This means there is (probably) plenty of opportunity for seasoned engineers to make serious money at Intel. But only for ones with thick skin who can deliver despite rotten company culture.
2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
211–220 of 767 posts
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sc…
> 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. This is a very misleading statement. They primarily only used the 5950X in single-core tests, and in those tests it doesn't come remotely close to 105W. In fact per Anandtech's own results[1] the 5950X CPU core in a single-core load draws around…
> This is a very misleading statement. They primarily only used the 5950X in single-core tests, and in those tests it doesn't come remotely close to 105W. In fact per Anandtech's own results[1] the 5950X CPU core in a single-core load draws around 20w.
It would seem that the switching of AMD chips in the various graphs have caused some confusion. I was referring to the "Geekbench 5 Multi-Thread" graph on page 2. This shows a score of 15,726 for the 5950x vs 7715 for the M1. This is about 2x. I do not see any notes that the benchmark is using less cores than the chip has available.
I don't follow your argument for why it is misleading to characterize the 5950x as a 105W TDP in this benchmark. Could you expand a little on why you believe this is misleading? The article that you have linked to shows over 105W of power consumption from 4 cores - 16.
Edit: I put in the wrong page number in the clarification :) Also, I see later in the linked article that the 15726 score is from 16C/32T.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting that your takeaway from all this is "oh, it can't beat some of the top x86 chips in existence—it can only meet them on even footing. Guess it'll be falling behind next year." This is Apple's first non-mobile chip ever. You think this is the best they can do, ever?
> This is Apple's first non-mobile chip ever. You think this is the best they can do, ever? They have been making mobile ARM chips for quite some time, so it's not like they are inexperienced.
Look at the tread lines. They been able to keep increasing single core performance every year. There is no reason to think that is stopping this year.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I mean that's kind of expected if you compare a low-power CPU with fewer cores against an unlimited-cooling desktop monster with much more cores. Are we looking at the same charts here? For cinebench multithreaded, the AMD 4xxx series CPUs are zen 2 parts with 15/35W TDP, hardly "unlimited-cooling desktop monster" like you described.
From the article: "While AMD’s Zen3 still holds the leads in several workloads, we need to remind ourselves that this comes at a great cost in power consumption in the +49W range while the Apple M1 here is using 7-8W total device active power." Looking through the benchmarks, the zen 2 parts generally seem to have lower performance than the M1. The cinebench multithreaded benchmark is one exception. It's not that sur…
The Zen2 4800HS also outperformed the M1 in the Specint2017 multi-threaded results, too.
The M1's float results are weirdly good relative to the int results, though. Not sure why Apple seems to have prioritized that so much in this category of CPU.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget to add that Apple is now doing this on their version of a "budget" laptop that has no active cooling, that gets 18-20 hours of battery life, that runs emulated x86 code with almost no performance hit and is a 1st gen product. I don't think any of these details can be understated. Even AMD's 1st gen Ryzen kind of sucked and look where that is now.
> Don't forget to add that Apple is now doing this on their version of a "budget" laptop that has no active cooling The Anandtech tests were on an actively-cooled Mac Mini and the power draw numbers they were observing were far outside of what can be passively cooled in a laptop. You'd need to wait for Air-specific results before drawing too many conclusions on how it performs.
AnandTech isn't the only one providing benchmarks, they are rolling in from all over the place now. People are running 15 minute finale cut pro jobs and the fan isn't kick in on the macbook pro.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#216I'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 feel exactly the same way, but I do wonder how this gap is going to close. If Microsoft team up with another ARM vendor and make similarly closed-off, proprietary glue sandwiches as a response, where does that leave Linux? I doubt PC-compatible, x86 laptops are going to disappear off the face of the Earth anytime soon, but... if there's basically two types of machines, and ours have worse performance and half the b…
Look at that new Raspberry Pi where everything is built into the keyboard unit like the old Apple 2 and Commodore 64. Linux’s future is brighter than ever. Linux hardware that is unique in its own right is much more interesting than trying to install Linux on PC or Mac hardware and beat it into submission.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#217Earlier 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…
That is an absurd comparison. AnandTech clearly mentioned that the M1 was on par in single core, not in multi core.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#218Someone posted these results on Reddit earlier: https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/jvrck7/m1_macboo... As far as I know, DotA 2 is running on Rosetta.
Those are some significant improvements. I'm actually really tempted to get a Macbook Air now versus my current plans to build a cheap gaming rig.
Ehh, if you are going to game you are going to want the Pro at a minimum but honestly the mac gaming scene is still sparse. It all really comes down to what type of game you want to play I guess but even if all the games you want are on mac then I'd still say you want the fan in the MBP.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one data point that's particularly interesting to me. As someone who (normally) travels a great deal, I'd probably go with the Air unless there were real throttling compromises, especially given that I use a different computer for multimedia editing at home.
Wish they re-introduce the discontinued Macbook 12 inch with the same specs as air. It weighed only 970grams vs 1.29 kg for air. In fact air feels bulky compared to other light weight laptops like LG Gram, not to mention the design is outdated. Always wondered why Apple killed the smaller model. Perhaps they want to push the iPad pro so killed off the netbook line. The wannabe traveller inside me keep drooling at 12…
The 12 inch is still my favorite MacBook experience, having owned pretty much every form factor since pre-unibody white plastic. Can't wait to see what they can do in that hyper minimal portable niche with Apple Silicon.
Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
#2201) Can I run VirtualBox on M1 (yet)? 2) What is the overhead of doing so with Rosetta2 vs native on Intel? 3) What is the situation with VT-X?
The answer to all three of your questions is "If you are worried about this, absolutely do not buy an M1 Mac." Rosetta 2 cannot magically turn VirtualBox from a virtualization management system into a high-performance x64 emulator. The long-term solution is probably going to be running ARM Windows or Linux in a VM and leaning on Rosetta-style compatibility/translation in the client OS to run x64 programs.
Edit: Since this is attracting downvotes, maybe it needs some clarification. The things OP asked about fundamentally cannot work. Rosetta 2 is designed exclusively for user-mode programs and cannot cooperate with virtualization software to run arbitrary OSes in VMs. VirtualBox has no plans to port to ARM and will not work in Rosetta. None of this is negativity or cynicism towards M1 Macs - it's just the reality of how switching architectures affects virtualization. If your use case for Mac hardware is to run arbitrary x64 code at high speed in VMs, you should not buy an M1 Mac because that capability does not currently exist.