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2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

anandtech.com

101–110 of 767 posts

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#101

I hope Apple allows us to install the OS of our choice. The battery life is impressive but I refuse to not use Linux.

And that's your choice. I would start looking at AMD's Ryzen offerings because supporting Linux is not going to be high on Apple's list going forward.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#102
> "Whilst the software doesn’t offer the best the hardware can offer, with time, as developers migrate their applications to native Apple Silicon support, the ecosystem will flourish."

I think that more developers would be excited about migrating their apps to support native apple silicon if Apple wasn't so developer hostile at the moment. I am referring to stuff like Apple's Online Certificate Status Protocol (https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/) and their Apple Tax war.

They need customers but they also need developers.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#105
post #80

I'm not buying into Apple's eventually-closed desktop computer systems - I don't care what the performance is. They've been slowly marching towards iOS's closed ecosystem model on the Mac and with an in-house CPU, they can effectively lock users out of alternate OS choices on their hardware. Buyer beware.

I get why this idea of becoming iOS-like is uncomfortable for a lot of people, but will they take away the POSIX-ness of the OS? What about all the people that spend all their time in Vim, TMUX, Emacs, and/or zsh? I think these people will continue to be pretty happy on macOS if they already are. In my experience, installing alternate OS's on Mac hardware has never been frictionless or satisfying anyway.

>In my experience, installing alternate OS's on Mac hardware has never been frictionless or satisfying anyway.

It would be if they take some effort to support it.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#106

Interesting that it is not able to outperform the Zen3 CPUs. I had expected it to do somewhat better, especially it being a 5nm processor, and with all the hype around ARM processors. I don't know how well it will hold up to its x86 competitors like this, especially once they launch their 5nm CPUs next year.

Have you seen benchmarks post 1st page? M1 at 7-8W power drain beats or just trails behind a desktop class $799 Ryzen 9 5950x at +49W consumption in single threaded performance. What did you expect?

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#107

From the article's conclusion... "The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of everything Intel has to offer, and battles it with AMD’s new Zen3, winning some, losing some. And in the mobile space in particular, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in either ST or MT performance – at least within the same power budgets." This is the first in-depth review validating all the hype. Assuming the user experie…

Yeah me too. I expect that there will be another release sometime next year with updated "package". It is cool that they put it in old Air box, but I think I can wait for better camera, overall package. By that time it will be clearer all the benefits and issues that come with it. I wouldn't mind plastic edition of MacBook /w M1. Aluminum and metal overall, not the best for everyday use. I prefer "warmer" feel of pla…

I suspect the aluminium frame is a key part of the passive thermal cooling. I'd be very surprised if we see a plastic version.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#109

From the article's conclusion... "The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of everything Intel has to offer, and battles it with AMD’s new Zen3, winning some, losing some. And in the mobile space in particular, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in either ST or MT performance – at least within the same power budgets." This is the first in-depth review validating all the hype. Assuming the user experie…

That conclusion is quite misleading, in my opinion. They write "outperforms the core performance" and the keyword here is "core". What they mean is that if one had a single-core Zen3 and a single-core M1, then the M1 would win some and lose some. But in the real world, most Zen3 CPUs will have 2x or more cores, thus they'll be 2x to 4x faster. So what they mean to say is that they praise Apple for having amazing per-…

The Zen3 processor that they are comparing it to is the 5950x - the fastest desktop processor with a TDP of 105W. The entire system power of the M1 mini under load was 28W.

What the article is pointing out is that the mobile low-power version of the M1 (as the mini is really just a laptop in a SFF box) is competitive with the top-end Zen3 chip; the benchmark gap is smaller than 2x.

We don't know yet how far the M1 scales up, e.g. a performance desktop will presumably have a higher TDP and probably trade the integrated GPU space for more CPU cores. But we don't known if/how this will translate into performance gains. Previous incarnations of the Mac Pro have also used multiple CPUs so it is not yet clear if "in the real word, most Zen3 CPUs will have 2x or more cores".

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#110

Wow it must suck to be Intel right now. It wasn't so long ago that the trope was while others had better multi-core performance "...Intel still holds the lead for single core performance" Now not only do AMD have a better product, but also Apple now offer equal or better performance than the best that Intel can offer. I wonder what is next for Intel now their £1000+ CPUs are firmly in third place. Looking forward to…

At some point one wonders if Intel will just cede the desktop and enthusiast markets to AMD and/or Apple and just focus on server and high-end computing? As an IBMer this feels familiar for some reason...

Amd 2qe on the market for decades practically as second in the performance tier. I'm not sure why Intel who should ostensibly have lower unit costs would abandon a market for a possibly temporary situation one or two deign nodes away might now be able an issue.
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