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

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

#551
post #284
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno, seems like most professionals would want to use docker, virtual machines, or enough video/data to want more than 16GB ram. Or maybe even plug in more than a charging cable and one more device. Or run more than one external monitor. Doesn't seem very "pro" to me. The MBP16" intel has 4 x USB-c ports, can drive two monitors, and can have >= 32GB ram.

> most professionals would want to use docker, virtual machines, or enough video/data to want more than 16GB ram I'm a Sofwware Engineer / pro photographer / videographer. I sling code from time to time, edit thousands of RAW files from my cameras and edit together 1080p footage day in and day out. I did that for years on a 2013 MBA with 8GB of RAM. Now I have a 2015 MBP with 16GB of RAM. It's perfectly adequate.

Yep. My new work laptop only has 16GB of RAM and it’s never been an issue. I’m usually running half a dozen containers, VS Code, Slack, Brave/Chrome, and a few other things. Maybe our work loads are just computationally lighter than some?

I ordered a 16GB Pro the other day to be my personal dev machine. I’m sure it’ll be more than fine. I’m upgrading from a 2013 8GB Pro which was only just starting to slow me down.

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

#552
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSMC’s 5nm node is exceeding everyone’s expectations.

On the non-Apple side, it will be interesting what AMD does with the 5nm node.

Yes I’m guessing we can expect a die shrink of Zen 3 at least next year meaning 10-15% additional performance with no architectural changes. Crazy.

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

#553
post #519
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 also funny that Johny Srouji and probably others in his team come from the team at Intel in Israel that "saved" Intel in the early 2000s by designing the Intel Core architecture which is still used by Intel today. cf. Anandtech article from 2003: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1083/2

Did not know that, and indeed the pentium m / core / core 2 series microarches have done incredibly well.

I've become something of CPU collector in recent years, and I have a nice line of p6 cpus from thePentium Pro -> Pentium 2 -> Pentium 3 -> Pentium M -> Core 2 that conveniently sidesteps those awful Netburst p4 CPUs.

It feels like this (p6+) microarch has finally run out of road and needs a rethink. What 'saved' intel was a change in philosophy rather than chasing MHz they chased power savings. And with Apple's new chips that history is repeating itself (and appears to be with a similar outcome).

It's an exciting time for hardware again because Intel and AMD are going to have to react to this and I think there's still legs to x86, it's survived everything thats been thrown at it so far...

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

#554

> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency. > The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. > Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core…

The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes.

Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

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

#555

I think nobody commented this, but Apple has just made the Mac lineup unrepairable. They will need to have a really high, almost perfect quality control.

Nothing they did this week made it more unrepairable that it already was. Newest Macbooks already had CPUs and memory soldered in to the motherboard for quite some time. And this doesn't make them unrepairable because most of the motherboard issues don't come from a faulty CPU or memory, but from corrosion/other kind of damage on the smaller discrete elements like resistors, capacitors or smaller chips, which can easily be replaced if you know what you're doing. It's not something that you can do at home without equipment, but there are a lot of repair shops that can repair even the newest Macbooks with high success rate.

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

#556
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have the same problem and I've tried plugging it into all 4 ports, no difference at all.

The monitor gets plugged in and the fans just start taking off to the moon - no workload or anything. It's extremely annoying.

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

#558
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you count the display in the macbook that's the same number of screens

So if the Macbook is closed can you drive two?

Theoretically yes (the M1 Mac Mini supports two external) but it's unknown whether the capability to disable the built in display is actually exposed.

You can disable the built in display on (some?) Intel MBPs via `sudo nvram boot-args="niog=1"` according to another poster. Whether this is supported on M1's remains to be seen.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those seem unrelated to me? – a pro-vax fan-liker

Back in the 1980s I used spend a fair amount of work time in rooms with a VAX and can attest to their powerful and noisy fans. If you are a pro with a VAX, you had better be a fan liker.

I’d like to say that I enjoyed first learning machine code on a VAX due to its orthogonal instructions and large fans, but it wouldn’t be true, because I learned on a MIPS machine.

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

#560

> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency. > The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. > Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core…

The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes. Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

Many apps optimized for the x64 platform won't run as well as the benchmarks.
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