Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by apohn » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #335

apohn wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That said I’ve been out of the PC space for quite a while. Do mobile discrete GPUs greatly draw much power when mostly idle (such as general desktop work)? Did others give up on switching the discrete GPU on and off a needed as Apple used to do (and gave up on IIRC)? I recently purchased and returned a Lenovo P1 Extreme Gen 4. It had an 11th generation i9 and a 3080. With no external monitor attached, the 3080 power…

Thanks for the numbers. I’m glad to hear it can turn off, but I will say I’m surprised it’s minimum draw is so high when it’s on.

In hindsight, one of the thing I didn't check was the GPU draw at idle (with a monitor plugged in) when the laptop was in Balanced Power mode.

Typically if I plugged a monitor in I also had the power cord in. And with the Power plugged in, I had the laptop set to highest performance mode in Windows.

There is a balanced mode which is more conservative with power consumption. I wonder if the GPU idle draw would have been lower.

The laptop I used also had the external TB4/USB-C and HDMI ports wired to the NVIDIA GPU. This means that external monitor = GPU on. I wonder if there are some laptops that can use the iGPU for basic tasks, and only switch to GPU as needed.

There are also laptops with less powerful discrete GPUs that might draw less power at idle.

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

#342

Post by zuhsetaqi » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

caconym_ wrote: post #167

MBCook wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to The Verge there is another configuration of this machine with double the RAM and a 4K 240Hz for the same price. Why in the world would you want a 1080p display just to get an extra 120 FPS? Even if you can perceive that difference (which I kind of doubt) you’re not going to get rates that high with your settings up high anyway. In The Verge’s tests only the old CS:GO got above 150 (it got over 400!). “ I…

There are people who want extremely high framerates, and they are the people this product is for. They play games that are not CPU-bound below the framerates they want, and they adjust the graphics settings until they achieve those framerates. The fact that they are throwing expensive modern GPU hardware at graphics that may be relatively primitive on a per-frame basis doesn't matter; for them, it's the framerate tha…

Can’t you just set the game to FHD on a 4K screen and get the same frame rate? Or does the higher resolution still „consume performance“ from the GPU?

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

#343

Post by baq » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

1_player wrote: post #301

baq wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would if you used windows. DPI scaling is _horrible_. macos figured this out years ago. it'll take a decade to solve this problem on windows and it'll never be 100% solved, because legacy apps don't support any kind of scaling at all.

I've used Windows 10 on a 4K monitor at 200% for a couple years and I didn't have any issue. macOS' scaling works best, but Windows has been HiDPI ready for a while, and only a small handful of old apps need you to enable the application-scaling option manually. Especially since Windows still runs 15 years old applications that use crappy old APIs, while macOS doesn't. It's not fantastic by any means, but it's a diss…

200% is easy mode since legacy apps look sort of ok. i'm on a 4k monitor with 150% scaling right now and e.g. task manager (hardly a legacy app) looks absolutely awful.

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

#344

Post by e4e78a06 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

moonchild wrote: post #290

e4e78a06 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do nearly 2x the work per clock as AMD chips which necessitates more logic per stage Not all work is created equal. Decoders on Arm are definitely parallel (= don't have more serial logic for wider decoder) compared to the variable length decode x86 is stuck with. And your backend ports are also parallel (although maybe scheduling isn't?). The only places where wider always means more logic per stage is caches…

> Decoders on Arm are definitely parallel (= don't have more serial logic for wider decoder) compared to the variable length decode x86 is stuck with x86 decode is parallel too

It is parallel in the sense that you can decode 4-6 instructions in parallel, yes. It is not parallel in the sense that variable length decoding requires each of your decoders to talk to the other ones to coordinate on instruction length boundaries, which means there is going to be a lot of serial logic in your decoder circuit.

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

#345

Post by throwaway473825 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

NoPicklez wrote: post #161

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).

Realistically, I think that the argument of Apple being way more expensive is simply now outdated. It was true in the past, but I don't think it's the case anymore.

It's still true outside the US.

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

#346

Post by monocasa » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

marcan_42 wrote: post #231

monocasa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh, word. Thanks for the correction. I guess I extrapolated too much from the combo of you knowing enough of the clock inputs to the peripherals to make them work and a statement of yours about finding a pll bypass signal. I want to say your main point your statements on the pll bypass was that the cores must be mainly static logic because they ran stable at whatever rate the crystal is, but I'm half remembering and could conflating that with something else.

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

#347

Post by philistine » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #340

philistine wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they manage to make significant single-core gains with their next-generation chips, I'd be impressed. Depending on what you mean by significant, they have made those every year since the iPhone 4 came out.

It appears that you doctored my quote somewhat, hm?

I literally copied and pasted a complete sentence, from beginning to end. Your sentence and my quote do not diverge one bit. You're off your rocker.

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

#348

Post by caconym_ » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

zuhsetaqi wrote: post #342

caconym_ wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who want extremely high framerates, and they are the people this product is for. They play games that are not CPU-bound below the framerates they want, and they adjust the graphics settings until they achieve those framerates. The fact that they are throwing expensive modern GPU hardware at graphics that may be relatively primitive on a per-frame basis doesn't matter; for them, it's the framerate tha…

Can’t you just set the game to FHD on a 4K screen and get the same frame rate? Or does the higher resolution still „consume performance“ from the GPU?

I don't think 4K@360Hz is a thing yet.

Beyond that, one imagines there may be some performance and power overhead, and many hardcore high-FPS players will probably prefer a display that natively matches their target resolution. It eliminates unnecessary variables that might affect performance.

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

#349

Post by onphonenow » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #187

onphonenow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely false. If you do any volume purchasing the resale value of old Acer laptop or asus ones is so bad they really do become w waste quickly. Folks w macs use them forever. And then resale market isMUCh better for apple

With the cpu change I suspect os support to be dropped in a couple of years, and resale values to drop. My friend had a pretty expensive g5 PowerPC that wasn’t worth much and had an end of life much sooner than the hardware should have had.

I'm curious how Apple's competitor Microsoft is handling ARM - I actually always thought Apple did a MUCH better transition / management of these types of tech variations.

Can I really run everything windows runs on windows ARM offerings? Be good if MS has solved things this time around. Some of us still remember Microsoft's "Plays for Sure" campaign against Apple.

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

#350

Post by Multiplayer » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

c0nducktr wrote: post #194

Multiplayer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deeply regret getting only 16gb ram in my air for exactly this reason.

Can you elaborate? I don't have a MacBook (but have been considering getting one), but I can't imagine that you need more that 16 GB of RAM to run a browser, no matter how memory-hungry Chrome might be. Is this really an issue? Maybe you're trolling? I don't understand how adding more memory is going to fix your performance. It's not like you're spinning up a HDD to swap. What do you regret?

The system really starts to bog down with 15 ~ 20 tabs open for things like jira, roam, email, etc. CPU usage will be very low but when swapping is in effect system slowdown is really noticeable. I don't see the same issue with Safari but of course Safari does not have the extensions I rely on.

I love the Air but excited for my 64gb macbook pro arriving in a month.