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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#291

Post by bayindirh »

Topfi wrote: post #283
bayindirh wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x86 is way more complex when compared to ARM processors, as a result their TDP is way higher when you request performance from them. Intel had to reduce the frequency of their processors when running AVX2 instructions and the AVX2 frequency of the processors were non-disclosable to anyone. Also, benchmarking Intel processors and publishing these numbers were forbidden in some cases. I don't know whether this ban is s…

Being mistaken on the CISC vs RISC debate (besides, modern x86 is closer to RISC via micro-ops then old school CISC) is understandable. There is a lot of misinformation out there and myths, plus, it just feels right to consider CISC overly burdened, etc. TLDR: Intel x86_64 is closer to RISC then you likely think and Apple Silicon arm is closer to CISC then you likely think. These lines are blurry and have been for de…

> But talking this authoritatively on something without doing the reading, that's grating...

Thanks for your prejudice on me without knowing anything about me. In short, I'm a HPC sysadmin and programmer who works in a HPC center, separated from the actual hardware by a couple of floors.

We can discuss how transistors' heat generation doesn't discern about ISAs or being in a DAC or a cutting edge microprocessor, and we can even discuss how implementation of some functional blocks generate heat regardless of the ISA being involved. If you want we can discuss how saturating memory controllers affect pipeline saturation in processors even...

But talking this authoritatively on something with that amount of prejudice, that's grating.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#292

Post by Topfi »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #200
bayindirh wrote: post #117

I know, this is a bit of a meaningless comment, but it's funny in a way. Feels like late 90s again: - Xiaomi: We have matched Apple in CPU performance. - Apple: *Meep Meep...*

It's been really weird reading laptop reviews over the last few months. I've seen a bunch of reviews where they have their usual bar graphs comparing a bunch of laptops, and the laptop that is at the bottom is an Apple. It's the really inexpensive Neo, of course, but even the M5 laptops are consistently beat on performance and battery life by Intel Windows laptops. I assume the M6 will take the crown back and then a…

> [...] but even the M5 laptops are consistently beat on performance and battery life by Intel Windows laptops.

Hold up, in what metric/benchmark? Feel personally like we life in an age where, no matter the SOC vendor, something high performant and efficient is offered, so seeing a claim that any vendor, be it Intel, AMD, Qualcomm or Apple, is consistently outperforming another, I'd like to get more context on that.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#293

Post by snovv_crash »

oscarteg wrote: post #96
nelsonic wrote: post #41

Sick. Particularly stoked for the 10gb network card ($100 option) when using the Mac Mini as a server. Just wish the memory + NVMe prices could come back down to pre ai-goldrush prices. As $2999 for the M5 Pro with 64GB RAM feels painfully over-priced.

As someone who is a beginner at home networking and have a Mac Mini running as a Plex server at home; what is the use case for the 10gb network card?

It feels stupid having my internet be faster than my computer can connect to it

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#294

Post by what_hn »

Lwerewolf wrote: post #239
SSLy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like I'll be sporting my 5800X3D + DDR4 + 9070 XT gaming box for a little while. Too bad the CPU's ST is slower than my MB Air m4.

Welcome to the club. If you're _really_ competitive in cs2, I'd swap out to a 9800x3d setup, but it's still a maybe. Very little reason to upgrade right now other than to run LLMs.

It will never make sense to me to run Llms locally unless I had 50k. I don't even think that would compete with price perf of a remote llm and getting business done. And that's completely ignoring that sol/fable level is not local

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#295

Post by 3form »

bel8 wrote: post #21
LeBit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.2TB/s is 2/3 the speed of an nVidia 5090. But you get a generic computer and much more RAM. And you lose a couple of organs.

The real downside for me is not having Linux support. It would take Apple one or two engineers to make Linux life much easier on macs. But Linux is outside their walled garden so it's ignored.

Same here. Sadly I think the voices like ours won't be heard, though, because Apple's looking for someone who's going to buy in on the whole ecosystem, and I think we're not it. Or at least I'm not.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#296

Post by meerita »

mrtksn wrote: post #16

Apple Studio with maxed out M5 Ultra, 256GB RAM and 16TB storage is 18,299$. The 512GB RAM version apparently is coming in October, considering that the difference between 96GB and 256GB is priced at 4000$, the 512GB upgrade must be eye watering. So, on the mini the RAM upgrade runs at 25$ per GB on all tiers, the same as the Studio therefore the upgrade to 512 will probably cost 6400$. The fully maxed out Apple Stud…

I don't think 16TB storage is a right choice. Going 2TB and it's 11,299. Probably, if you buy the storage and install it yourself you can go higher and quite cheaper.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#297

Post by dagmx »

TimByte wrote: post #113
mrtksn wrote: post #16

Apple Studio with maxed out M5 Ultra, 256GB RAM and 16TB storage is 18,299$. The 512GB RAM version apparently is coming in October, considering that the difference between 96GB and 256GB is priced at 4000$, the 512GB upgrade must be eye watering. So, on the mini the RAM upgrade runs at 25$ per GB on all tiers, the same as the Studio therefore the upgrade to 512 will probably cost 6400$. The fully maxed out Apple Stud…

Apple hasn't been selling just ram for a long time, they sell vram. Try getting 512 gb of HBM on current Nvidia cards - it's gonna cost way more than $ 24k. And here you get the same amount of memory for weights right in a quiet unit under your desk Put together a similar build with a couple of rtx 6000 Ada cards and Apple's price tag suddenly looks pretty damn reasonable

HBM itself is very expensive but it’s not really fair to compare to LPDDR or GDDR

They’re very different things.

The more logical argument to me is that Apple uses its upgrade price points as more than just direct BOM and rather as a proxy for things that are amortized across all their sales like support/warranty/etc so higher SKUs subsidize the costs of the lower ones.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#298

Post by dbspin »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #275
dbspin wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even the M5 laptops are consistently beat on performance and battery life by Intel Windows laptops. When plugged in... This caveat is so enormous it should almost be legislated. If your computer use is at all portable, a computer that scales down to 20 - 40% of GPU power when unplugged is an enormously significant factor. So far as I'm aware (could be wrong about arm devices?) there's no non-apple laptop that opera…

Apple also is faster when plugged in

Citation needed. I've owned Apple laptops for many years - and I'm a video editor (amongst other things). If this is the case it's new behaviour.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#299

Post by bayindirh »

pavlov wrote: post #287
bayindirh wrote: post #117

I know, this is a bit of a meaningless comment, but it's funny in a way. Feels like late 90s again: - Xiaomi: We have matched Apple in CPU performance. - Apple: *Meep Meep...*

In the ‘90s it was the opposite. - Apple: We have matched Intel in CPU performance thanks to this new PowerPC! ( Shows ad that uses carefully handpicked benchmarks to suggest that the PowerPC is actually faster when it really isn’t on average ) - Intel: Oh, we just found a 30% clock rate increase in the pocket of our other fab pants. - AMD: Hold my beer, I have the DEC Alpha guys making an x86 CPU… How about 64-bit w…

I said late 90s though. The insanity which poured through early 2000s.

5.25GHz Pentium 4s, intentionally lower binned Athlons, the era your CPU got obsoleted the moment you booted it for the first time.

I don't remember early 90s much. I was too young back then. I don't remember much stuff from that era. But late 90s, early 2000s.

Oh, boy.

P.S.: AMD64 was a great sucker punch though. One of the professors in our university rejected to believe and got mad when he learnt that Intel licensed AMD64 from AMD, heh.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#300

Post by Nursie »

Zylokloto wrote: post #266
giwook wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see how defensive some of these pro-China posters get on HN and elsewhere. I'm genuinely curious why there seems to be an inferiority complex here with respect to America/American companies.

I'm not a pro-china poster, i'm from germany and didn't find this 'funny'. Apple is the second richest company on the world (which doesn't need help/protection?!) and they have experts in chip design. Xiamoi is some random chinese company not known for high end chips and was able to catch up impressivly in a short period of time. This fact doesn't get funny or wahtever just because apple brought out a new chip today.…

> Xiamoi is some random chinese company

That might be the funniest thing I read all day. Xiaomi is a massive company that makes all sorts of things, including a lot of pretty high-end mobiles, and has an annual revenue in the order of 75 billion US.

It’s no Apple, but it’s not exactly “some random Chinese company” either.

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