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Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

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Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#401

Comparing the OpenCL GeekBench score is unfair. "More popular"? I don't really think so. Anyway of course it's going to be slower than a machine with more then two times its number of cores.

Why isn't it fair? NVidia GPUs are notoriously terrible at OpenCL.

OpenCL has been deprecated on macOS since the M1 was released so the M1 drivers won't optimise for OpenCL.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#402
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's x86 emulation is otherwise very impressive, and not many games are bottlenecked on the CPU, especially at high resolutions. Bigger overhead for AAA games is likely due to emulation of DirectX or Vulkan on Metal, but that's just Apple's stubborn choice to have it that way. In the end, none of that matters. I won't be playing Cyberpunk at 14fps, without RTX, and comforting myself that the SoC could do maybe 28f…

> Bigger overhead for AAA games is likely due to emulation of DirectX or Vulkan on Metal, but that's just Apple's stubborn choice to have it that way. This is a weird take. None of he major gaming platforms use the same graphics API. Microsoft has DirectX on Windows and XBox, Apple has Metal on iOS and Macs, Sony has Gnmx on Playstation. It's like saying Android gaming is terrible because they didn't use DirectX.

The major platforms do use the same graphics API, Vulkan. It should be preferred due to more low-level access and wider platform support (Linux, Android, Nintendo, MacOS, Windows).

On another note, problems that keep major AAA games from running on Linux (Anti-cheat solutions for example) will block many games from running ob MacOS, too.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#403
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's an AMD desktop. Their chiplet design really isn't good for idle power.

Seriously, even when doing nothing whatsoever (and cores themselves idling at 1.3W) the package is taking 20W.

Disable memory overclock or undervolt the memory and SoC. You will see the power drop down like crazy.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end that sum it takes energy during gaming is meaningless. I spend more on coffee while playing than to electricity.

Right, and you could have afforded better/more coffee with the savings costs to consuming less power. Which is the point: energy costs are not 0. These costs vary depending on which devices you play on, regardless of games. Someone playing the same games as you on PS5 rather than a gaming PC, is going to save enough money to then buy another indie game per month or more coffees in that month than you. Note: this isn'…

In the end, living on northern region (Finland), my PC power costs in reality are meaningless. My gaming probably eats what.. few hundred kWh per year? Lets say 1000kWh to make something meaningful. 1000kWh is less than the yearly fluctuation of electricity consumption of the house in heating costs. It's less than my Tesla's winter consumption fluctuation depending on the amount of heating the battery / car requires for me to open the doors.

See the insanity of optimizing couple of watts from PC? I don't play 12 hours a day, I play after work in the evenings - at best few hours a day, but not every day.

My workstation's power usage does not have any impact on my life. Even if doubled, tripled, quadruppled, it would be lost in margins of everything else where I use electricity.

PS5 eats about the same amount of power to be fair (or my XSX) so there's not much to save here. Also, they're a bit slower than my desktop and do not provide the flexibility.

Proper gaming performance requires power as no one has invented any golden goose to reduce it (not AMD, not NVIDIA, not Apple) at the same performance. I'd even wonder if Apple's usage of GPU in M2 Ultra is that power efficient when looking at the real world games as the fps counters are so low.

Theoretical performance is pointless in the end if it doesn't actually crunch anything that fast in reality. Maybe the glue architecture is only nice on paper and that's why Apple after years of ignoring specs is now only advertising specs on their GPU parts, not what it could do.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#406
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason to buy the Pro is if you have a bunch of really weird PCIe cards They’re telegraphing the use case for future SOCs.

> They’re telegraphing the use case for future SOCs. Can someone explain what that means?

Telegraphing means to give away away a message, inadvertently or not.

While the M2 doesn’t include external GPU support, I think the M3 Mac Pro will in order to continue justifying the astronomical price.

Otherwise, Apple would have gone through an awful lot of trouble to design a new motherboard with PCIe slots for an otherwise limited-use case.

In releasing an M2 Mac Pro, Apple is trying to balance a consistent message regarding the ARM transition and customer expectations, but also the hiccups and limited experience of developing desktop CPUs. There may be some silicon bug or silicon-level design oversight in the M2 preventing use of an external GPU.

Discrete GPU support is supposed to be there, but not quite ready.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 finis…

Why are you bringing up Microsoft’s translator here? I don’t see why it is relevant?

> Apple consistently advertised gaming performance without any substance to it.

> Why are you bringing up Microsoft’s translator here? I don’t see why it is relevant?

It should be pretty obvious that emulating x86 slows performance, regardless of whose ARM OS we're discussing.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#408
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those systems sit at idle, when they are on at all. Idle power is not the same as TDP. The idle difference is not so great that it's a big deal.

Do you have a source showing idle numbers? I’ve never seen a comparison. The ones I’ve seen are always about max power.

It's not apples vs apples. Literally and figuratively. The I/O or board features on PC boards will eat power. So you will end up with a 15-30 W idle vs probably 5-8 for the Mac. I doubt the PCIe on the pro does much to the power unless there is an extra I/O die on system, you need active chips to eat power. That is vs Intel.

AMD will add a bunch more watts to the idle number as their multi CCX CPUs just eat more power at idle. You'll be closer to 30-45 W idle. This is a guess, it's widely acknowledged but not really quantified that I've found.

AMD monolithic dies are more in line with Intel. IE the laptop/mini PC line will be nice and low.

The difference is vastly diminished when you add the display that's using 80 Ws. So that's 85 vs 100 W total system power? 15% difference that gets bigger when you peg your processor.

Apple numbers are better in pretty much every way on power. But we're talking a handful of watts. Even at really high power rates it isn't going to add to up much.

Sources: I have a Mac mini and an Intel raptor lake desktop. I take measurements. And I have read various sources. This is my best information.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bigger overhead for AAA games is likely due to emulation of DirectX or Vulkan on Metal, but that's just Apple's stubborn choice to have it that way. This is a weird take. None of he major gaming platforms use the same graphics API. Microsoft has DirectX on Windows and XBox, Apple has Metal on iOS and Macs, Sony has Gnmx on Playstation. It's like saying Android gaming is terrible because they didn't use DirectX.

The major platforms do use the same graphics API, Vulkan. It should be preferred due to more low-level access and wider platform support (Linux, Android, Nintendo, MacOS, Windows). On another note, problems that keep major AAA games from running on Linux (Anti-cheat solutions for example) will block many games from running ob MacOS, too.

> The major platforms do use the same graphics API, Vulkan.

By all means, share a list of XBox games that only use Vulkan.

Re: Apple M2 Ultra SoC isn’t faster than AMD and Intel last year desktop CPUs

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what tower case you are using, or what cooling system you have set up, but in modern times, if you hear much noise from your cooling solution, you have chosen components poorly. From fans to pumps to dampened cases, you could have build a relatively silent system.

How many hours of research and people on forums yelling at you do you have to go through before you do that? I built a fairly stock PC, it is not silent and needs BIOS undervolting and custom fan curves to get there, and most recently I found updating the BIOS erases all of that. Also built a NAS (which is too loud so I'd like to rebuild it) and the one time I reported a bug to FreeNAS a graybeard yelled at me on Bug…

Really should be no yelling! If the place you are visiting has assholes yelling, just leave for another. But like any major purchase, it takes research. I do this research every 4-5 years or so, when I will be undergoing a desktop replacement. I’d choose the CPU and GPU first, then investigate cooling solutions. Liquid cooling is not always optimal with regard to noise, so another decision to make before committing on a solution is if you’ll be overclocking or not, as there are air-based cooling solutions that could be silent, and give you all the TDP cooling your CPU needs. After you’ve chosen your cooler (liquid or air-based), investigate low-noise, high-airflow fans at the size your cooler accepts. Going the largest fans is not always the best choice for optimal airflow or noise, so factor that in the investigation. I have less experience with custom GPU coolers, as I’ve only used stock coolers—those are pretty silent and well optimized these days.
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