2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by runeks » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

heipei wrote: post #159

d3nj4l wrote: post #13

Dave2D found the air to be on par with the Pro, at least for tasks that took under ~8.5 minutes. It only really throttled after that point, according to him.

I watched and read multiple reviews and Dave2D seems to be the only one who tried to quantify the throttling to some extent, all the others only had useless statements like "The Pro will probably be able to sustain unthrottled workloads for longer thanks to it's active cooling" - No shit, sherlock. For me the fact that it only throttles after 8-9 minutes (!) of heavy use is going to be the deciding factor that will a…

Couldn't the Pro just turn on its fans after 8-9 minutes (to avoid throttling), thus giving the best of both worlds?

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

#202

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

GiorgioG wrote: post #38

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.

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by formerly_proven » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

The Cinebench R23 results seem kinda weird to me. The 5950X would have almost a 40 % clock speed advantage over the M1 (~5 GHz 1C vs 3.2 GHz 1C), yet the M1 is only about 8 % slower in an entirely ALU-limited SIMD benchmark? This suggests the M1 core has like 50 % more EUs and achieves much higher throughput than Zen 3.

The SPEC results are... decisive to say the least. Without Zen 3, x86 CPUs would look, well... like shit. All Intel offerings, including the Sunny Cove part (so not a 7 year old uarch), look uniformly bad across all workloads.

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

#204

Post by vbezhenar » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #69

vbezhenar wrote: post #3

Not very impressive considering 5nm process. But a good start. I expect impressive CPUs in the coming years with more cores and more TDP. Hopefully Mac Pro Mini rumours will be true. That will be strong candidate for my next computer.

Not very impressive a CPU at 7-8W power drain beats or just trails behind a desktop class $799 Ryzen 9 5950x at +49W consumption in single threaded performance?

Mac mini is a plugged computer. I don't care whether it drains 7W or 700W. Electricity is cheap. And the fact that it trails behind AMD on a better node means that its design is inferior or not fully uncapped.

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

#205

Post by alwillis » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #95

d3nj4l wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like most people here haven't seen the SPEC benchmarks AnandTech performed (and they're partly to blame for that; their UX is awful). But the M1 is toe-to-toe with desktop Ryzen: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... E: And multi-core SPEC: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... , where they're on par with mobile Ryzen.

I looked up multi-core Cinebench R23 and the AMD 2990WX comes in at 33,213 vs. 7,833 was given for the M1 in the article. Apple markets this as a "Pro" device for professional video editing. That's why I believe it is fair to take their word and compare it against my other options for a professional video editing rig. And in that comparison, which Apple has chosen itself, the M1 comes out woefully inadequate at a mer…

Apple markets this as a "Pro" device for professional video editing

No, they don't. Because Apple keeps raising the ceiling on low-end devices like the 13-inch MacBook Pro, in many aspects, it's more performant than a high-end laptop or desktop Mac from just a few years ago.

Please read the best article so far that explains what "Pro" means for Apple—it just means nicer; it doesn't mean for professionals. https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_mac...:

Wait, wait, wait, you might be saying, the MacBook Pro is pro. But as I’ve written numerous times, pro, in Apple’s product-naming parlance, doesn’t always stand for professional. Much of the time it just means better or nicer. The new M1 13-inch MacBook Pro is pro only in the way, say, AirPods Pro are. This has been true for Apple’s entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pros — the models with only two USB ports — ever since the famed MacBook “Escape” was suggested as a stand-in for the then-still-missing retina MacBook Air four years ago.

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

#206

Post by breakfastduck » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

matvore wrote: post #199

breakfastduck wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going on internet comments they've been marching towards this for years. I've yet to see anything actually happen.

Eminent Internet speculation about Apple is correct surprisingly often. EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, maybe because I was too cryptic. To clarify, it seems like the rumors that gain traction with mainstream sites and Apple-focused YouTube channels and forums tend to have strong correlation with something that will happen later.

This speculation has been going on for years.

They're not going to remove the ability to run arbitrary code or the unix core. There would literally be no reason to buy a mac over another product of theirs.

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

#207

Post by mastax » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #58

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #41

I'm not surprised it's doing well. Apple has deeper pockets than anyone else on the planet, and they have considerable experience doing this kind of thing –literally, decades . Say what you will about Apple; this is a strong point for them. But I'm still waiting for the M2 before I upgrade. I'm also interested in new form factors. Right now, they are still relying on the currently-tooled production line for their she…

I'd say Intel has the deepest pockets regarding CPU R&D, and yet they are being overtaken left and right.

Intel's architectures have been massively delayed by process issues. They're still shipping Skylake (Aug 2015) architecture processors on the desktop and server because they waited too long to change strategy. About a year ago they announced they're going to start decoupling the microarchitecture from the manufacturing process. 2021 will be show the first fruits of that labor with Rocket Lake, which is Ice Lake (Sept 2019) backported to 14nm. If they had done that at the first sign of manufacturing trouble (2014?) they could have 2 more generations of IPC improvement and still be ahead in every way except efficiency. I guess Intel management was more concerned with not rocking the boat.

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

#208

Post by alfonsodev » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

stu2b50 wrote: post #178

obblekk wrote: post #151

I’m really curious what Xcode and IntelliJ compile times look like for real world repos. It’s a single use case, but by far the most common one for me where I genuinely feel productivity slowed by my computer. Hopefully good news there as well.

Dave2D had xcode benchmarks and it seems like... It's faster than the iMac Pro, and even faster than his friends hackintosh. Might be the fastest, or almost the fastest, out of Apples entire lineup. https://youtu.be/XQ6vX6nmboU at minute 3

I'm looking this repo[1] for reference, something must be off, because a mid 2015 has half the time in incremental build, of course the project matters, but Dave doesn't reveal the name of the app they are compiling or I missed it.

[1] https://github.com/ashfurrow/xcode-hardware-performance

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

#209

Post by dukeofdoom » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

Macbook air: $999 (2 ports, no hdmi)

vs

$699 mac mini (2 ports + hdmi) + ipad $329 = $1029

Thinking of upgraing, my current macbook 2013 sits in a drawer 99% of the time connected to a monitor and keyboard. That 1% of the time when I travel, the macbook is too large to use comfortably on an airplane seat. The ipad would work better for this use. macbook air also only has two ports, so one would be used for external monitor, the other for power. No place left to connect external drives. Which I need to use for video editing, and sometimes need to connect two drives to transfer files between them. Seems like this would only be doable on macbook air running on battery.

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

#210

Post by interestica » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

xuki wrote: post #92

Performance per watt of this thing is INSANE, take a look at the battery left after compiling WebKit, compared to older Mac: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WebKit-Com... https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... IMO the all day battery will be THE killer feature of the new laptops.

These gains are just through improvements in processors. Now, combine that with parallel leaps for battery tech... It's also good that battery tech hasn't jumped too far ahead already - the constraint has helped in the development in these mobile chips. The display panel is still the biggest energy draw on my laptop. There's a lot of chance for improvement there too. A 2 day battery in 5 years isn't that crazy.