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M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

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Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#281

Post by postalrat »

deergomoo wrote: post #272
jamespo wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this pretence that the vast majority of the time laptops are plugged into the power anyway.

It’s not just battery life, it’s heat and noise too. Yeah I know not a lot of people actually use laptops on laps (though I do), but you typically can’t hide it under a desk like you can with a desktop. My job provided me with a Dell laptop with an i7 and it can keep my coffee warm just idling. Sometimes, when it’s decided it doesn’t want to sleep, I can hear the fans from the next room. While the screen is off, not…

So this conversion goes from Apple shouldn't need more display controllers since most people Air users don't use more displays to most people don't use their laptop on battery but power usage should be a major concern.

It's almost like we should focus on what Apple does best and ignore what Apple does worse.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#282

Post by musha68k »

As a user of many Apple Silicon generations in different / mostly top configurations by now I’m obviously a big fan. One thing that I have “observed” though (with no data to back it up): it seems to me as if under heavy load / resource over-provisioning the Intel systems from before seemed to recover more gracefully? I wonder if it’s just me, the particular OS version I had been using at the time or some other thing I’m missing?

Again, no idea if this is actually the case / for other workflows than mine. I would be curious to know if anyone else had made the same observation potentially with actual “high load performance” data to back it up?

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#283

Post by jonah »

alberth wrote: post #229
asylteltine wrote: post #67

And yet the air can’t support more than one monitor. I know Apple is a small company with only a few engineers so it must have been too hard. Sarcasm obviously. As an Apple enthusiast it’s so annoying how they sniff farts.

Only 1-monitor support seems like a market segmentation decision, not a lack of capability. (Much like how the iPhone Pro has faster USB-C data transfer speeds vs base iPhone)

The regular iPhone 15 has last-year's Pro chip, the A16, and the 15 Pro has the new A17, so it's not simply a matter of binning or disabling features.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#284

Post by unlikelytomato »

corbezzoli wrote: post #275
jader201 wrote: post #121

It’s ridiculous that the base and Pro only support 1 and 2 external displays, respectively. Want 3 monitors? Have to pay for the Max. https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/02/m3-chip-still-supports-...

Really you’re complaining you can’t plug in a 4th display into your computer? The fraction of the population who does can afford the Max, together with the 3 extra monitors. I’m not trying to justify Apple here, but this usage seems quite niche and it’s understandable to me to need a non-base setup. It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of notebook users never even plug a single m…

I might argue that what you are describing is exactly why it's a bit absurd. It would be surprising to me as a user to discover such a limitation. If I didn't read about it here, I would probably find out after the return window and then be pissed that they took a stand on this particular artificial market segmentation.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#285

Post by quitit »

asylteltine wrote: post #67

And yet the air can’t support more than one monitor. I know Apple is a small company with only a few engineers so it must have been too hard. Sarcasm obviously. As an Apple enthusiast it’s so annoying how they sniff farts.

The answer is pretty straight forward: it has no fan and limited ram.

It supports a 6K screen in addition to the built-in screen. It's reasonable to say that if you need 3 screens to get your job done, then that is not representative of the market for apple's lowest-end laptop.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#286

Post by musha68k »

user_7832 wrote: post #72
asylteltine wrote: post #67

And yet the air can’t support more than one monitor. I know Apple is a small company with only a few engineers so it must have been too hard. Sarcasm obviously. As an Apple enthusiast it’s so annoying how they sniff farts.

While some engineering compromises I can understand, most appear to simply be anti-consumer/cash-grabs. Need more than 8gb ram? Hope you've got sufficient money. Want a high refresh rate screen present in cheap android phones? Sorry not for our base models.

Agreed, especially the increasing greediness with regards to RAM and corresponding upselling is unfortunately real at this point. I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM and I will probably need to do so for my two Macs as well. 16GB/32GB RAM I “fear” not going to cut it in 2024 for my kind of snappy productivity work anymore. Especially due to unified memory architecture.

QED seemingly works out well for Apple though.. :P

I’m still hoping for some ex Apple folks to create some new version of NeXT computers. I would switch immediately to someone’s alternative offering trying to actually play at Apple’s level of quality.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#287

Post by exabrial »

quitit wrote: post #285
asylteltine wrote: post #67

And yet the air can’t support more than one monitor. I know Apple is a small company with only a few engineers so it must have been too hard. Sarcasm obviously. As an Apple enthusiast it’s so annoying how they sniff farts.

The answer is pretty straight forward: it has no fan and limited ram. It supports a 6K screen in addition to the built-in screen. It's reasonable to say that if you need 3 screens to get your job done, then that is not representative of the market for apple's lowest-end laptop.

Dude my old galaxy phone from yesterday could drive a 4k display

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#288

Post by astrange »

musha68k wrote: post #286
user_7832 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some engineering compromises I can understand, most appear to simply be anti-consumer/cash-grabs. Need more than 8gb ram? Hope you've got sufficient money. Want a high refresh rate screen present in cheap android phones? Sorry not for our base models.

Agreed, especially the increasing greediness with regards to RAM and corresponding upselling is unfortunately real at this point. I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM and I will probably need to do so for my two Macs as well. 16GB/32GB RAM I “fear” not going to cut it in 2024 for my kind of snappy productivity work anymore. Especially due to unified memory architecture. QED seemingly works…

> I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM

This is a bad reason to upgrade. If you were supposed to know about it, it'd be in the specs.

It's not there to improve performance or be more forward compatible, it's because the camera upgrades need it.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#289

Post by lilyball »

musha68k wrote: post #282

As a user of many Apple Silicon generations in different / mostly top configurations by now I’m obviously a big fan. One thing that I have “observed” though (with no data to back it up): it seems to me as if under heavy load / resource over-provisioning the Intel systems from before seemed to recover more gracefully? I wonder if it’s just me, the particular OS version I had been using at the time or some other thing…

Right now I have an intel laptop for work and an apple silicon laptop for personal use. The workloads I do on these machines is different so comparisons are a bit hard to do, but I've seen the intel laptop exhibit poor behavior under load that I've never seen from the apple silicon machine.

Re: M3 Macs: there's more to performance than counting cores

#290

Post by musha68k »

astrange wrote: post #288
musha68k wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, especially the increasing greediness with regards to RAM and corresponding upselling is unfortunately real at this point. I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM and I will probably need to do so for my two Macs as well. 16GB/32GB RAM I “fear” not going to cut it in 2024 for my kind of snappy productivity work anymore. Especially due to unified memory architecture. QED seemingly works…

> I just upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the 8GB RAM This is a bad reason to upgrade. If you were supposed to know about it, it'd be in the specs. It's not there to improve performance or be more forward compatible, it's because the camera upgrades need it.

OOM kills are basically the sole reason for me to upgrade iPhones. Nothing more annoying than force-reloaded/lost state in/between apps while on-the-go and under tight time constraints. Also somewhat true: new lenses are amazing but “computational photography” defaults sometimes less compelling than my old iPhone X’s more “honest” output. I’m going to play around with RAW some more if I get the time for it though.
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