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

macrumors.com

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

#171

Post by treeman79 »

imwally wrote: post #95
srtjstjsj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. No…

    sudo htop
See what’s going on.

Os-query was going bonkers on me.

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

#172

Post by Bud »

maz1b wrote: 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…

It's not just outperforming the MacBook Pro. It's also blowing away the current 2020 top-end iMac, which has a 10-core Intel i9.

And it's doing this while using more than an order of magnitude less power (10W vs. a TDP of 125W for that Intel part).

That's stunning.

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

#174

Post by alasdair_ »

cactus2093 wrote: post #128

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

I’ll take a stab at the problem: an “actual professional” in this context is someone who makes their money by using the computer.

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

#175

Post by Bud »

numpad0 wrote: post #148
maz1b wrote: 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…

Laptop Macs of late are known for heavy throttling due to inadequate cooling, which cannot have been unnoticed in simulations

But not anymore. That era is over.

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

#176

Post by sitkack »

imwally wrote: post #95
srtjstjsj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. No…

You need to plug the power port into the back right usb-c connector.

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

#177

Post by LASR »

martinald wrote: post #155

What's actually more interesting to me than Intel vs ARM is how much further ahead Apple is vs the competition. The snapdragon 8cx is about 1/3rd the speed in both Single and Multicore performance of the M1. How is Apple so far ahead even with the same instruction set?

It’s what happens when a trillion dollar company does vertical integration the right way instead of dicking around.

Intel, Qualcomm, Microsoft - all have to build products that work for the lowest common denominator. Loss of focus is a major problem.

Apple has a handful of products. One OS. One developer platform.

This kind of agility is extremely powerful. They can switch fabs whenever it makes sense. They can switch ISAs whenever it makes sense.

Contrast with Microsoft, that has to support so many hardware platforms. They’re not helping themselves with so many software frameworks - Win32, WinRT, .NET, MFC, WinJs? I’ve lost count.

Intel is handicapped stuck to their process nodes.

Qualcomm, while they’ve effectively captured the mobile SOC market, they too have the same problem. They can’t control what handset makers do. So they can only go so far.

Apple can make a single CPU core and mix and match that with variations. Things get a lot easier if you just have to deal with yourself e2e - even as far as retail sales.

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

#178

Post by andreasley »

kube-system wrote: post #135
nostromo wrote: post #127

So... I'd be feeling pretty silly right now if I bought the Mac Pro in 2019 for like $7,000. (Which I almost did!) https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/457 M1 is comparable to baseline Mac Pro on multicore performance and better on single core performance. And several thousand dollars cheaper (and smaller).

There's still a lot to be said for software support, IO, RAM, etc.

Also GPU: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/compare/1799092?bas...

The Vega II is even faster (but quite a bit more expensive).

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

#179

Post by wmf »

martinald wrote: post #155

What's actually more interesting to me than Intel vs ARM is how much further ahead Apple is vs the competition. The snapdragon 8cx is about 1/3rd the speed in both Single and Multicore performance of the M1. How is Apple so far ahead even with the same instruction set?

ARM laptops have been trapped in a vicious cycle of low performance -> low sales -> low R&D -> low performance. The A78C and X1 cores should help a lot but they still won't match Apple Silicon.

Apple is ahead because they have more money than Arm, Qualcomm, Samsung, etc. combined.

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