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Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

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Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really rendering in a cafe that you need on the go GPU performance?

That’s not the right way to look at it. We never did this because you couldn’t get enough performance. Now you can get performance off a battery for your entire work day for less money than the competition (if reports are to be believed). In this scenario, would you render things in a cafe? Why not?

> In this scenario, would you render things in a cafe? Why not?

honestly, as a traveler and sometimes digital nomad, the real question is "why yes?"

There is no real reason to work in a cafe, except because it looks cool to some social audience.

Cafes are usually very uncomfortable work places, especially if you have to sit for hours looking at the tiniest of the details as one often does when rendering.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#732
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really useless comparison. A 10 year old laptop will be extremely slow compared to any modern laptop and the battery will have degraded. The T460 has knock off battery replacements floating around but that’s not exactly reassuring. Granted: it works for you (and me, actually, I’m one of those people who likes to use an old thinkpad; x201s in my case though I mostly use a dell precision these days) but peopl…

Define "extremely". You get maybe a factor 2 or so, not 10 or 100. Is that nicer? Yes, sure. Is it necessary? No, older stuff is perfectly sufficient for most people. Also, it is "if you need that power and need it with laptop formfactor". Again, impressive, but desktops/servers work just as well for most people.

Saying a 10 year old laptop is 2x or 4x slower than a new laptop is just a tiny part of the big picture.

I would say that for a light laptop user, the main reasons to upgrade are:

- displays: make a big difference for watching youtube, reading, etc. You can't really compare a 120 Hz XDR retina display with a 10 year old display.

- webcam: makes a big difference when video conferencing with family, etc.

- battery life: makes a big difference if you are on the go a lot. My 10 year old laptop had new something like 4 hours battery life. Any new laptop has more than 15h, some over 20h.

- fanless: silent laptops that don't overheat are nice, nicer to have on your lap, etc.

- accelerators: some zoom and teams backgrounds use AI a lot, and perform very poorly on old laptops without AI accelerators. Same for webcams.

If you talk about perf, that's obviously workload dependent, but having 4x more cores, that are 2-4x faster each, can make a big difference. I/O, encryption, etc. has improved quite a bit, which can make a difference if you deal with big files.

Still, you can get most of this new stuff for 1000$ in a macbook air with M1. Seems like a no brainer for light users that _need_ or _want_ to upgrade. If you don't want to upgrade, that's ok, but saying that you are only missing 2x better performance is misleading. You are missing a lot more stuff.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#733
post #625
post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'm someone who hacks on Linux for a living. What do I do now?

Well, I've been hacking on Linux for 8 years and been a maintainer for a few packages in AUR so what? Even the way you present yourself here proves my point. This is not an OS for a comfortable life, it's a system for "hacking" (including the system itself). If you still have passion and time for this - cool, most people don't want to spend their days on this.

> If you still have passion and time for this - cool, most people don't want to spend their days on this.

Just adding another counterpoint to "MacOs is awsome", anecdotal one, because we don't have any other.

My wife (she is not a hacker, just a computer science teacher) hates macos, she preferred Linux. She used the system I setup for her, and I left it alone. She loved it.

MacOS is created for average Joe that just browses web and has no clue about anything else (like filesystem, directories). Example: Finder, that thingy can't show you full paths. If you try to get to your home directory to get some files you have to jump hoops.

I'm astonished that it is pushed as a developer OS, "because you have 'Linux' there". Sorry, that poor choice of basic utilities (some time ago bash there was ages old), that everyone has to use brew to get anything useful there.

Hardware is nice, but OS, is something that you just overwrite while installing Linux.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#734
post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that why every tech company uses Macbooks? People who can't afford Apple laptops (and gamers and certain other use cases) buy cheaper laptops. The brand appeal draws all the wealthy people towards Apple devices.

A lot of tech companies let their engineers choose between something like an X1 Carbon or a Macbook. Lots of tech workers, in my experience, actually choose a Macbook for work because they really want to use a slick, luxury device and can't justify the cost for personal use... particularly given how many of them actually use their work laptops for personal tasks in off hours. I think HN underestimates how many SWE's…

> I think HN underestimates how many SWE's actually don't do much programming or use their personal computers for much at all. Particularly those with families.

This. I haven't owned personal computer for 10 years now, always use laptop I get from work.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#735
IMHO, ditching Intel is a smart move for apple but a bad one for hackers. I’m sticking with older intel mbps until decent emulation scores are achieved with qemu, and probably further down the line. Hypervisors (say VBox proxmox combo) are so useful when you have to experiment/test with other platforms. Happy to see HDMI and escape key back tho, and it looks like we’ll even get a Target Display Mode equivalent! We’ll be back to my 2015 setup.:-)

My ideal M1 mbp would be this new one with 64gb ram but with a second cheap mid tier i5 with 16gb dedicated, and a rtx2070(cmon NVdia has Cuda —we need that) with 8gb, connected via internal tb3. I don’t care that it would be 700g heavier and a bit bigger or have less battery life when used to the max (idled chips should not eat a lot). It terms of bare costs thats maybe 1000$ more silicon, but it’s a world more of possibilities. What’s wrong with dedicated gpu offering— not for everyone but hackers love it and help the aura.

And —-please—- bring back a modular slot (m2?) for (additional?) storage! (Also good for hackers but not for Apple)

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#736
post #733
post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I've been hacking on Linux for 8 years and been a maintainer for a few packages in AUR so what? Even the way you present yourself here proves my point. This is not an OS for a comfortable life, it's a system for "hacking" (including the system itself). If you still have passion and time for this - cool, most people don't want to spend their days on this.

> If you still have passion and time for this - cool, most people don't want to spend their days on this. Just adding another counterpoint to "MacOs is awsome", anecdotal one, because we don't have any other. My wife (she is not a hacker, just a computer science teacher) hates macos, she preferred Linux. She used the system I setup for her, and I left it alone. She loved it. MacOS is created for average Joe that just…

> Example: Finder, that thingy can't show you full paths

It can

> If you try to get to your home directory to get some files you have to jump hoops.

You don't

> Sorry, that poor choice of basic utilities (some time ago bash there was ages old), that everyone has to use brew to get anything useful there.

Ah yes, unlike the great linux where everyone is using apt-get/yum to install anything useful

Disclaimer: have used Macs as my primary developer machine since 2008 across 4 industries as both frontend and backend developer in half a dozen different programming languages.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#737
post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out on the fact that Apple didn't release a 12980hk or 5980hx competitor. These are 30 watt chips that trounce the competition's 65 watt (e.g. the 12980hk and 5980hx) and beyond chips. Hell, this Geekbench is faster than a desktop 125 watt 11900k. It's faster than a desktop 105 watt 5800x. Apple intentionally played to the competition here. They know AMD/Intel reach some performance level X and release…

It seems Intel seems to have recognized that and hedged their bets by securing the remaining 3nm capacity [1] 1: https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-locks-down-all-remainin...

Frankly don't believe this. Who do you give majority of leading node capacity to?

1. Biggest long term partner.

2. Someone who competes with you as a manufacturer.

Not a hard decision!

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#738
post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the M1 is consuming less power at low loads, enabling longer battery lives. What other explanation do you think there could be for the long battery lives of the M1 laptops?

What does it have to do with geekbench which test processors on max load, i.e., highest possible TDP, which I referred to?

Depends on how you look at it. What's impressive about the M1 is that it gets highly respectable Geekbench scores while also being able to deliver 20 hours of battery life in a small form factor laptop. If there is an Intel chip that can do that, where are the laptops with comparable battery life?

We can nerd out about the exact definition of TDP all day, but ultimately these benchmarks are only useful insofar as they tell us something about real world performance and power consumption.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#739
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this perspective. I think it's important to recognize that the M1 is a System on a Chip (SoC), not simply a CPU. Comparing the Apple M1 to "mid-range 8-core AMD desktop CPUs from 2020" is not comparing apples to apples. The M1 Max in the Geek Bench score has 10 cores whereas the AMD desktop CPUs you mention have 8-cores. That would be more of an apples to apples comparison. Where the M1 architecture r…

I really hope Qualcomm/NUVIA (or Nvidia/ARM) release a competitive ARM SoC that will eventually become part of a framework mainboard module.

M1 was 10 years in the making. So I wouldn't hold my breath for Qualcomm or anyone else.

Re: Apple M1 Max Geekbench Score

#740
post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out on the fact that Apple didn't release a 12980hk or 5980hx competitor. These are 30 watt chips that trounce the competition's 65 watt (e.g. the 12980hk and 5980hx) and beyond chips. Hell, this Geekbench is faster than a desktop 125 watt 11900k. It's faster than a desktop 105 watt 5800x. Apple intentionally played to the competition here. They know AMD/Intel reach some performance level X and release…

> It might be a long time before it makes sense to buy a non-Apple laptop. ...if you only care about the things that Apple laptops are good at. Almost nobody needs a top-of-the-line laptop to do their tasks. Most things that people want to do with computers can be done on a machine that is five to ten years old without any trouble at all. For example I use a ThinkPad T460p, and while the geekbench scores for its proc…

I'm still using my 12 (!) year old 17" MacBook Pro as daily work machine. Yes, it's not the fastest computer but for my usage it works. Granted, starting IntelliJ needs some time, but coding still works well (and compiling big codebases isn't done locally).

The one thing that really isn't usable anymore is Aperture/Lightroom. And missing docker because my CPU is too old (but docker it still works in VMs ...) is a pain.

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