torvaldsforsaken Nvidia card). Here's a list of
           | the issues I can recall off the top of my head:
           | 
           | - High-refresh displays cause strange green/purple
           | artifacting
           | 
           | - Plugging in multiple displays just outright doesn't work
           | 
           | - Still a surprisingly long boot time compared to my x201
           | (almost a teenager now!)
           | 
           | - No user replaceable storage is a complete disservice when
           | your OEM upgrades cost as much as Apple charges
           | 
           | - Idle temps can get a little uncomfortable when you're
           | running several apps at once
           | 
           | ...and the biggest one...
           | 
           | - A lot of software just isn't ready for ARM yet
           | 
           | Maybe I'm spoiled, coming from Arch Linux, but the software
           | side of things on ARM still feels like they did in 2012 when
           | my parents bought me a Raspberry Pi for Christmas. Sure it
           | works, but compatibility and stability are still major
           | sticking points for relatively common apps. Admittedly, Apple
           | did a decent job of not breaking things any further, but
           | without 32-bit library support it's going to be a hard pass
           | from me. Plus, knowing that Rosetta will eventually be
           | unsupported gives me flashbacks to watching my games library
           | disappear after updating to Catalina.
        
           | katbyte wrote:
           | yep. if things don't work contact apple support they are
           | actually pretty decent. i had a lemon mini, randomly would go
           | into a bootloop after os updates - had a bad mainboard so
           | apple replaced it and it's been fine since.
        
         | lambdapsyc wrote:
         | Easy, it is likely docker that is making your Mac mini slower
         | than your old linux box?
         | 
         | Docker on macOS is painfully slow, because it is implemented on
         | macOS through what amounts to a sledgehammer to the problem.
         | Docker depends on linux kernel features so on macOS it just
         | starts a linux virtual machine and does other high overhead
         | compatibility tricks to get it to work. Volumes are the biggest
         | culprit.
         | 
         | If you are running docker through rosetta... (don't know the
         | state of docker on apple silicon) then that is a double whammy
         | of compatibility layers.
         | 
         | Regarding bugs, yeah probably teething issues because the M1
         | was/is such a large departure from the norm. They should really
         | get those things fixed pronto.
        
           | ArchOversight wrote:
           | Docker for Mac Desktop supports the M1 and uses an Linux VM
           | that is ARM.
           | 
           | It is not using Rosetta 2 at all.
        
             | johncolanduoni wrote:
             | But if you run x86 images, it will use qemu's software
             | emulation inside the Linux VM (which is quite slow).
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | Well switching hardware and OS makes it hard to tell what's
         | responsible for the difference. I also suspect Docker and
         | what's running in the containers might well be x86 code instead
         | of native.
         | 
         | I can tell you that I have a high end mbp 16" intel-i9 with
         | 32GB ram and it feels much slower than a new mac M1 mini. My
         | intel-i9 runs the fan card during backups (crashplan), video
         | conferencing, and sometimes just because even just outlook. The
         | M1 mini on the other hand has been silent, fast, and generally
         | a pleasure to use.
         | 
         | Doubling the number of fast cores, doubling (or quadrupling)
         | the GPU and memory bandwidth should make the new MBP 14 and 16"
         | even better.
        
         | localhost wrote:
         | I have a three-year old hand-built 16-core ThreadRipper 1950X
         | machine here with 64GB 4-channel RAM. I have a 14" MBP M1 Max
         | on order. I just checked the Geekbench scores between these two
         | machines:                 M1 Max: 1783 single-core | 12693
         | multi-core       1950X:   901 single-core |  7409 multi-core
         | 
         | That's a big difference that I'm looking forward to.
         | 
         | Also, just checked memory bandwidth. I have 80GB/s memory
         | bandwidth [1] on my 1950X. The MBP has 400GB/s memory
         | bandwidth. 5x(!)
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_threadripper/1950x
         | 
         | *EDIT adding memory bandwidth.
        
         | plandis wrote:
         | What are the specs on your Ubuntu machine?
        
         | spamizbad wrote:
         | The answer is M1 is a great chip held back by a mediocre OS.
         | Containers and certain other applications are just going to run
         | faster on Linux, which has had a ton of performance tuning put
         | into it relative to MacOS.
        
         | throwaway894345 wrote:
         | That's Docker for Mac versus native Docker. Docker only runs on
         | Linux, so Docker for Mac spins up a linux VM to run your
         | containers. When you mount your Ruby or Python projects into
         | your containers, Docker for Mac marshals tons of filesystem
         | events over the host/guest boundary which absolutely devastates
         | your CPU.
         | 
         | Docker for Mac is really just bad for your use case.
         | 
         | No idea what's going on with the thumb drive, bluetooth, etc.
         | 
         | Beyond that, it's a little silly to compare a desktop
         | (presumably many times larger, ~500+W power supply, cooling
         | system, etc) with a Mac mini (tiny, laptop chip, no fans, etc).
        
           | mvanbaak wrote:
           | > Docker for Mac is really just bad for your use case. Nah,
           | not just for mac, docker is really just bad. period ;P
        
           | shados wrote:
           | > Beyond that, it's a little silly to compare a desktop
           | (presumably many times larger, ~500+W power supply, cooling
           | system, etc) with a Mac mini (tiny, laptop chip, no fans,
           | etc).
           | 
           | You're totally right, but I see a lot of folks around me
           | making absolutely bonker claims on these M1 devices. If I
           | believed everything I'm told, I'd be expecting them to run
           | complex After Effect rendering at 10000 frames per second.
        
             | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
             | > _You 're totally right, but I see a lot of folks around
             | me making absolutely bonker claims on these M1 devices._
             | 
             | What "but"? The claims are less bonkers with a perspective
             | that acknowledges the significance of those physical
             | differences.
             | 
             | Without the case, would the full internals
             | (motherboard/CPU/GPU/PSU/ram/heatsinks/storage) of your
             | desktop fit in your pants pockets? Because the M1 Mac
             | Mini's fit in mine.
             | 
             | How much fan noise does your desktop produce? How much
             | electricity does it consume? M1s are fast compared to
             | almost everything, but they're bonkers fast compared to
             | anything getting even remotely close to 20 hours on a
             | battery at 3 lbs weight.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | > You're totally right, but I see a lot of folks around me
             | making absolutely bonker claims on these M1 devices.
             | 
             | Fake news happens on HN too. Apparently. Sadly.
             | 
             | Hopefully it's mostly limited to discussions about Apple.
        
             | alwillis wrote:
             | I think that's disingenuous. I haven't seen any claims that
             | haven't been backed up by benchmarks and specific use
             | cases.
             | 
             | What most people keep missing is the M1 jumped out way
             | ahead on performance per watt _on their first attempt at
             | making their own processor_.
             | 
             | I've seen the M1 Mac for less than $700. In that price
             | range, there's not much competition when it comes to
             | computation, GPU performance, etc. and comes fairly close
             | to much higher priced x86 Macs and PCs.
             | 
             | That's why people are excited about the M1. You generally
             | can't edit 4k (and 8k) video in real-time on a machine in
             | this price range--and what people happily paid 5x that
             | price to get this level of performance just a few years
             | ago.
        
         | alwillis wrote:
         | Let's review: "Black. Magic. Fuckery."--
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25202147
        
         | dubcanada wrote:
         | Seems like your computer may have issues, you shouldn't be
         | crashing from USB devices. Sounds like you should go get it
         | checked out tbh.
        
           | thenthenthen wrote:
           | Well could just be a software issue, for example if you
           | installed the wrong CH430x driver to run your faux arduino
           | clones (that didnt pay debt to ftdi) you might run into this
           | issue.
        
         | jiveturkey wrote:
         | Probably more to do with bug sir than the hardware. Catalina is
         | pretty solid.
        
           | lostlogin wrote:
           | I hadn't heard that one. I had some pain, but I can laugh
           | now.
        
         | chrisco255 wrote:
         | My AMD / Nvidia laptop running Ubuntu has had a number of
         | issues from flash crashes to freeze ups to external monitor
         | connectivity that have progressively gotten better as the
         | drivers were updated. It is likely the drivers are buggy and
         | will probably improve with time.
        
         | merrvk wrote:
         | Put the same thing in a fanless laptop, that seems to last
         | forever on a charge, then you'll understand
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Meh. The M1 is a node ahead and memory is placed on package.
         | I'm trying not to be dazzled by the tech when it comes at the
         | price of freedom.
        
           | outside1234 wrote:
           | Ok - I get that comment for iPhone - but what is less free
           | about the Mac vs. a PC?
        
         | y4mi wrote:
         | docker is a second-class citizen on anything but linux. i'm
         | especially amazed you bothered with the m1 mac mini if you
         | wanted to use docker, considering how little memory it has. the
         | memory overhead of having a VM running with only 8GB available
         | is significant.
         | 
         | yes, i know the docker on mac has "native" support for the m1
         | cpu, that doesn't mean its not running a VM.
        
           | jacurtis wrote:
           | Yeah people forget that Docker is built to run on Linux. That
           | is why it exists. You deploy your containers onto a Linux
           | host that runs docker for containerization, that is the
           | point.
           | 
           | The reason we have Docker for Windows and Mac is so that
           | developers can emulate the docker environment for testing and
           | building purposes. But ultimately it is expected that you
           | will take your container and eventually deploy it on Linux.
           | So Docker will always be a second class citizen on these
           | other OS's because it is just there for emulation purposes.
        
         | mikhailt wrote:
         | Many folks are comparing it to previous Macs with macOS, not
         | PCs nor other distros.
         | 
         | If you have an Intel Mac next to it, there's a clear noticeable
         | difference assuming macOS is on it.
         | 
         | If you put W10 on the Intel Mac, it is much faster than macOS
         | on it (from my own experience). If we could run W10 or Linux on
         | M1, it will be much faster than Intel Mac.
         | 
         | Another example, Windows 10/11 on ARM in Parallels on my MBA m1
         | is much faster than Surface Pro X, a MS-tuned/customized
         | device.
        
           | vmception wrote:
           | For me, all the gains from a W10 running faster than MacOS
           | are lost because I have to immediately go into control panel
           | to fix everything. Those fast computers are waiting on me to
           | improve the user experience most of the time. I'm personally
           | not really splitting hairs over much longer running processes
           | if I have to walk away anyway.
        
           | EugeneOZ wrote:
           | I'm comparing Windows PC (i7-6700k, nvme) with MBA m1 and MBA
           | is noticeable faster in just everything. Compilation time of
           | JS and Java code is literally 2 times faster on MBA M1 than
           | on desktop i7 CPU.
        
             | EugeneOZ wrote:
             | for those who downvote the facts they don't want to know
             | about: https://twitter.com/eugeniyoz/status/140751857088881
             | 0497?s=2...
        
               | ry4nolson wrote:
               | nobody is arguing with your facts, just that your
               | comparison is apples and oranges since the i7 6700k was
               | released 5+ years ago.
        
             | munchbunny wrote:
             | Isn't the i7-6700k 3-4 generations older at this point than
             | the m1?
        
             | rahimnathwani wrote:
             | i7-6700k is 6 years old. The current equivalent i7
             | (i7-11700k) is almost 2x as fast when using all cores.
        
               | ricardobeat wrote:
               | If the latest gen, top cpu is "almost 2x as fast" it will
               | still lose to the parent's "literally 2 times faster" M1.
               | While using 4x more power.
        
               | rahimnathwani wrote:
               | Right but GP's main points were:
               | 
               | - noticeable faster in just everything
               | 
               | - literally 2 times faster [compiling code]
               | 
               | Neither of these statements is true when comparing
               | against the latest generation, which is the relevant
               | comparison.
               | 
               | The power thing is true, but irrelevant to GP's point and
               | my objection to it.
        
             | wging wrote:
             | That hardware is from 2015, though. A fairer comparison
             | would be to current gen Intel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
             | i/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_processo...
        
         | jccalhoun wrote:
         | I've never owned a mac and I've never used an M1 so take this
         | with a heavy grain of salt. Everyone I've seen talk about how
         | fast the M1 is were coming from 4-5+ year old macs not
         | comparing them to intel/amd chips that came out last year in a
         | similar price range.
        
         | websap wrote:
         | Currently typing this on an m1 laptop that I bought 2 weeks
         | back. This machine blows my 16 inch Macbook out of the water.
         | My 16 inch Macbook is pretty well spec'd, but this laptop is
         | something else.
        
       | celsoazevedo wrote:
       | - https://web.archive.org/web/20211020175422if_/https://browse...
       | 
       | - https://archive.md/zQAC3
        
       | busymom0 wrote:
       | For someone with more knowledge- are these scores dependant on
       | the OS? Like would it have different scores if it ran Linux?
        
         | timbit42 wrote:
         | On macos, if you are running some x64 apps, they are jit'ed and
         | emulated. On Linux, all your repo and manually compiled apps
         | will be compiled for the native CPU so it would be fast.
        
       | launchiterate wrote:
       | So can someone build a mini cloud service with these machines?
        
       | reacharavindh wrote:
       | What did I miss? Dell XPS 15 with intel CPU has way higher
       | scores... is Geekbench not capable of working correctly on Apple
       | Silicon?
       | 
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16376678
        
         | joshstrange wrote:
         | Is that a legitimate GB score for that machine? Searching for
         | scores from that machine gives me:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=XPS+15+9510
         | 
         | Which shows score much lower than the linked test (maybe I'm
         | missing something). Likewise unless it's coming from someone
         | like AnandTech I'm skeptical of any benchmarks for the M1
         | Pro/Max until these machines are actually released next week.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | mrbuttons454 wrote:
         | That's a v4 score, which can't be compared to a v5 score.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | rokobobo wrote:
         | I think you're looking at a geekbench 4 score, vs v5 in the
         | post. It seems that this machine performs significantly better
         | than an XPS 15.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | unicornfinder wrote:
         | That's a Geekbench v4 score, which isn't comparable to a
         | Geekbench v5 score.
         | 
         | You can see the same laptop on Geekbench v5 here, where it
         | scores much, much lower than the M1:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10506812
        
           | jkeddo wrote:
           | I think there is a big variance in XPS 17 scores. For
           | reference, here is a top scoring XPS 17. In this case, scores
           | are much closer.
           | 
           | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10481116?baseli.
           | ..
        
           | jjcm wrote:
           | For those that can't load and are curious, the M1 Max scores
           | about 2x the Intel Core i7-11800H in the Dell laptop on both
           | single core and multi core scores.
        
             | jkeddo wrote:
             | I don't think that was a good sample, most of the XPS 15's
             | I see have a much higher single thread score, almost double
             | the one linked above:
             | 
             | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10491562
        
               | snuser wrote:
               | It looks like the original as been updated, the
               | differences don't seem very drastic especially when you
               | consider what the SKU's w/ the m1 max cost
               | 
               | guess it's about a 1.5-2x difference in battery life
               | though
        
             | smoldesu wrote:
             | It also costs twice as much, so I should hope I'm getting
             | something for the money.
        
         | minimaul wrote:
         | You're comparing Geekbench 4 and 5 scores - you can't do that.
         | It's a different scale.
         | 
         | Here's an example of a Geekbench 5 score:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10501477
        
         | lalaithion wrote:
         | Here's the actual Dell XPS 17 vs MacBook Pro:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10502109?baseli...
        
           | jkeddo wrote:
           | That might be a lemon XPS 17. With a higher scoring XPS 17,
           | the benchmark is much closer:
           | 
           | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10481116?baseli.
           | ..
        
         | throwawaybanjo1 wrote:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/10501477 V5 score for that
        
           | judge2020 wrote:
           | Comparison for that https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/comp
           | are/10501477?baseli...
        
         | petecooper wrote:
         | Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5 are different scales.
         | 
         | Edit: about 5 people beat me.
        
       | biosed wrote:
       | Compared to my gen 1 M1 macbook pro:
       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10514397?baseli...
        
       | hammock wrote:
       | Single core regular M1 Macbook about the same. Multicore the Max
       | is a lot higher.
        
         | hbOY5ENiZloUfnZ wrote:
         | It should be about the same. It is the same micro-architecture
         | which is why they are still called M1. There are just more of
         | the same cores.
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Looks not the same to me:
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10508124?baseli...
         | 
         | Did I pick the wrong regular M1 Macbook?
         | 
         | Edit: Hmm.
         | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/10508059?baseli...
         | 
         | I guess Geekbench is a little unpredictable?
         | 
         | And it looks like HN is pushing their capacity...
        
           | hammock wrote:
           | Hmm not sure what I was looking at before, that site is not
           | the easiest to navigate.
        
             | tyingq wrote:
             | My second link shows what you're talking about. I'm not
             | sure which result to trust.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | Geekbench has always been a little unpredictable. It was most
           | famously skewed quite heavily in Apple's favor before
           | Geekbench 4, and even the modern scores are pretty opaque.
           | I'd wait to see real-world performance metrics out of it.
        
       | dzink wrote:
       | A few days ago there were comments on HN that the Geekbench score
       | on M1 Max was run on an operating system not optimized for M1.
       | Has that changed with this one?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | simonebrunozzi wrote:
       | Wondering if some of the avid videogamers, in need for powerful
       | GPUs, will consider Macbook Pros with M1 Pro or Max as a good
       | option.
       | 
       | AFAIK, some of the most popular videogames run on Mac too.
        
         | lghh wrote:
         | Some, but not nearly enough.
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | Almost none of the most popular actually. No Fortnite no
         | warzone
        
       | DisjointedHunt wrote:
       | I'm not sure how Geekbench browser tests hold up to real world
       | usage, but note that Apples ecosystem is WAY different compared
       | to x86.
       | 
       | For starters, the chip isn't general purpose compute, it's more
       | of an ASIC that is optimized to run the OS abstractions available
       | through the official APIs (Think on screen animation such as
       | rendering an image or detecting things in it. On x86, you
       | implement the code and in some cases, proprietary libraries such
       | as Intels MKL make it seemingly faster to run. On Apple Silicon,
       | for such common use cases there are DEDICATED chip areas. Thus,
       | an ASIC)
        
       | lostmsu wrote:
       | I will get one if it can run Windows and nothing comparable
       | released by then.
        
       | louwrentius wrote:
       | The single core performance is still the same as the M1, so
       | frankly, for a laptop that's awesome, but I wish single core
       | performance could hit the AMD Ryzen scores.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | Depends what benchmark you ask. According to Passmark, the M1
         | is the best single core CPU no question.
        
       | musesum wrote:
       | Compared to my Mid 2018 6 core i9 2.9Gz
       | 
       | 1.62x single core 2.70x multi core (10 vs 6 cores) 2x to 3x
       | faster on ML and Graphics
       | 
       | Hopefully, less power and no more false positives on the taskbar.
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-20 23:00 UTC)