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Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

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Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#51

Post by epmaybe »

nicoburns wrote: post #47
epmaybe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was worried about this too, but have been pleasantly surprised by this laptop. I'm sure my use case is far different to yours though. I was looking at my RAM consumption on my 16GB MacBook Pro prior to purchasing the M1 MacBook Air, and I was usually hitting 14-15GB with multiple GB of swap used in my regular use case (couple of chrome tabs, some electron apps, Xcode, 1st party apps all open). I consciously pare do…

I wouldn't be worried about 16GB now (my current MacBook is 16GB and I don't have any problems). But I want my laptop to least a decent amount of time (at least 5 years), and I do worry about whether 16GB will be sufficient then.

I figure I will eventually pass this laptop on to a family member by the time I will be in the market for a new laptop, so I am not necessarily worried about that. I suspect my 2017 mbp would have worked fine for a few more years but I wanted to transition to a more portable device.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#52

Post by judge2020 »

api wrote: post #16
tambourine_man wrote: post #13

Can't wait to see the Mac Pro. The argument is over for best laptop processor. I want to see if Apple is as eager to beat the competition in the Workstation/HPC space as they were in the mobile/laptop. I think they are, Srouji looks like he's got a knife in his teeth and can't wait to claim fastest personal computer ever period. But we'll have to see, it's a tiny, tiny market to justify the effort.

How much effort is it really? Make a version of this with more cores and cache and maybe all high-performance cores instead of heterogenous. It's just a remix of the same already designed components. The only really tough thing would be supporting things desktop users want like external video cards, but people may be willing to forego that if the CPU smokes everything else and if the built-in GPU is at least fast eno…

I'd be surprised if they didn't still include 2 or 4 high efficiency cores to continue touting power efficiency - the business customers would love to cut their power bill in the long term.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#53

Post by formerly_proven »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #23
doikor wrote: post #10

> Just Buy M1 if you'd like to have a low-power, long-lasting, quiet, and performant dev machine. If your development environment/tooling/workflow does not gain any real advantage from more CPU cores. Also your data must fit in the 16GB of RAM as offloading any workload to disk will kill the performance and you cannot add more. The M1 has excellent single core performance so any task that is mainly single threaded wi…

Or if the bottleneck in your workflow is RAM read/write speed as opposed to RAM capacity. The RAM being on the same chip as the CPU/GPU gives it tremendously low RAM latency, which seems to be where it's getting much of its edge in these tests

The M1 has pretty high memory latency at around 100 ns [1], which is significantly higher than either AMD or Intel for typical systems. Note that physical distance between CPU and memory is rather less important for latency, as DRAM is high latency in itself, so adding a few ns at most due to wiring is not going to matter.

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#54

Post by jtxx »

wwright wrote: post #37
api wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah seeing a MacBook Air beat an i9 is hilarious. I think this should put arguments over X86 efficiency disadvantages to bed. The X86 is obviously a huge boat anchor. There is no other explanation for this monstrous of a performance efficiency gap... unless Apple has invented something fundamentally new that has never been done in the entire history of CPU design. I doubt that.

Well, Apple has managed to move all the way down to a 5nm process while Intel still hasn't made it past 14nm. AFAIK that's the largest limiting factor for Intel. I can't speak to why they have been stuck there for so long.

I’m not sure about 5nm but I know they were targeting 7nm and something broke that set them back till 2022/23. Not looking good for intel

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-announces-delay-to-7...

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#55

Post by kzrdude »

cpascal wrote: post #43

> Just Buy M1 if you'd like to have a low-power, long-lasting, quiet, and performant dev machine. I would absolutely love to buy the M1 MacBook Air (and I almost did), the performance is just too good. It’s nearly impossible to justify spending money on any other laptop. Unfortunately, I just can’t get past the single external display limitation. I did see there is a DisplayLink workaround to get multiple external di…

Can't you configure it with two external displays (and the internal display blank)?

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#56

Post by Aperocky »

vmception wrote: post #29
bb123 wrote: post #11

The fact that we are even able to realistically compare a CPU in an ultralight laptop with no fan to an i9 is absolutely amazing. To me that would be an upgrade even if performance is a complete wash.

Stores should have a new category: Apple M1 and Only Fans

Color me an only fan.

M1 earned it.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#57

Post by [deleted] »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #23
doikor wrote: post #10

> Just Buy M1 if you'd like to have a low-power, long-lasting, quiet, and performant dev machine. If your development environment/tooling/workflow does not gain any real advantage from more CPU cores. Also your data must fit in the 16GB of RAM as offloading any workload to disk will kill the performance and you cannot add more. The M1 has excellent single core performance so any task that is mainly single threaded wi…

Or if the bottleneck in your workflow is RAM read/write speed as opposed to RAM capacity. The RAM being on the same chip as the CPU/GPU gives it tremendously low RAM latency, which seems to be where it's getting much of its edge in these tests

[deleted]

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#59

Post by msoad »

Rumor is in a few months Apple will release a new chip that is made for pro computers. It will be in iMac and MacBook Pro 16in. I don't know what it is called but it had almost double the cache and core count of M1. That MacBook Pro is the one you probably want to buy for coding purposes.
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