Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 551 posts

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

#261

Post by jltsiren »

varispeed wrote: post #208
carlgreene wrote: post #11

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.

On extremely heavy workloads the fans do engage on my M1 Max, but I need to get my ear close to the machine to hear them. Recently my friend bought a laptop with Intel Ultra 9 185h. It roared fans even when opening Word. That was extraordinary and if it was me making the purchase I would have sent it back straight away. My friend did fiddle a lot with settings, had to update BIOS and eventually the fan situation was…

When I play Baldur's Gate 3 on my M2 Max, the fans get loud. You need a workload that is both CPU-heavy and GPU-heavy for that. When you are stressing only the CPU or the GPU but not both, the fans stay quiet.

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

#262

Post by allenrb »

fnikacevic wrote: post #39
grahamj wrote: post #31

So Ultra used to be the max but now Max is max… until Ultra goes past the max and Max is no longer the max. Until the next Max that goes beyond Ultra!

Can't wait until there's an M4 Ultramax too!

And these CPUs will be available in… max!

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

#263

Post by renewiltord »

_hyn3 wrote: post #73
cloudking wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M3 Pro user here, agree with the same points. It's nice to be able to actually have your laptop on your lap, without burning your legs.

ARM processors have always been good at handling heat and low power (like AWS Graviton), but what laptop did you have before that would overheat that much during normal usage? That seems like a very poor design.

I’d place my top of the line Intel Mac on my feet to warm them and then bend over and write code while sitting on my chair.

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

#264

Post by TinkersW »

rbanffy wrote: post #221
jrockway wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the game. If there are a lot of game simulation calculations to do for every frame, then you're going to be CPU constrained. If it's a storybook that you're walking through and every pixel is raytraced using tons of 8000x8000 texture maps, then it's going to be GPU constrained. Most games are combinations of the two, and so some people are going to be CPU limited and some people are going to be GPU limi…

> If there are a lot of game simulation calculations Why not move at least some of that into the GPU as well? Lots of different branchy code paths for the in-game objects?

Latency of communication with GPU is too large, and GPUs suck at things CPUs are good at.

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

#265

Post by moondev »

jihadjihad wrote: post #98
carlgreene wrote: post #11

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've got a coworker who still has an Intel MacBook Pro, 8-core i9 and all that, and I've been on M chips since they launched. The other day he was building some Docker images while we were screensharing and I was dumbfounded at how long it took. I don't think I can even remember a recent time when building images, even ones pushed to CDK etc., takes more than a minute or so. We waited and waited and finally after 8 m…

Sounds like they were building an aarch64 image, building an x86_64 image on Apple Silicon will also be slow - unless you are saying the M* builds x86_64 faster than an i9?

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

#266

Post by readyplayernull »

rconti wrote: post #256
zjp wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding. The M1 MacBook Pro I got from work is the first time I've ever subjectively considered a computer to be just as fast as it was the day I got it.

I think by the time my work-provided M1 MacBook Pro arrived, the M2s were already out, but of course I simply didn't care. I actually wonder when it will be worth the hassle of transferring all my stuff over to a new machine. Could easily be another 4 years.

Funny that we can buy renewed Intel Macs for less than $200 and do exactly the same.

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

#267

Post by abhinavk »

SushiHippie wrote: post #225
whalesalad wrote: post #113

Wild. It absolutely shits on my 13900K - https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7692643?baselin...

Same, I have a Ryzen 9 7950X and it has 130-140% better performance (according to Geekbench) https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8593555?baselin... Though a MacBook Pro 16" with M4 Max(that's what achieved this geekbench score), but the same amount of memory (64GB) and the same amount of storage (4TB) as my PC, would cost 6079€. That is roughly twice as much as my whole PC Build did cost, and I'm able to exp…

If they release a Studio without increasing prices next year, these specs will cost you 4500€. That's more comparable to your build (sans the upgrade options of course).

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

#268

Post by wtallis »

hulitu wrote: 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.

Amdahl's law has not actually been overturned.

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

#269

Post by stogot »

jwr wrote: post #232
eigenspace wrote: post #4

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?

I verified Geekbench results to be very tightly correlated with my use case and workloads (JVM, Clojure development and compilation) as measured by my wall times. So yes, I consider it to be a very reliable indicator of performance.

Curious how you verified that? I should possibly do thesame

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

#270

Post by ChoGGi »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #44
carlgreene wrote: post #11

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

That 3090 uses about 5x more power than the 7800x3d.
Post reply on HN