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A look at power on the new M1 Max

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Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#31

Post by Hamuko »

41209 wrote: post #13

I'm loving my M1 Mac mini. I use it mostly for recording and it's very nice for that. I still have my big desktop, but if I was to start again I'd go Windows Laptop+ Mac Mini. Realistically I don't want to spend 2k on a laptop, it can ultimately be stolen , destroyed, might not last too long , etc. But with a Mac Mini you buy into the Apple ecosystem at a fairly low price.

>Realistically I don't want to spend 2k on a laptop, it can ultimately be stolen , destroyed, might not last too long , etc.

Aren't most of those things the reason why insurance exists?

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#32

Post by eyelidlessness »

Havoc wrote: post #11

Honestly I find the potential for fanless “good enough” almost more exciting than the top end. For most of my use cases computers these days are already “good enough” and apple pushing the bounds suggest to me that soon we’ll have chrome book class (and price) devices that don’t suck

To be honest I’d buy a hypothetical fanless “MacBook Air Plus” with a modest M2 if only it supported 64 GB RAM. M1 is already significantly better than my 2019 16” MBP, and I’d much prefer the MBA’s thermals.

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#33

Post by knolan »

witweb wrote: post #30
akmittal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Qualcomm to be a better competitor to Apple. They already have experience building custom cores and NUVIA acquisition should help with performance. x86(Even Ryzen) is hardly as power efficient as ARM.

Is the efficiency really that depend on the architecture (x86 vs arm64)? I always thought Apples lead comes from things like the little big approach and the lower transistor size. Can someone elaborate?

A part comes from the dedicated units such as the hardware media and neural blocks. So you can export video in Apple’s ProRes in something like Final Cut at way better perf/W compared to doing some other codec blocks on a GPU in Premiere Pro.

You also save a lot of time and power not having to move data between memory pools by having fast access to the unified memory.

It seems that there’s no one thing that achieves the efficiency numbers we’re seeing. It’s excellent execution across the entire design.

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#34

Post by batmanthehorse »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #32
Havoc wrote: post #11

Honestly I find the potential for fanless “good enough” almost more exciting than the top end. For most of my use cases computers these days are already “good enough” and apple pushing the bounds suggest to me that soon we’ll have chrome book class (and price) devices that don’t suck

To be honest I’d buy a hypothetical fanless “MacBook Air Plus” with a modest M2 if only it supported 64 GB RAM. M1 is already significantly better than my 2019 16” MBP, and I’d much prefer the MBA’s thermals.

Yeah, I was eagerly waiting for the new MBP but ended up returning it (unopened) because I was disappointed that its 10% heavier than the last model. I think my ideal would be a thin, fanless 16 inch with 32GB RAM. I'm fine with some power throttling under sustained load, but I understand why they filled the new Pros with big fans to avoid that.

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#35

Post by jamesgeck0 »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #17
alexkundera wrote: post #16

It is good for industry in the long term. With all the rumors, obviously I can't wait for Microsoft to release a Surface of their own with fanless design and custom chips.

They already have an ARM Surface model I think it is called X. The one I played with for a while was first gen using Microsofts ARM chip. SQ1. A much slower design than the M1 for sure, but I wonder if they can do better in the next generation. I am not sure if SQ2 is out yet. I know they got really busy once the M1 came out.

The SQ2 has been out about a year. It was only about 12% faster than the SQ1. Neither is a particularly fast chip. To make matters worse, most popular Windows applications still don't have ARM builds and run under emulation.

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#36

Post by michaelmrose »

ksec wrote: post #25
traspler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, is it actually competition? Apple will never sell any of their Chips to OEM partners so they will have to make do with whatever AMD, Intel, nVidia, Qualcomm, etc. sell. Will it actually lead to more people choosing a MacBook than any other Laptop? With these prices I‘m not so sure.

>Will it actually lead to more people choosing a MacBook than any other Laptop? With these prices I‘m not so sure. Not MacBook Pro, but MacBook Air. The MacBook Air starts at $999. And if anyone has been paying a little more attention one may discover MBA discount is unusually high compared to previous Intel MBA. Education MBA M1 are going at $899 and in some cases $799. The lowest retail discount on MBA goes down to…

94% of people aren't current college enrollees and aren't paying educational prices they are paying the prices listed at store.apple.com. Looking at store.apple.com the 999 model is a dog nobody should buy because its forever locked in at 8GB of non replacable RAM and it comes with an anemic 256GB of storage.

The minimum configuration anyone ought to buy in 2021 comes in at $1400 for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage or $1600 if you want to bump it up to 1TB. Meanwhile the average PC is bought for between $600 and $700 meaning half of people actually pay less even than that.

Here is an example of a typical PC one can find at Walmart where an average user buys their tires, green beans, and their computers.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-2021-New-Touchscreen-laptop-i3...

It comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage for $649 or 1TB for $719. I do not herein assert that it is an equivalent machine its not. However it is a very typical PC.

Here is another with 16GB of RAM but only 256GB of storage but its also only $449 and you wont have to close some applications before opening others partying like its 1998 with your windows CE portable machine.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-15-6-FHD-Ultra-Slim-Noteb...

Yes its a gateway. Gives you a warm fuzzy right.

The point is for the majority of PC laptop buyers the M1 macs even the economical models aren't competitors anymore than a Tesla is really competing for the same buyer as KIA even though the goods are absolutely in the same category. PC's are a largely a huge mass of very cheap machines with a minority that compete directly with apple.

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#37

Post by ehutch79 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #14
ogazitt wrote: post #12

These power numbers are impressive. The memory bandwidth is also impressive. But one thing to watch for - just because the memory bandwidth is so good, don't skimp on memory. The original M1 reviews in Feb 2021 convinced me to get an M1 Macbook Air with only 8GB of memory back in March. My brother-in-law who works for Apple hardware assured me it would be more than enough. Wrong - the machine was churning within a da…

Unfortunately you might have a nice 4gb for dev work after WindowServer takes 28gb :(

I haven't rebooted in weeks and it's taking up 1.49 for me?

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#38

Post by visarga »

friedman23 wrote: post #29
Gravityloss wrote: post #18

How long will it take that all software is just as slow again and the fans are spinning constantly?

Given we are already using browsers as cross platform gui environments, I don't think applications can get more bloated unless everyone starts integrating 3d effects into all their apps.

you mean "meta" effects? they will come soon enough

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#39

Post by p_l »

ehutch79 wrote: post #37
TheJoeMan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you might have a nice 4gb for dev work after WindowServer takes 28gb :(

I haven't rebooted in weeks and it's taking up 1.49 for me?

It's probably reference to the Monterey memory leaks (seems I recall something similar back with Catalina?) which end up allocated in various applications (seen Control Center, WindowServer, etc.)

Re: A look at power on the new M1 Max

#40

Post by kube-system »

michaelmrose wrote: post #36
ksec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Will it actually lead to more people choosing a MacBook than any other Laptop? With these prices I‘m not so sure. Not MacBook Pro, but MacBook Air. The MacBook Air starts at $999. And if anyone has been paying a little more attention one may discover MBA discount is unusually high compared to previous Intel MBA. Education MBA M1 are going at $899 and in some cases $799. The lowest retail discount on MBA goes down to…

94% of people aren't current college enrollees and aren't paying educational prices they are paying the prices listed at store.apple.com. Looking at store.apple.com the 999 model is a dog nobody should buy because its forever locked in at 8GB of non replacable RAM and it comes with an anemic 256GB of storage. The minimum configuration anyone ought to buy in 2021 comes in at $1400 for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage…

Here's another data point.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories/zg...

#1, #2, and #5 are MacBook Airs. The only Windows PC in the top 50 is #39, and has 4GB RAM, and 128GB SSD.

Although I really don't think that power users would always be better served with a 16GB RAM Walmart marketplace specials. RAM and storage space are important data points, but the types of machines made specifically for bargain-basement prices often sacrifice other important design features -- particularly anything qualitative.

I have family that was recently screwed by one of these marketplace sellers. They bought one of these marketplace laptop with great specs, later to find out that it didn't ship with those specs from the manufacturer, the marketplace seller modified it with crap parts and relisted it. Now it has parts not subject to the manufacturer warranty and the performance of those parts is really bad.

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