Live data from Hacker News

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

macrumors.com

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

> 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…

One has to remember that Apple is still selling an Intel mac mini at the top of the range: it likely means something about the performance to expect from M1 vs Intel.

They probably have a lot of customers still demanding Intel CPUs. Mac minis are often used in server farms as build servers and there are many companies that would require Intel CPU there for some time.

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

#612

What are current viable alternatives to the M1 MacBook (Air and Pro) laptops in the PC world? I'm looking for those 2% computers "in the same class" (from the apple keynote 2 days ago) that are faster than these M1 laptops. From the looks of it they surpass their Apple store siblings, but how about x86 PC laptops? I'm currently shopping for my next dev machine, in the lighter side of the form-factor. I've seen some n…

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 GA502IV-AZ115 is likely to be faster. It is cheaper than the Macbook Air M1 with 16GB/512GB, too (in Germany: 1465€ vs 1588€). It has an AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS CPU and a RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU.

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

#613
post #598

One interested little side aspect of Apple Silicon and Apple's war against Epic Games is going to be Unreal Engine. I can see Unreal Engine not being available for Apple Silicon for quite a while. During the presentation of the new notebooks, Apple showed quite a bit of gaming. If there are no Unreal Engine titles for Apple Silicon, this could hurt them.

The case between Apple and Epic Games is about the app store on iOS. Epic can sell games without having to give Apple 30% on Mac OS. I doubt the investors is on board boycotting Apple as a whole.

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

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if M1 dominates an i9-9980HK at multithreaded workloads that make full use of available SIMD? Does an M1 dominate at peak theoretical flops?

M1 is not magic and can't break the laws of physics. SMT makes better use of silicon and will probably push speeds closer. OTOH, M1 has a fast memory that the i9 can't match. I still bet on the i9, but it'd be interesting to run a test.

What are the laws of physics that would be broken in this case?

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

#615
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What in the world is an actual professional? I would say that generally , a "professional" user of pretty much any tool, is someone for whom the tool's quality is a constraint on their professional productivity. A professional paint user is an artist. A professional telescope user is an astronomer—or a sniper. A professional typewriter user is a stenographer. A professional shoe user is an athlete. In all these cas…

I'm a professional programmer... hardware constraints aren't exactly the limiting factor when i use vim all day.

Esc key vs touch bar does not influence how you can use vim?

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are not priced competitive. Cheapest macbook air starts from $999. Cheapest Dell Inspiron starts from $319.

The cheapest Dell Inspiron doesn't even hold a candle to the MacBook Air. They're not competing in the same class...

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

#617

> 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?

Asking myself that very same question. I've been booting linux, quite happily I might add, off mid/high-end Dells and HPs for a while. The last time I looked Airs were still dual-core, and much more expensive for 16 GB.

I'm not an Apple fan, but the change in value is stunning. I don't need a new laptop currently...

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

#618
post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the Ryzen wins out, that would still be comparing a desktop CPU to a mobile one, using 105W vs 10W. It is incredible that we are making these comparisons. Apple outdid themselves.

There's going to be a AMD mobile version of the 5000 generation soon and when looking back at 4000 generation their single core (boost) performance is going to be virtually the same as the desktop variant. Desktop CPUs differ from the mobile CPUs mainly in how much can they boost more/all cores.

I highly doubt it will match it in performance under the same power envelope, and in the end for a mobile device that's what's important.

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

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

5nm is not design compatible with 7nm, but 6nm is, so there might be a die shrink to that.

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

#620
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

*Intel Laptop Macs of late are known for heavy throttling

We have no idea what the M1 would look like. Though it's likely. I imagine they wouldn't have taken the fan out of the Air if that was a big concern.

Post reply on HN