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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

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Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I had almost the same configuration (2tb/32gb/2.4 ghz). I’m literally getting the new Air for half of what I’m selling it for.

Where are you selling it? I want to know where to buy a used 16” MBP.

I've sold on cragislist before... worked out fine.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#152

So... I'd be feeling pretty silly right now if I bought the Mac Pro in 2019 for like $7,000. (Which I almost did!) https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/457 M1 is comparable to baseline Mac Pro on multicore performance and better on single core performance. And several thousand dollars cheaper (and smaller).

There are very few reasons to buy the Mac Pro with the lowest CPU option. This here is the comparison to make and it crushes the M1's multithreaded score of 7,000 with a score of almost 19,000:

https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac-pro-late-2019-intel-x...

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#153
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing my 16" MBP (8 core i9 2.3ghz / 32GB RAM) with the new Air as well. All of that power (yes I know, it's not sustained) without a fan is incredible.

Why did you pay a fortune for 32GB RAM, a larger screen, and a dGPU if you don't need it? You could have bought a 13" MBP and saved enough cash to get the new Air and now have 2 laptops.

Somebody else bought it.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#155
What's actually more interesting to me than Intel vs ARM is how much further ahead Apple is vs the competition. The snapdragon 8cx is about 1/3rd the speed in both Single and Multicore performance of the M1.

How is Apple so far ahead even with the same instruction set?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#156

The 16GB max ram still seems a head scratcher. Not what would suppose I want for video editing.

The three models Apple chose are all the consumer, low-end ones. You will see much higher specs on the Mac Mini Pro, MacBook Pro 14/16 and Mac Pro planned for next year.

To think... this is the performance we’re seeing from their low-end model

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a lot to be said for software support, IO, RAM, etc.

Yeah, the Mac Pro supports up to 1.5TB of DRAM (vs. 16GB), it's got a bunch of slots and discrete GPUs, and it can run Windows and Windows VMs. I hope it doesn't end up as an orphan system like the 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro, which was an interesting system that got zero upgrades. Perhaps Apple will offer Apple Silicon upgrades to Mac Pro buyers. Assuming they can build it (and they have implied that they can scale the…

> Apple could even bring back an Apple Silicon powered Xserve

Given their performance/watt, this sounds like it could be potentially game changing.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#158
I wonder what Linus thinks of Geekbench's accuracy now:

https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curpost...

https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost...

Personally I'm not convinced, until I see something like SPECint/SPECfp results.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#159
I wonder how they compare the machine learning performance of the integrated GPU. Does anyone know if any of the ML libraries support the new architecture? AFAIK most libraries don't support anything other than nVidia. Any tests on training models? Or is it mostly inference?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely a version that can beat a 8 core Xeon is made for 'actual professionals'?

It still has a lot of limitations that matter to many pros - max 16 GB of RAM, max 2 displays (only 1 external for laptops), only enough PCIe lanes to support 2 thunderbolt ports. eGPUs aren't supported either, but hopefully that is a software thing that will be fixed. It will be very interesting to see what the performance will be of the more "pro" chip that overcomes those limitations that they'd put in the 16" and…

why would it be only 1 external display? Can you not plug into a thunderbolt dock and use multiple external displays? I do exactly that with my 2012 MacBook Pro.
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