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Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

macworld.com

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Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#231

Post by marcan_42 »

monocasa wrote: post #73
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is going to happen, but: It would be extremely funny if Apple strapped a heavy copper heatsink and a turbo fan to an M1 and just overclocked the ever-lasting crap out of it. The crazy thing about using a Macbook Pro (with an M1 Pro or M1 Max CPU) is that, in single-threaded performance, it's really no faster than a dippy little Macbook Air. And at the end of the day, single-thread performance is mo…

marcan seems to have a pretty good handle on the clock tree. There's probably enough breadcrumbs in asahi to void some warranties on a Mac mini, go nuts with cooling, and see how high it can go. The pmic might not be configurable though.

We actually know very little about the clock tree; we know where the clock mux registers are but not how they connect to each other, and that's mostly about peripherals, not the CPUs. Also, the PLL registers are locked out and read only. The CPU DVFS stuff is all done automatically (you just select a performance level in one register), and I wouldn't be surprised if the underlying tables and configs for that are also locked post boot. The PMIC is accessible to some extent, but runs its own firmware anyway which might lock things out, and I don't think CLVRs (final voltage regulator stage, the one you care about) are directly accessible (on the Pro/Max) and that should all be controlled by the SMC or hardware logic, which again has a good chance of being locked off.

Basically, all of this is configured at boot and much of it locked off. Apple have done a good job making it difficult to nuke these things from the OS level, for better or for worse :). I once overwrote all the GPIO registers and didn't even break anything (though the Type C controllers did crash, but a hard shutdown and boot fixed it - this was on an M1 Pro MacBook). It's in one of my streams somewhere...

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#232

Post by bserge »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #55
dijit wrote: post #3

3.5%-5% increase in performance at more than double the wattage, for a chip that is not in consumers hands against a chip that basically hasn't changed and was released 14 months ago~ This is not the victory that the title implies. It's also a _little_ bit funny that the i9 laptop was double the price, given people usually rant loudly about how expensive Apple computers are.

I don’t think this is going to happen, but: It would be extremely funny if Apple strapped a heavy copper heatsink and a turbo fan to an M1 and just overclocked the ever-lasting crap out of it. The crazy thing about using a Macbook Pro (with an M1 Pro or M1 Max CPU) is that, in single-threaded performance, it's really no faster than a dippy little Macbook Air. And at the end of the day, single-thread performance is mo…

No post body was provided.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#234

Post by philistine »

ddingus wrote: post #208
KennyBlanken wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a decent example of what folks are talking about in terms of supported lifespan. Your Note 8 was EOL'd in October 2021. It came out in September of 2017. That's four years of support. My iPhone came out around the same time and Apple is planning to support devices several generations older than mine with iOS 16...

I am very likely to use this phone another three years. Just saying. Otherwise, yeah! My wife has an older iPhone still nicely supported, and older than my Note. My last Mac was a 2012 i7. I used it 6, 7 years? It is still useful, but got coke on keyboard! I fixed it myself last time. Not doing it again.

What if there is a debilitating security problem with Android within those three years?

I wouldn't choose that kind of uncertainty.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#235

Post by sroussey »

smoldesu wrote: post #202
KennyBlanken wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in single-threaded performance, it's really no faster than a dippy little Macbook Air. Maybe in terms of raw FLOPS or something, but more importantly it has enormous levels of memory and storage bandwidth, which is what's actually important for most user workloads these days. That's not even accounting for the performance of the GPU cores which can be used for a ton of multimedia workloads.

> more importantly it has enormous levels of memory and storage bandwidth, which is what's actually important for most user workloads these days. I've heard this tossed around a lot, but is there any evidence that it's actually true? I struggle to imagine a regular workload that benefits from 32gbps of bandwidth, much less a scenario where the average layman could saturate a 200gbps or 400gbps bus.

Working with media files requires lots of bandwidth. No so much for productivity.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#236

Post by dmitriid »

zepto wrote: post #177
smoldesu wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's touching that you reduce me to "Android commentator", but my point is that Apple has a lot of history to spite with their second-gen chips. Whether or not they're engineering their own cores or decided the name of ARM is irrelevant, they simply haven't proven that they can increase their desktop chip performance without packing more cores onto a die and calling it a day. If they manage to make significant single…

No. They have in fact increased the performance of their cores with every single generation since the A4. I think the point about Android commentators is that they may not have been following Apple’s silicon development closely enough to know this, especially if they think that the M1 is the first in the line.

> may not have been following Apple’s silicon development closely enough to know this, especially if they think that the M1 is the first in the line.

It's not just Android commentators. A surprising amount of people have the view that Qualcomm/Google/ will surely come up with better CPUs in a couple of years. Apple has been doing this for more than 10 years. They probably spent 4 or 5 years designing A4 before it came out. And A4 came out in 2010

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#237

Post by Jcowell »

broodbucket wrote: post #90
nickpeterson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not, I’m sure for every modder that puts a new motherboard and mech keyboard in, there are 100000 that just get pitched

They're also not purchased at the volumes that Macbooks are, I do think you're underestimating how well they hold their value. You picked an unfortunate laptop line to make your point, especially since this is in no way a recent phenomenon. I'm sure people chuck away their Macbooks instead of reselling them too.

More like put it in a drawer. I question the notion that laptops are thrown away as opposed to put in storage. Especially when they’re used for sensitive information and not normally wiped if they’re not used for resale.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#238

Post by sorry_outta_gas »

Gigachad wrote: post #68
chii wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact is, apple hardware is not _that_ expensive relative to what you get for the money. Their supply chain is super optimized, and it's hard to beat them on price if a competitor decides to try (at the same quality that is).

What gives people the perception of apple being expensive is that other OEMs play tricks to boost numbers on a spec sheet that the common person checks while cheeping out massively on parts that don’t show on the spec sheet. I know someone who got an MSI laptop recently and it’s complete garbage. The screen casing cracked from the force of the hinge within months, the trackpad is borderline unusable, wifi is spotty,…

It's really the cost of capability and addons, I'm not sure about that MSI model but you're able to get a ton of storage and a good gpu for under what apple charges

if you want one or two tb of storage and decent ram you're looking at $3,000+ after taxes

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#239

Post by philistine »

speed_spread wrote: post #152
dijit wrote: post #3

3.5%-5% increase in performance at more than double the wattage, for a chip that is not in consumers hands against a chip that basically hasn't changed and was released 14 months ago~ This is not the victory that the title implies. It's also a _little_ bit funny that the i9 laptop was double the price, given people usually rant loudly about how expensive Apple computers are.

At least this CPU can run more than a single OS.

Give it a couple more months and Linux will boot on Apple Silicon. Give it a couple of years and Microsoft will wisen up and start licensing Windows for Apple Silicon too. Then we'll be back to where we were before the architecture switch.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#240

Post by marcan_42 »

mehrdada wrote: post #182
WatchDog wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 3 M1 series chips, the M1, the M1 Pro, and the M1 Max. The M1 is a different die to the M1 Pro and M1 Max. I believe the Pro and Max are the same die binned differently as you alluded to.

M1 , M1 Pro , and M1 Max are all distinct dies, with M1 Max being quite a bit larger, with a larger cache, and more I/O compared to its M1 Pro sibling. The 24-core M1 Max , however, is a binned die of the 32-core M1 Max . There are lower core bins of M1 Pro that are only available on the cheaper 14-inch MacBook Pro. M1 is also available in two forms, one with a 7-core and the other with 8-core GPU.

Specifically, the M1 Max has twice the memory controllers, and each one comes with a cache block, and hence has twice the cache. It also has twice the GPU cores, an extra ProRes core, two extra display controller cores, an extra AVE (video encoder) block, an extra scaler block, an extra PMGR (power manager, including some PLLs and such) block and extra bus fabric branches to drive it all, and two things Apple won't talk about: an extra ANE (Neural Engine) (disabled on all shipping machines) and die-to-die interconnect.

This is all in the lower chunk of the die, such that they could basically cut the design on the dotted line for the M1 Pro (not literally, but almost; they definitely didn't redo much if any P&R, as the shared portion is identical by all visual and logical appearances).

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