Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A workstation can be a single core, 256MB RAM, 1 watt SBC. No. Words have meanings. Workstation does not mean that.
What does ”Workstation” mean then? What kind of ”work” is it meant for? Accounting? Writing? Programming? Video editing?
Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
251–260 of 448 posts
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#252I find the article quite informative. Yes, M2 and the other chips are completely different products with different goals. If one wants to say that something completely trumps the other, it will be wrong. But here is what is visible: The M2 core is probably in the same ballpark as Zen 4 core, likely a tiny bit below. That may become very tiny if Zen 4 core runs at lower frequency to equalize the power. This doesn't ac…
Apple's GPU performance is what makes me sceptical about their gaming related advertising. Sure, you can do 1080p gaming with the highest SKU, but you're paying through the nose if you bought an M2 to play games. It seems strange to me for Apple to advertise something they haven't exactly mastered yet on stage. Maybe they have some kind of optimization up their sleeves that will roll out later? I can imagine Apple co…
> Apple's GPU performance is what makes me sceptical about their gaming related advertising.
The issue is that people compare games running under emulated x86 and emulated graphics APIs, when making claims about what the SOC is capable of.
There's nothing wrong with knowing how well the SOC performs when emulating games, but if you claim to be talking about what the SOC can do, then include the performance of native games as well.
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#253I’ve used core i9 mbp16 for almost 3 years and this week I’ve used M1 Pro mbp, seeing hide differences in performance and knowing the actual difference in tests of these 2, it make me think that apple international slowdown and heat up intel macs, like they did (and may be still do) with iPhones I also remember my macbook unibody 2008 and mbp 2012, with them I could do a lot with 4gb ram, even on hdd, nowadays 8gb is…
I’ve had the i9 MBP with the 5500m from launch and it was always hot and noisy fwiw. For most people just having a second monitor plugged in made the fans always run because of a voltage issue. I sincerely doubt Apple needs to intentionally make it any worse. I hate that laptop!
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
They announced MetalFX for their upscaling tech last year and by all accounts it works well if developers take advantage of it.
Not familiar with DLSS at all, does it requires developers to do something in order to take avantage of it too? I had imagined it was automatic but then again I know nothing about it beyond the marketing pitch to consumers.
> Not familiar with DLSS at all
Here's a video comparing DLSS and MetalFX upscaling.
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take anything from wccf with a grain of salt. And yeah, as others point out, this is Apples to oranges. x86 desktops are great at some things, M2 Ultras are great at others, and the overlap that really matters is pretty small... Like, you have to be crazy to buy an M SoC for gaming, or buy a Nvidia GPU for workloads that won't fit in VRAM.
I tested the new game porting kit on a Mac mini M2 and was surprised I was able to run Cyberpunk 2077 and it was running really well, I can imagine that more powerful M processors will be awesome, so the argument of games might go away soon
What is really well? Can me have a metric? What resolution and what frame rate?
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The M2 GPU is in the same league as a 300$ mid-range nVidia card It still has the advantage of a much larger memory pool. I did a quick comparison exercise - I priced two workstations with similar configurations, one from Dell, the other from Apple. While there are x86 (and ARM) machines that'll blow the biggest M2 out of the water, the prices, as far as Apple can go, aren't much different. https://twitter.com/0xDE…
If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already. The article describes the M2 being blown out of the water by a 4080 and a 13900KS. That's about $2000 + RAM, motherboard, and power supply. Plus you can use the built in GPU in your CPU for acceleration things like transcodes. You can get a pre-built gaming PC with a 4090 for about $4000, that'll crush the M2 in compute if you use an…
I agree with your take. My plugged into the wall machine is a 128GB 13900k 4090 system. My mobile machine is an Apple Silicon Macbook Pro. There are some tasks that are still better on the unified memory of the Macbook, but only a handful. There are many tasks that are more pleasant on the Macbook because of the absurd power efficiency (DAW, Final Cut Pro).
Both machines have a quality that I appreciate: they are never, ever slow.
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The M2 GPU is in the same league as a 300$ mid-range nVidia card It still has the advantage of a much larger memory pool. I did a quick comparison exercise - I priced two workstations with similar configurations, one from Dell, the other from Apple. While there are x86 (and ARM) machines that'll blow the biggest M2 out of the water, the prices, as far as Apple can go, aren't much different. https://twitter.com/0xDE…
If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already. The article describes the M2 being blown out of the water by a 4080 and a 13900KS. That's about $2000 + RAM, motherboard, and power supply. Plus you can use the built in GPU in your CPU for acceleration things like transcodes. You can get a pre-built gaming PC with a 4090 for about $4000, that'll crush the M2 in compute if you use an…
> If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already.
The price of workstation-class machines also includes the cost of higher build-quality and stability, things like same-day support and service - at least the option for a long-term (5-6 year) warranty, and FRUs - you don't get that with consumer-grade computers - and those things matter when a machine is something you depend on professionally.
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple consistently advertised gaming performance without any substance to it.
I thought the whole idea of M2 was “exceptional product given the power consumption”. I don’t mind that it has nothing to show for all the talk once you throw out the need to basically sip power (like a notebook computer). Is this something inherent with ARM though? Why can’t there be ARM based desktop and server computers that need a kilowatt of power at peak? Like how much more performance can you get for each addi…
> I thought the whole idea of M2 was “exceptional product given the power consumption”.
When running native code.
Look at the performance of Microsoft's ARM Surface Pro when running emulated code.
> My frustration with this computer wasn’t a workload thing. It didn’t start out fast and gradually slow down as I opened more things and started more processes. It was peppered with glitches and freezes from start to finish.
I’d have only Slack open, and switching between channels would still take almost three seconds (yes, I timed it on my phone). Spotify, also with nothing in the background, would take 11 seconds to open, then be frozen for another four seconds before I could finally press play. When I typed in Chrome, I often saw significant lag, which led to all kinds of typos (because my words weren’t coming out until well after I’d written them). I’d try to watch YouTube videos, and the video would freeze while the audio continued. I’d use the Surface Pen to annotate a PDF, and my strokes would either be frustratingly late or not show up at all. I’d try to open Lightroom, and it would freeze multiple times and then crash.
It quickly became clear that I should try to stick to apps that were running natively on Arm.
https://www.theverge.com/23421326/microsoft-surface-pro-9-ar...
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Workstation, by a lot of people's definition, are suppose to be the power hungry in exchange for absolute performance?
When I hear "workstation" what comes to mind is a daily driver for business purposes, so rock-solid reliability is utmost. Redundant components, ECC ram, rated to run 24/7 with ample cooling. Performance per watt is also up there. Whereas raw performance specs are typically high but ultimately dependent on use case.
>business purposes
I can show you a company of 10,000+ people using Chromebooks and Macbooks for 'business purposes' with little regard for performance per watt.
Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The M2 GPU is in the same league as a 300$ mid-range nVidia card It still has the advantage of a much larger memory pool. I did a quick comparison exercise - I priced two workstations with similar configurations, one from Dell, the other from Apple. While there are x86 (and ARM) machines that'll blow the biggest M2 out of the water, the prices, as far as Apple can go, aren't much different. https://twitter.com/0xDE…
If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already. The article describes the M2 being blown out of the water by a 4080 and a 13900KS. That's about $2000 + RAM, motherboard, and power supply. Plus you can use the built in GPU in your CPU for acceleration things like transcodes. You can get a pre-built gaming PC with a 4090 for about $4000, that'll crush the M2 in compute if you use an…
> If you buy anything labeled as "workstation", you're paying twice the price already.
We are not comparing MacPros to low-end desktops.
> You can get a pre-built gaming PC with a 4090 for about $4000, that'll crush the M2 in compute if you use any kind of GPU acceleration.
Yes, but the gaming PC will not as well built as the workstation-grade machine. And pretty much any GPU you can install on a gaming PC you can install on a MacPro - it's just that it won't be there out of the (Apple branded) box.
> you're stuck with the amount of RAM you pick at checkout
Sadly, this has been Apple for some time now - you buy the machine as it will be used for its whole intended lifetime. With the MacPro you can at least add internal storage and one or more GPU cards.