Earlier quoted context omitted.
Buying M1 chips from Apple isn't happening.
Not chips, servers. Apple has sold those before.
You mean the commercial failure of A/UX and X Server?
Good luck with those against Linux/FreeBSD workloads.
Apple M1 Ultra
821–830 of 855 posts
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#822Earlier quoted context omitted.
> GPU performance matters (Game performance, ML training perf) No one plays games on a Mac. And it has nothing to do with GPU performance but rather the fact that the audience simply isn't interested in gaming on it and so there is no economic incentive to target them. So the GPU performance that matters to Mac users and is relevant to Apple is not games but rather content creation, production etc.
> No one plays games on a Mac. My wife does (I play games on Linux). I have friends who own Macs who reluctantly dual boot to Windows just to play some games -- they would completely ditch Windows if they could just play every game on Mac. I see there are Mac games on Steam. All of this points to the situation being more nuanced than "no one plays games on Mac".
The interesting question would be: out of all Mac users, how many of them play games on their Macs?
I have no idea what the answer is. Personally I have run a number of games on macOS, via Steam, and via Boot Camp and virtualization. Some popular MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, and Eve Online have macOS clients, though Guild Wars 2 discontinued theirs.
Apple Arcade apparently has enough Mac users that Apple has a reason to support it on macOS as well as iOS.
And Apple apparently has some reason to support iOS/iPadOS games on Apple Silicon Macs as well (though it could just be a side effect of a future iOS-macOS merger or hybrid device.)
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#823I wonder if the max 128GB graphics memory opens up some applications that would not have been viable before?
Yep, finally Electron apps will run smoothly on consumer hardware.
Wishful thinking. Giving Electron apps more RAM is like giving a toddler with crayons more walls to scribble on.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#824I wonder how long it will be until a CPU as capable as this one will be the required baseline for ordinary apps. Is there any hope that the upgrade treadmill will stop any time soon?
>Is there any hope that the upgrade treadmill will stop any time soon?
The bottleneck for most slow/old PCs is not actually the CPU. Dried thermal paste, mismatched low speed RAM sticks, operating systems installed to mechanical disks and weak iGPUs are often to blame. You can fix most of these easily at home for very little money and keep using old systems.
Most people are sadly too tech-illiterate to really understand what an SSD is, so I still sometimes do SSD upgrades on almost brand new laptops and pre-built desktops for friends and family. OEMs like to add insult to injury by bloating up the default Windows install with janky driver control panels and adware. A new SSD, a clean OS install with generic drivers, new thermal paste and some compressed air in the fans will make those PCs work better than they did on day one.
I have a few of those kind of machines around the house...
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#825Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been saying 4x M1 Max is not a thing and never will be a thing ever since the week I got my M1 Max and saw that the IRQ controller was only instantiated to support 2 dies, but everyone kept parroting that nonsense the Bloomberg reporter said about a 4-die version regardless... Turns out I was right. The Mac Pro chip will be a different thing/die.
Plus they are running out of M1 superlatives. They’ll have to go to M2 to avoid launching M1 Plaid.
M1 Ultra²
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#826Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost of powering my 3090 for a year is now more than the cost (RRP) of a 3090.
Where do you live that power is anywhere close to that expensive? And are you overclocking your 3090? Even assuming literal 24hr/day usage at a higher, "factory overclocked" 450w sustained, at a fairly high $0.30/kWh that's $1200/yr. Less than half the retail price of a 3090. And you can easily drop the power limit slider on a 3090 to take it down to 300-350w, likely without significantly impacting your workload perf…
UK electricity is $0.28/kWh but will be $0.36/kWh from the end of the month - my business is quoted at $0.60/kWh fixed for the next 12 months.
At $0.36/kWh - card alone @450W ~running cost ~= RRP 3090 $1,499
Yes, can power it down to be more efficient, however, that effectively agrees with the previous comment that PPW matters.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#827Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because when they wrote the API no real standard existed to suit their needs.
Yes, and instead of writing an open standard or adapting Vulkan when it came around, they instead decided to double down on proprietary and moved to Metal 2.
I mean, Metal is a good API and they designed it first. They could've decided to abandon it when Vulkan came out, but I guess they just didn't want to make their API worse. Not ideal, yes, but I don't really blame them for the decision.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#828Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll still spend another Mac Studio on energy in order to run a comparable PC for the next five years. To say nothing about not wanting to be in the same room as its fans.
What are you talking about? This is not for cloud datacenters trying to squeeze every bit of compute per resource. These machines are commonly used by professionals in industries like movie and music production. They don't care what the power bill is, it's insignificant compared to the cost of the employee using the hardware.
> "They don't care what the power bill is"
Oh... They do. At least, they should. If a similar PC costs $500 less but you spend $700 more in electricity per year because of it, at the end of the year, your profits will show the difference.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#829Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference between an Apple TV and a Mac Mini is essentially how powerful of Apple silicon it has, whether it runs tvOS or macOS, and whether it has HDMI out or not. The Studio is a more compact form factor than any modern 4K gaming console. If they chose to ship something in that form factor with tvOS, HDMI, and an M1 Max/Ultra, it would be a very competitive console on the market — if game developers could be p…
Seems unlikely that the general population would spend 2-4k on a console.
If you could spend 2-4k on a special playstation or xbox with double/triple/quadruple graphics capability, it would sell. The games will work fine on the cheapest m1 mac mini, not everyone and every game will need max settings on 4k at 144hz to be a great experience.
Re: Apple M1 Ultra
#830Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No one plays games on a Mac. My wife does (I play games on Linux). I have friends who own Macs who reluctantly dual boot to Windows just to play some games -- they would completely ditch Windows if they could just play every game on Mac. I see there are Mac games on Steam. All of this points to the situation being more nuanced than "no one plays games on Mac".
The interesting question would be: out of all Mac users, how many of them play games on their Macs? I have no idea what the answer is. Personally I have run a number of games on macOS, via Steam, and via Boot Camp and virtualization. Some popular MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, and Eve Online have macOS clients, though Guild Wars 2 discontinued theirs. Apple Arcade apparently has enough Mac users that…
> The interesting question would be: out of all Mac users, how many of them play games on their Macs?
...and how many would play more games on their Macs if they were available?
I refuse to believe Mac users are less fond of videogames. Based on my personal observation of the Mac users I know, they enjoy games as much as anyone.
At least casual games on iTunes for the iPad have a vast library, with many genuine good games (source: me, my iPad 2 was mainly a gaming platform for me, never found other uses for it).
I do realize more complex games are a different beast. But casual? I'd say Apple fans love them.