Live data from Hacker News

Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

macrumors.com

91–100 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#92
post #33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing my 16" MBP (8 core i9 2.3ghz / 32GB RAM) with the new Air as well. All of that power (yes I know, it's not sustained) without a fan is incredible.

Note that the M1 does not support eGPUs, in case you need it.

Where is that spec’d out?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#93
post #48

This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years. For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and…

Surely a version that can beat a 8 core Xeon is made for 'actual professionals'?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#94
post #90

If the M1 mops the floor with everything else, why didn't they put it in the high-end 16-inch MBP too?

I think we have to assume something else is coming. Certainly something that supports >16GB of RAM, and something that has more I/O.

While we're there we may as well a bunch more cores...

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#95
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing my 16" MBP (8 core i9 2.3ghz / 32GB RAM) with the new Air as well. All of that power (yes I know, it's not sustained) without a fan is incredible.

Why did you pay a fortune for 32GB RAM, a larger screen, and a dGPU if you don't need it? You could have bought a 13" MBP and saved enough cash to get the new Air and now have 2 laptops.

I’ve always used 15” MBPs without external displays as my only computer for years. I like being mobile and don’t particularly like having a desktop + laptop. Since COVID I’ve been stuck at home so I decided to finally get an external monitor. The problem is that you can’t use the 16” with an external display and the lid open without the fans spinning at full speed. Some people don’t mind it but it drives me crazy. Now it’s hooked up to my display in clamshell mode. Do I need all of that power? No, but I did want the biggest screen at the time when I purchased it a year ago. I plan on selling it when the new Air comes in.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern mobile CPU with a TDP of 6 watts is beating a modern desktop CPU with a TDP of 125 watts? Is it just me or this seems too good to be true?

5nm vs 14nm is the easiest explainable reason.

It's also the most wrong explanation. The actual performance efficiency between those processes isn't that drastic. The power efficiency of the M1 would come from better IPC such that it just doesn't have to clock as high to be competitive.

That's why A14 only runs at 1.8ghz base, 3ghz boost. That's how it has low power consumption. And similarly Intel pushing 5ghz is why it has high power consumption.

TSMC's 5nm will have a raw transistor performance/watt advantage, but it's not huge

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#97

Geekbench is designed to test CPU's in short bursts to not get them into thermal throttling (this is by design, it is supposed to be CPU test, not cooling test), so I would be wary of Air's results - at least until other benchmarks results are available. MacBook Pro's results on the other hand should be more representative as it has active cooling and can sustain heavy load for longer.

My maxed out 2018 air did 760/1596 on geekbench 5.0.3.

New MBA has a 1719/6967 on gb 5.3.0

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That demo shows an ARM VM with Linux for ARM running inside it. There have been no announcements or demos of Intel emulation, besides Rosetta 2.

Parallels announced a full version of Parallels Desktop (which is the Win-on-macOS product) at the same time as the event on Nov 10: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-sili...

That PR doesn't actually say anything about running Windows. You can't just port the app. A VM on an ARM system is still ARM inside, and given that the PR specifically mentions "support of x64 applications in Windows on ARM", this is clearly for ARM VMs. You'd need actual Intel emulation in order to run the normal version of Windows.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#99
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware is able to use an eGPU, but Apple decided to not compile the Radeon drivers for arm64 macOS at least for now. Hopefully they'll reverse that decision. (or their GPUs in the higher end machines will have to be really good)

I'm assuming (for now) that discrete GPUs will still be featured in higher-end machines, so the Radeon drivers will appear over the next couple of years.

I think Apple is done supporting other people’s GPUs. Their graphics are pretty good, they can match NVidea and AMD with TSMC’s help if they want to.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#100
post #48

This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years. For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and…

Surely a version that can beat a 8 core Xeon is made for 'actual professionals'?

It still has a lot of limitations that matter to many pros - max 16 GB of RAM, max 2 displays (only 1 external for laptops), only enough PCIe lanes to support 2 thunderbolt ports. eGPUs aren't supported either, but hopefully that is a software thing that will be fixed.

It will be very interesting to see what the performance will be of the more "pro" chip that overcomes those limitations that they'd put in the 16" and iMacs

Post reply on HN