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Apple M1 Ultra

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Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#531

Post by kllrnohj »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #482
kllrnohj wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gaming performance of the existing M1 GPUs is, well, crap (like far behind the other laptop competition, to say nothing of desktop GPUs). The Ultra probably isn't changing that, since it's very unlikely to be a hardware problem and instead a software ecosystem & incentives problem.

I don’t think the performance is that bad. On a whim I tried running WoW on a 16” M1 Pro MBP and it consistently got FPS higher than the refresh rate (120hz) with the game rendering at 1x scale and most effects maxed out. Granted, that’s not as good as what you’d get with a mobile RTX 3080 or something, but it’s nothing to sneeze at for a laptop that doesn’t get scorching hot and doesn’t sound like a leaf blower when…

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

M1 Max struggles to keep up with an RTX 3060 mobile.

Now that's with the overhead of Rosetta 2 and all that, so it's of course "not fair" for the M1. But that's also the current reality of the market, so ya know.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#532

Post by derac »

t3rabytes wrote: post #483
flipgimble wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"every video game company" = Epic Games, and mostly because they don't like to pay overhead for their Fortnite loot boxes that most parents wish they could have some control over. I don't have allegiance to either company mostly because they don't care about me, just my money.

Epic doesn’t do lootboxes, next.

In the spirit of his argument, they do use time-gated content and other methods to psychologically exploit their users into buying things.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#533

Post by MBCook »

nintendo1889 wrote: post #91
drcongo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox and Signal are the only two I ever use, and yeah, the lack of interest in porting to M1 from both of those companies is increasing my lack of interest in their apps.

That page says that both of those apps are supported.

I believe Dropbox was in the last few months. Which was still over a year after public release of the M1.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#534

Post by astrange »

Thaxll wrote: post #235
maronato wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hasn't been true since M1's release

A CPU like the 5900x is better than the m1 and cost 400$.

I own one and it's worse because I had to go and read random forum guides to learn about undervolting so Windows would stop turning the fan on and off constantly.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#535

Post by OOPMan »

dcow wrote: post #529
EugeneOZ wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have some monster like 3090, you expect it to run games smoothly on “ultra” settings. In reality, some games are pushing its limits even on “middle” settings (Cyberpunk 2077 @ 2k, RDR2 @ 4k). Any emulator will hit performance, so if you want some top-of-the-top performance - you still need Windows PC with RTX 3090. And it will not be even more expensive than Mac Studio ;)

I want my game to vsync with my monitor. That is all I care about.

Your 4k monitor?

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#536

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

kllrnohj wrote: post #360
polyrand wrote: post #258

I think the GPU claims are interesting. According to the graph's footer, the M1 Ultra was compared to an RTX 3090. If the performance/wattage claims are correct, I'm wondering if the Mac Studio could become an "affordable" personal machine learning workstation (which also won't make the electricity bill skyrocket). If Pytorch becomes stable and easy to use on Apple Silicon [0][1], it could be an appealing choice. [0]…

The GPU claims on the M1 Pro & Max were, let's say, cherry picked to put it nicely. The M1 Ultra claims already look suspicious since the GPU graph tops out at ~120W & the CPU graph tops out at ~60W yet the M1 Studio is rated for 370W continuous power draw. Since you mention ML specifically, looking at some benchmarks out there (like https://tlkh.dev/benchmarking-the-apple-m1-max#heading-gpu & https://wandb.ai/tcapel…

> 370W continuous power draw.

Don't know if it's the same, these days, but when I was designing electronic stuff, we were always told to spec the power supply at twice the maximum draw.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#537

Post by kllrnohj »

oneplane wrote: post #490
kllrnohj wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPU claims on the M1 Pro & Max were, let's say, cherry picked to put it nicely. The M1 Ultra claims already look suspicious since the GPU graph tops out at ~120W & the CPU graph tops out at ~60W yet the M1 Studio is rated for 370W continuous power draw. Since you mention ML specifically, looking at some benchmarks out there (like https://tlkh.dev/benchmarking-the-apple-m1-max#heading-gpu & https://wandb.ai/tcapel…

Yeah, there are a lot more parameters here than just 'there are two chips and one is the bestestst', like the availability you pointed out. There is raw performance, but there is also performance per watt, availability and scalability (which is both good and bad - M1 is available, but there is no M1 Ultra cloud available). If you want a multi-use setup, an RTX makes more sense than most other options, if you can get…

For the market this is aimed at, performance per watt is really irrelevant. Performance per dollar or just outright performance are far more important the vast majority of the time. That's how we ended up with 125w+ CPUs and 300w GPUs in the first place.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#538

Post by Macha »

momothereal wrote: post #479
unicornfinder wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention if you build your own PC you can upgrade the parts as and when, unlike with the new Mac where you'll eventually just be replacing the whole thing.

I believed that until I realized I couldn't individually upgrade my CPU or RAM because I have a mobo with LGA1150 socket and only supports DDR3 (and it's only 6 years old). So eventually you still have to "replace everything" to upgrade a PC.

You were unlucky to buy ddr3 near its end of life then (like someone buying ddr4 now), but you could still upgrade stuff like your GPU or drives independently. My first SSD (a 240gb Samsung 840) is still in service after 9 years with its smart metrics indicating only 50% of its expected lifetime cycles have been used, for example.

You could also put a 4790k, 16gb of ddr3 and a modern gpu in that system to get a perfectly functional gaming system that will do most titles on 1080p high. Though admittedly we've passed the point where that's financially sensible vs upgrading to a 12400 or something as both devil's canyon CPUs and ddr3 are climbing back up in price as supplies diminish

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#539

Post by inkyoto »

oneplane wrote: post #492
mehmetoguzderin wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 3090 also can do fp16 and the M1 series only supports fp32 Apple Silicon (including base M1) actually has great FP16 support at the hardware level, including conversions. So it is wrong to say it only supports FP32.

I'm not sure if he was talking about the ML engine, the ARM cores, the microcode, the library or the OS. But it does indeed have FP16 in the Arm cores.

FP16 is supported in M1 GPU's and Neural Engines through the CoreML framework. From https://coremltools.readme.io/docs/typed-execution :

> The Core ML runtime dynamically partitions the network graph into sections for the Apple Neural Engine (ANE), GPU, and CPU, and each unit executes its section of the network using its native type to maximize its performance and the model’s overall performance. The GPU and ANE use float 16 precision, and the CPU uses float 32.

Also, this exploration (https://tlkh.dev/benchmarking-the-apple-m1-max#heading-neura...) reports the 5.1-5.3 TFLOPS FP16 ballpark performance.

Re: Apple M1 Ultra

#540

Post by namlem »

Geee wrote: post #307

This is insane. They claim that its GPU performance tops the RTX 3090, while using 200W less power. I happen to have this GPU on my PC and not only it costs over $3000, but its also very power-hungry and loud. Currently, you need this kind of GPU performance for high resolution VR gaming at 90 fps, but its just barely enough. This means that the GPU will run very loudly and heat up the room, and running games like HL…

The 3090 should have no problem playing all but the most poorly optimized VR games at max or near-max settings. Often times the difference between "very high" and "ultra" is indistinguishable btw, with "ultra" just being shit that wasn't well optimized to begin with.
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