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Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

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Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#161
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat. I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Nor have I had any desire to upgrade.

> Nor have I had any desire to upgrade I never thought I'd see a processor that was 50% faster single-core and 80% faster multi-core and just shrug. My M1 Pro still feels so magically fast. I'm really happy that Apple keeps pushing things and I'll be grateful when I do decide to upgrade, but my M1 Pro has just been such a magical machine. Every other laptop I've ever bought (Mac or PC) has run its fan regularly. I di…

Folding/rolling screen would be awesome. 16” form factor that turns into 20” screen.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has always baffled me why Apple doesn't take gaming seriously. They aren't really the ones that have to.

But they are. They need to subsidize porting AAA games to solve the chicken-and-egg problem. Gaming platforms don't just arise organically. They require partnership between platform and publishers, organized by the platform and with financial investment by the platform.

> They need to subsidize porting AAA games to solve the chicken-and-egg problem.

glances at the Steam Machine

And how long do they have to fail at that before trying a new approach?

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#163
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is so hard for people to understand why apple did that? They want the people who are still clinging to intel mac to convert finally. And as for m1 comparisons, people are not changing laptops every year and that is the cohort of m users that is the most likely to upgrade. It's smart to do what apple did.

I get that argument, but it comes across as hugely disingenuous to me especially when couched with so much glitz and glamour and showmanship. They're aim is to present these things as huge quantum leaps in performance and it's only if you look into the details that it's clear that they're not and they're fudging the figures to make them look better than they are. "New Car 2025 has a simply incredible top speed 30x gr…

No one in the industry uses Apple's marketing in any real sense. The marketing is not for you - its sole purpose is to sell more Macs to their target market.

That you are distracted by it is not Apple's problem - and most other industry players don't GAF about Apple's self-comparisons either.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#164
post #40

How many people does this actually affect? Gamers are better off with AMD X3D chips, and most productivity workloads need good multicore performance. Obviously MR is great silicon and I don't want to downplay that, but I'm not sure that best singlecore performance is an overly useful metric for the people who need performance.

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Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the $1599 M4 Pro Mac mini beats the current $3999 M2 Ultra Mac Studio on GeekBench 6 multi-core: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/31/m4-pro-chip-benchmark-r...

Yes, but I suspect the 64GB of memory in the studio compared to 24GB in the mini the is going to make that studio a lot faster in many real-world scenarios.

In that case, you can get the mini with 64GB of memory for $1999.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#167
post #12

I'm confused. They're claiming "Apple’s M4 Max is the first production CPU to pass 4000 Single-Core score in Geekbench 6." yet I can see hundreds of other test results for single core performance above 4000 in the last 2 years?

AMDs upcoming flagship desktop CPU (9800 X3D) reaches about 3300 points on singlecore (the previous X3D hit 2700ish)

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Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#168
post #165

> Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing Single taskink OSs are long gone. Single core performance is irrelevant in the world of multitasking/multithreading/ preemtible threads.

There are lots of apps that only run in a single thread. If you want them to run fast, you need fast single-core performance.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#169

I'll admit to some reflexive skepticism here. I know GeekBench at least used to be considered an entirely unserious indicator of performance and any discussion relating to its scores used to be drowned out by people explaining why it was so bad. Do those criticisms still hold? Are serious people nowadays taking Geekbench to be a reasonably okay (though obviously imperfect) performance metric?

It'll still be at the top of SPECint 2017 which is the real industry standard. Geekbench 6.3 slightly boosted Apple Silicon scores by adding SME - a very niche instruction set extension which is never used in SPECint workloads. So the gap may not be as wide as GB6.3 implies.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat. I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Nor have I had any desire to upgrade.

I do wonder if PC desktops will eventually move to a similar design. I have a 7800x3d on my desktop, and the thing is a beast but between it and the 3090 I basically have a space heater in my room

A game I play with friends introduced a Mac version. I thought it would be great to use my Apple Silicon MacBook Pro for some quiet, low-power gaming.

The frame rate wasn’t even close to my desktop (which is less powerful than yours). I switched back to the PC.

Last time I looked, the energy efficiency of nVidia GPUs in the lower TDP regions wasn’t actually that different from Apple’s hardware. The main difference is that Apple hardware isn’t scaled up to the level of big nVidia GPUs.

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