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M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

eclecticlight.co

71–80 of 234 posts

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen little to no hype based on synthetic benchmarks. M1 macs are just really damn fast for daily usage. My M1 Macbook Air blows my 16" out of the water in every conceivable way. I'd elaborate but there seriously isn't any dimension of it that isn't an improvement. Maybe the smaller display?

> My M1 Macbook Air blows my 16" That is the issue though. Intel macbooks were notoriously badly cooled. That hurts the performance a lot. If all you have used is that, of course you find the new one a lot better. However, compared to any other high end Intel/AMD laptop, you would not perceive this much difference in speed. Pick up a Macbook 16 and XPS 15 from 2019 with the same specs (CPU/RAM) and the XPS absolutely…

> Pick up a Macbook 16 and XPS 15 from 2019 with the same specs (CPU/RAM) and the XPS absolutely runs circles around the macbook when it comes to general responsiveness in UI. All because of cooling.

One visit to XPS owner’s subreddit was enough for me to stop entertaining the idea of buying it.

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could do something gnarly like fit 8 sockets on a single board Those sockets need to communicate with each other, and extremely quickly. And that I/O is very, very expensive in terms of power. Even with that you still end up with poor performance scaling, especially with anything that isn't numa aware (which almost nothing is) So no, that extrapolation doesn't make sense. But even ignoring that missing cost, 8…

Interesting idea about the power usage of the interconnect. I don't remember this being discussed as an issue in tech press writings about multisocket Xeon or EPYC systems. Do you happen to have any references?

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13124/IF%20Power%20EPYC.pn...

Here's EPYC 7601's "IF" power (it's really all the uncore power) vs. the core power.

Going outside the chip means swinging lots of capacitance up and down, and modern interconnects swing that capacitance fast.

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#73

I can’t wait for the desktop-class Pro hardware. If you extrapolate on power consumption alone it would be a complete monster. They could do something gnarly like fit 8 sockets on a single board and send your compute ability to level 9000. I’m hoping for a mid-tier unit though - a rebirth of the G4 Cube as a “Mac Mini Pro” I daily drive an M1 mini now and abuse the hell out of it. I’ve never heard the fan. It’s a rem…

They will skip desktop and ship server chips. If the trends hold, they will have TCO savings which no cloud provider can resist.

I keep hearing this on HN and I do not buy it. The initial cost is much much greater than the competition and even at lower power draw, I don't see it being competitive.

And I don't think Apple would even want to be competitive in this segment.

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#74

These laptops are too expensive. What the hell is the markup on these things

Agreed ! We should also differentiate between "expensive" and "good-value for money". a Ferrari sports car is very 'expensive' and not many ppl can afford it, a Ferrari at 35% discount is a great deal but still 'expensive' for most ppl. Bringing this back to the M1 Macs, I think what you get for your money in terms of computing, power consumption and build quality is simply amazing ! I think few can argue that. But i…

M1 Macbook airs are 1k and a very capable machine so if this is your price range they are a great buy.

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My M1 Macbook Air blows my 16" That is the issue though. Intel macbooks were notoriously badly cooled. That hurts the performance a lot. If all you have used is that, of course you find the new one a lot better. However, compared to any other high end Intel/AMD laptop, you would not perceive this much difference in speed. Pick up a Macbook 16 and XPS 15 from 2019 with the same specs (CPU/RAM) and the XPS absolutely…

And weirdly one of the major design changes for the new M1 Pro & Max machines were significantly improved cooling. Weird how suddenly Apple cared about airflow when it was their 100w SoC in the machine instead of Intel's....

I am sorry, i have a 10th gen dell precision for work. an absolute horror. if i am working on anything development, the fans are just so loud. absolute crap battery life.

if i run same vscode dotnetcore workload on m1 air, that thing lasts atleast 10hours on battery and no heat whatsover. better, the compile time is usually faster than 3800 bucks worth dell precision (on a 1200 bucks laptop)

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#76
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity is slow on any machine. With that said, there is a huge M1 hype on HN. It reminds me of the 64-bit ARM hype when someone benchmaked encryption (because ARMv8 has AES instructions) and everyone were made to belive that the new iPhone would be 3-4 times faster.

> With that said, there is a huge M1 hype on HN. The main thing driving this is that people are comparing a new M1 to their Intel Mac laptops with processors from ~2016 and then naturally it's a marked improvement because it's being compared to a five year old machine. You compare them to a modern Intel or AMD system and they're competitive. They win some and lose others. Much was made about the M1 Max taking the sin…

Looking at pure performance without power usage is meaningless for these machines.

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#77
post #72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting idea about the power usage of the interconnect. I don't remember this being discussed as an issue in tech press writings about multisocket Xeon or EPYC systems. Do you happen to have any references?

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13124/IF%20Power%20EPYC.pn... Here's EPYC 7601's "IF" power (it's really all the uncore power) vs. the core power. Going outside the chip means swinging lots of capacitance up and down, and modern interconnects swing that capacitance fast .

Also why pci 4 and 5 require much more cooling for more than the cpu.

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#78
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe these are actually one of the lowest markups Apple has and in general a great deal. Consider this: 1. 14” or 16” custom miniLED display 2. Anodized one-piece aluminum clamshell 3. Completely custom SoC (much more expensive than buying Intel’s latest, at least in the short-term) 4. Completely custom OS with a full suite of native apps 5. Custom MagSafe adapter 6. Thunderbolt 4 (3 of them) Now consider that t…

They must be getting their bread by charging $400 for the ram upgrade instead of the traditional $200 apple price for what should be $80 of memory.

That ram is no longer a commodity ram sticks, can’t compare prices directly

Re: M1 Pro First Impressions: Core Management and CPU Performance

#80
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 watts? That implies that with serious use you could burn the battery to zero in an hour. Apple's graphs don't show more than 60 watts at peak, and no one is reporting heavy fan output even when running extended benchmarks.

There are reviews where they actually burn through the battery in an hour. This is not surprising: the M1 Max model can consume 70 watts, plus the display consumes tens of watts in HDR mode.

> the M1 Max model can consume 70 watts

In a 16” at least, the Max can go up to 92W per anandtech’s initial test, and display + ram + rest brings the wallplug draw to 120.

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