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2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

anandtech.com

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

#241

Post by arvinsim »

patentatt wrote: post #46
mattlondon wrote: post #33

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…

Not long ago at all, like just a few weeks ago right before zen3 was out in the wild! A double whammy for sure for Intel, tough times ahead indeed. Apologists can hand wave AMD off by citing the huge lead in sales that Intel still enjoys, but that argument falls flat with Apple, a trillion dollar company. Maybe Intel will start to compete on price like AMD used to.

As someone who owns both Mac and PC, I am excited on what Ryzen can offer on 5nm.

If Apple has these gains, I am sure Ryzen will have great performance leaps too.

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

#243

Post by ghaff »

dogma1138 wrote: post #186
murukesh_s wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In fact air feels bulky compared to other light weight laptops like LG Gram, not to mention the design is outdated.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…

They should probably release an 11" version of the air, I'm not sure a 12" having the same specs as the Air would be viable. However the interesting part would be what are they gonna do with their iPad Pro line at this point I don't see a reason for it not to run Big Sur or the Bigger Sur they'll release next year and compete directly with the surface. What I see Apple doing is the following: iPhone/iPad non-pro cont…

Convergence can be overrated. Arguably Apple finally made tablets mainstream because they didn't feel the same need to maintain compatibility with their desktop/laptop line that others did.

But it's hard not to see some sort of convergence between mobile, laptops, and desktops over time.

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

#244

Post by arvinsim »

amwelles wrote: post #222
dukeofdoom wrote: post #209

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 m…

I switched from a MBP to a Mac Mini and iPad Pro last winter for my personal setup. I absolutely love it. I spend roughly equal time on both, but I’m not doing a ton of programming these days outside of work. Taking the iPad traveling is way easier than taking a laptop.

Are you using the Magic Keyboard? Just asking if that is a big part of your good experience with the iPad.

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

#245

Post by kllrnohj »

314 wrote: post #212
kllrnohj wrote: post #192

Earlier 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. 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…

If you're referring to the single time the 5950X's multi-threaded performance was compared then sure, the 105W TDP is fair. But you should also be calling that out, or you're being misleading, as the majority of the 5950X numbers in the article were single-threaded results, and it did not appear in most of the multi-threaded comparisons at all.

But in multi-threaded workloads it also absolutely obliterates the M1. Making that comparison fairly moot (hence why Anandtech didn't really do it). It's pretty expected that the higher-power part is faster, that's not particularly interesting.

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

#246

Post by alwillis »

vel0city wrote: post #123
jmull wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Apple released the M1 as their low-end chip, putting it in the entry-level slot of their low-power Macs. They may have something with substantially more power in store soon.

The cheapest MacBook Air with an M1 chip is $1,000. The cheapest Mac Pro with an M1 chip is $1,300. I don't consider a $1,000+ laptop "entry level" or "low end". These are high-end machines.

I don't consider a $1,000+ laptop "entry level" or "low end". These are high-end machines.

In the Apple ecosystem, a $1000 laptops are low-end devices.

The iMac Pro [1] and the Mac Pro [2] are high-end, professional level machines. The iMac Pro starts at $5,000; the Mac Pro at $6000.

The biggest difference is that Apple doesn't sell commodity hardware that virtually every PC OEM does. That was a deliberate choice many years ago.

BTW, the M1 Mac mini starts at $699 and blows away all the PCs in it's class, including those that cost more.

Some Hollywood studios have already talked about replacing much more expensive computers with the Mac mini because it's so fast [3]. No joke.

To be clear, you're not going to render a full-length movie in 4k on an M1-based Mac mini—that's what the Mac Pro is for. But for less demanding 4k editing tasks that would have been unthinkable on an under $1000 machine a year ago, certainly.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro

[2]: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro

[3]: Hollywood thinks new Mac mini 'could be huge' for video editors: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/12/hollywood-thinks-...

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

#247

Post by jillesvangurp »

I think this will get interesting if/when MS, Nvidia and others start using ARM cpus more widely as well. Nvidia just bought ARM so that would help them get rid of Intel as a middle man for gaming hardware. MS already has windows running on ARM but that seems to be a budget laptops only kind of thing so far. Also they are shipping AMD on x-box, which is interesting. But you could see Nvidia building an SOC graphics + cpu running windows potentially. Most game engines already target IOS and Android so there should be no issues porting to ARM on that front either.

AMD ought to be paying attention. Risc V could be an alternative at this point if they want to push the market in a different direction. Having to license ARM from Nvidia would not be their dream scenario, I imagine.

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

#248

Post by tonyhb »

em500 wrote: post #228
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.

Here's one data point: a WebKit compile took 25min on the Air vs 20min on the Mini/Pro. That 25min is still a bit faster than the Intel 16-inch Pro, which took 27min and waaay faster than Intel 13-inch Pro at 46min. The crazy thing is that both M1 MacBooks still had 91% battery left after the compile, vs 61% on the 16-inch Pro and 24% on the 13-inch Intel Pro. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macb…

This is insane perf/watt. x86 backwards compatibility may have gotten us to where we are, but it's certainly holding it back. Arm is looking great, and maybe it's time for x86 to die.

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

#249

Post by arvinsim »

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.

As someone using Jetbrains products, I would get no less than 32GB for my machine :)

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

#250

Post by abainbridge »

foldr wrote: post #175
qz2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another item added to the list of why I'm not buying one of these.

It doesn't make a huge amount of sense to buy a Mac if you're not going to use Mac OS as your daily driver. A lot of the benefits (e.g. battery life, touchpad quality) are dependent on software as well as hardware, and are greatly diminished on Windows or Linux.

I've never been that impressed with the Mac Mini's battery life or touchpad :-)
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