MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max • Hacker News Board

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#621

Post by AceJohnny2 » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #503

dijit wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why Thunderbolt eGPUs don't work - the M1 and M2 can't actually write to the memory on the GPUs. I thought the major reason was simply lack of drivers. When I consider that I can use direct mapped M.2 storage over Thunderbolt; or use 100GBit network cards over Thunderbolt 4 (with a PCIe adapter) I wouldn't think that I was limited to mapping memory in the SoC.

I'm skipping over a few details here[0]. ARM has several different classes of memory access mappings; the normal one is called... well, Normal. I/O and storage is mapped using Device mappings, which don't cache reads and can be further divided into how little the CPU is allowed to try and optimize writes[1]. GPUs need Normal memory because applications written for modern graphics APIs expect to be able to map GPU mem…

Considering the complexity of a SoC like the M1, that there is zero documentation for it, and the Asahi team can only reverse-engineer it, what are the odds that they just don't know the magic bits to twiddle to get this functionality?

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#622

Post by jstx1 » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

swe_dima wrote: post #616

These new ARM chips are almost perfect, the only bad part is... ARM. Most backend devs these days use Docker, and serious Docker usage on M1/M2 macs isn't really possible due to bugs and super slow performance. I was doing benchmarks and for our workloads images would build several times slower as well as our test suites. We had many devs in our company buy the shiny macbooks only having to return them due to incompa…

I don't know what you mean about Docker - in my experience it runs just fine on M1.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#623

Post by agloeregrets » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

csdvrx wrote: post #56

That's when I realize how much my weird hardware preferences set me apart: I mostly care about an OLED screen and ECC ram. Then, a touchscreen supporting pen entry, and a good keyboard (with the edit keys like home/insert/pageup/pagedown directly accessible, bonus is there's also printscreen) especially if it's not a foldable or a tablet. Apple's got good CPU and battery life, but unless the core features are present…

I have a Galaxy Book Pro 360 and a 14 inch Macbook Pro. The Galaxy book has like 2.2 of those core features (OLED and touch + Pen). The level of a beatdown that the Macbook Pro 14 gives on the OLED display is nuts, the brightness difference is crazy and gets even more crazy with HDR. OLED really isn't there yet against Mini LED for outdoor brightness performance. Something also feels wrong with the OLED white balance too but I think that's a fact of life in many windows machines color tuning, white just never feels....correct? It always feels like changing the display brightness is ALSO changing color tuning, white feels not just less bright but contrast falls in an uneven way.

Even compared to the Samsung-built OLED in my iPhone 14 Pro, just massively different tuning.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#624

Post by agloeregrets » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #617

agloeregrets wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Not exactly and this is a silly comparison anyways Apple dynamically scales the GPU memory while Windows GPU memory must be reserved. If you have 64GB of Ram and want 32GB of VRAM you now...always.... have 32GB of system memory. But furthermore...that iGPU is like 1/10th the performance of an M1 Max lol, absolutely nobody should EVER do this on an iGPU. Their argument is that on a dedicated card you just can't do…

It is not true that iGPU memory always has to be reserved anymore. Some programs and APIs don't support it, but you can address main system memory from many iGPUs and vice-versa. In Vulkan for example you can do this by setting the HOST_COHERENT, HOST_VISIBLE and DEVICE_VISIBLE for a buffer. Of course, this is subject to driver bugs, and you have to be careful with caches that may or may not be shared depending on th…

The example here is an M2 Max, which presumably is at least 2.X times faster than M1 Pro, but hey, good to know!

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#625

Post by Lramseyer » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #592

Of course I bought a new 14" MBP with M1 Pro two weeks ago. Looks like if i had waited, I could have paid the same price for faster CPU with more cores, faster wifi, and 8K HDMI output. I guess that's how it goes.

Check the return policy on your laptop. You might still be within the return window!

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#626

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #587

Kirby64 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone cameras are absurdly thick compare to the thickness of a laptop lid. If you've noticed, they've also gotten even thicker over the year (the camera bump has gotten thicker). Nobody will want a laptop lid as thick as their iPhone + camera bump.

Even the front (selfie) camera?

My iPhone 14 Pro is at least twice as thick (not counting bump) as the MacBook lid and the selfie camera is only 4k@30/1080@60. Not sure if there is a clever way to pack the camera or not but it doesn't sound good at first check.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#627

Post by inadequatespace » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #619

londons_explore wrote: post #524

In the feature list, the most underwhelming item to me is the '1080p FaceTime HD camera'. Aren't pretty much all cameras at least 1080p by now? I'd expect a top of the line laptop to have a multi-megapixel camera able to push 240fps for slowmo and windowing abilities to allow software zoom while still outputting a high enough resolution feed that someone viewing on another macbook pro can't see the pixels (ie. more t…

Contrary opinion: I don't see the need for a high-quality camera on a laptop. I can't think of another good use besides Zoom calls and Facetime and the like, when your counterparties in the meeting are all going to be seeing a scaled-down image anyway. Stick in some decent and cheap camera, and put the money into stuff that matters like computing capabilities, RAM, storage, networking, screen, etc.

Any use besides… one of the most common uses of the laptop in general in this remote-work era…

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#628

Post by JKCalhoun » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #389

mk89 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. They are diversifying their laptop/desktop solutions like crazy. Even a Macbook Air can almost compete with the entry-level version of the Macbook Pro, which is great to be honest. I heard they are exceptionally good. Honestly, 7-900$ for a machine that will not get old very soon is not so bad, especially if you already own a screen (which due to WFH you kind of have to have together with a…

"that will not get old very soon" No idea how you can write that with straight fingers.

I was using Blender on a 12 year old iMac until just a few weeks ago. Desktops don't seem to age as quickly as their portable counterparts (they are certainly less fragile).

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#629

Post by agloeregrets » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

DoingSomeThings wrote: post #589

agloeregrets wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a spec bump, possibly meaningfully so but if you are on an Intel machine or want two monitors and can find a M1 14inch for ~$1500-$1700 that's a killer upgrade no matter what.

Does the M1 14inch support 2 monitors? I was under the impression every M-based laptop only supports a single external monitor.

14 inch M1 Pro supports two external displays, 14 inch M1 Max Supports four, all four can be 5K.

Sadly, Apple knows exactly how to get my money from me.

Re: MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max

#630

Post by acchow » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

f8 wrote: post #597

I love the MBP with the M1 chip, but my biggest gripe is it lacks dual monitor support natively. I shouldn't have to use DisplayLink to get the second monitor working. Just been working on a single monitor since I got this thing because I heard DisplayLink is a buggy resource hog.

Can you explain what you mean by "lacks dual monitor support natively"? I run two monitors on my MBP M1.