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How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

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Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#301

Post by spockz »

spockz wrote: post #36
oregontechninja wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an unbeliever, but we got some M1 Mac Mini's and this is the result. They even beat the dedicated workstation many of our people have set up. I get when people say it won't quite match a new ryzen for compute power, but in all of our tests, the M1 beat out all our workstations.

What workloads do you run? I’ve got a 16GiB M1 mbp and a 2019 maxed intel and when compiling Java/sbt projects the intel is significantly quicker, albeit also much loader and power hungry.

Wow, based on the comments here I decided try out the native M1 builds of Azul.

I see a 4.1x speedup in compiling (including tests), excluding dependency resolution:

  Azul Native M1 java JDK11: 
   ./sbt "clean;compile;test:compile"  
     254.86s user 
     11.84s system 
     519% cpu 
     51.375 total
  Azul java JDK11: 
    ./sbt "clean;compile;test:compile"  
     490.04s user 
     59.48s system 
     269% cpu 
     3:23.81 total

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#302

Post by hinkley »

geerlingguy wrote: post #202
post_break wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I ran into the other day, had an app crash taking 50% of cpu. I was on the couch for hours on battery. Only noticed when my battery life was at 60% when normally it would be at 85%. My intel machine would have alerted me by burning my legs and trying to create lift with the fans.

Ha, speaking of burning legs, I was doing some video editing in FCPX last night, and I had to keep changing positions trying to optimize for not burning my legs too badly and not blocking the air flow through the vents on the bottom/sides causing even more throttling.

Bamboo cutting boards make great, cheap lap desks.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#304

Post by alien_ »

gketuma wrote: post #296
valbaca wrote: post #288

I have a 2020 Intel Macbook from work and a M1 Macbook for personal use. Granted I put my work laptop under more load (compiling, video chats at work) but it just feels like a normal laptop. I feel it take its time loading large programs (IDEs) and the fan clicks on when I'm doing big compiles. I use my personal laptop for occasionally coding, playing games, and also video chats. But the M1 feels amazing. It's fast,…

"I never hear the fan. Even playing Magic Arena AND a Parallels VM runs silent." That is because there is no fan.

I have an M1 Macbook Pro for almost a month now as work laptop and I've only heard the fan once so far, while doing a multi-file search/replace in VSCode. For whatever reason that maxed out the performance cores for a few minutes.

Other than that it's been entirely silent and blazingly fast and I had no major issues with it.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#305

Post by kllrnohj »

SigmundA wrote: post #300
kllrnohj wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To leverage shared memory in Metal you have to target Metal. Otherwise take for example glTexImage2D: https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL-Refpages/gl4/html/gl... Apple can't just hang onto that void* that's passed in as the developer is free to re-use for something else after the call. It must copy, even on a UMA system. And even if it was adjusted such that glTexImage2D took ownership of the pointer instead, the…

I believe most of the benchmarks where Metal based in the Anand article, also PBO have been around for quiet a while in OpenGL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Gr... Any back and forth between CPU and GPU will be faster with unified memory especially with a coherent on die cache. This is the same model from iOS so just about anyone doing metal will already be optimizing for it same with any…

> I believe most of the benchmarks where Metal based in the Anand article

But that doesn't tell you anything. Being Metal-based doesn't mean they were designed nor benefit from UMA.

Especially since, again, Apple's own recommendation on big data (read: textures) is to copy it.

> Any back and forth between CPU and GPU will be faster with unified memory especially with a coherent on die cache.

Yes, but games & gfxbench don't do this which is what I keep trying to get across. There are workloads out there that will benefit from this, but the games & benchmarks that were run & being discussed aren't them. It's like claiming the sunspider results are from wifi 6 improvements. There are web experiences that will benefit from faster wifi, but sunspider ain't one of them.

Things like GPGPU compute can benefit tremendously here, for example.

> also PBO have been around for quiet a while in OpenGL:

PBO's reduce the number of copies from 2 to 1 in some cases, not from 1 to 0. You still copy from the PBO to your texture target, but it can potentially avoid a CPU to CPU copy first. When you call glTexImage2D it doesn't necessarily do the transfer right then, it instead may copy to a different CPU buffer to later be copied to the GPU.

> "Comparing the two GPU architectures, TBDR has the following advantages:

> It drastically saves on memory bandwidth because of the unified memory architecture. Blending happens in-register facilitated by tile processing. Color, depth and stencil buffers don’t need to be re-fetched."

> https://metalkit.org/2020/07/03/wwdc20-whats-new-in-metal.ht...

Uh, that blogger seems rather confused. TBDR has nothing to do with UMA, nor is Nvidia or AMD immediate mode anymore.

Heck, Mali was doing TBDR long before it was ever used on a UMA SoC.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#306

Post by Eric_WVGG »

EricE wrote: post #295
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author’s analysis sounds less like an explanation of how the M1 is faster, and more like an explanation of how it gets such amazing battery life. If someone could figure out a way to get all MacOS apps —including the system — to use the performance cores, perhaps the battery life would be back down to Intel levels?

>If someone could figure out a way to get all MacOS apps —including the system — to use the performance cores, perhaps the battery life would be back down to Intel levels? Other than to prove an utterly useless point - why would you want to even remotely do that?!? If my time machine backup takes four times as long but my battery lasts longer still why would I care? The overall experience is a HUGE net improvement. T…

curiosity? proving the thesis? knowledge that could improve competing laptops?

yah never mind I don't care why these computers are impressive let’s just play macos chess and browse facebook jfc if you’re not interested why did you even join this conversation

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#307

Post by [deleted] »

kogepathic wrote: post #229
eldaisfish wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that with mid-2010s apple laptops, >5 year lifespans are the norm. With the majority of other, even comparably priced laptops, that is the exception. There are other laptops that are similar or superior build quality to those from Apple (N.B. - older MacBooks, not the newer ones) but those are also easy to spot. They’ll usually be ThinkPads or some XPS models from dell.

> With the majority of other, even comparably priced laptops, that is the exception. Consumer grade PC hardware has terrible build quality, and regardless of the price of your unit, the consumer build spec is just inferior to the business/professional lines. Asus, MSI, Sony, Acer, etc laptops all have consumer grade build quality and they just aren't designed to last a decade. > They’ll usually be ThinkPads or some X…

[deleted]

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#308

Post by emteycz »

davidy123 wrote: post #201
apexalpha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I feel other laptops at the same price point as Apple Macbooks do this too, sometimes even better. I bought a HP 8530w in 2009 or so and it still works. Replacing the DVD drive for a SSD required just a common Philips screwdriver and battery replacements are sold by HP themselves or many others.

Exactly. Too many people compare a $400 cheap Windows laptop to a $1200 Macbook. Compare like for like, and the thing is likely to last until it's absolutely obsolete. And, while I don't really support this, some might find it an advantage to replace the computer three times for the same price. But people should be comparing to a well built, upgradable laptop (especially those that support not just RAM and disk but a…

Lenovo or Dell displays are much worse than Apple displays even though the machine costs the same.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#309

Post by yurishimo »

deergomoo wrote: post #280
nikanj wrote: post #74

My 16 inch pro Intel is plenty fast - for the first 45 seconds before thermal throttling kicks in. I have a feeling the M1 is faster because it can actually do work for more than just the briefest bursts

The heat and noise was what led me to sell my 16" MBP in favour of a 13" Air. I was working from home the whole time I owned it and my partner could often hear it from a different room. No idea how anyone works in an office with one of those things without irritating the hell out of their coworkers.

Most likely because everyone already wears headphones to isolate themselves. There is outside traffic noise and aircon to compete with, as well as general drone of conversations. It's only really an issue in environments that are already quiet.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#310

Post by thefourthchime »

kryps wrote: post #75

It does not just feel faster, in many cases it is faster. E.g. compiling Rust code is so much faster that it is not even funny. cargo install -f ripgrep takes 22 seconds on a Mac Book Air with M1, same on a hexacore 2020 Dell XPS 17 with 64GB RAM takes 34 seconds.

It's been amazing for me.... EXCEPT for when resuming from sleep, for some reason it would be very slow for a minute.

I have since FIXED THIS! The solution is to just not let it sleep. I'm using Amphetamine and since then it has been amazingly fast all the time.

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