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

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

#351

Post by thomassmith65 »

brigade wrote: post #343
thomassmith65 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2x correct amount of thermal paste... not good. Insufficient airflow from blowers... not good. 110 celsius heat... not good for lead-free solder... not good for computer. This whole thread is starting to feel surreal to me. Pretty soon everyone will have me believing I dreamt up Apple's reputation for bad thermal management.

Well, when you don’t appear to know or care about the actual issues stemming from poor thermals (Intel relying too much on turbo clocks, toasty crotches, low battery life, noisy fans) and instead complain about made-up issues, yeah.

My frustration was with the totality of comments in the thread, not yours exclusively. I'd have no problem with any one reply in this thread, on its own. Apologies if I came across as rude.

There's nothing in a comment thread so cringeworthy and boring as a person trumpeting their own expertise, so I'll refrain, and leave off here.

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

#352

Post by stouset »

sangnoir wrote: post #220
whynotminot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not the only one — but just curious where this skepticism comes from. This is M 4 — Apple has now made four generations of chips and each one were class leading upon release. What more do you need to see?

> Apple has now made four generations of chips and each one were class leading upon release. Buying up most of TSMC's latest node capacity certainly helps. Zen chips on the same node turn out to be very competitive, butAMD don't get first dibs.

It’s more like Apple fronts the cash for TSMC’s latest node. But regardless, in what way does that detract from their chips being class-leading at release?

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

#353

Post by jccalhoun »

dwayne_dibley wrote: post #234

How impressed should I be. In terms of Apples history of manufacturing chips compared to, say, intel. This is their 4th generation of the M chip and it seems to be so far ahead of intel, a company with significant bigger history of chip production.

It is impressive but it is also important to remember that Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm make dozens of different chips while Apple makes a handfull. That means they can't be as focused as Apple.

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

#354

Post by GeekyBear »

nl wrote: post #279
hhejrkrn wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol ... You were not around for the ppc -> Intel change ... Same thing happened then ... Remarkable performance uplift from the last instruction set ... And we had Rosetta which allowed compatibility... The m1 and arm took power efficiency to another level .... But yeah what has happened before will happen again

I was around for that. The thing then was it was just Apple catching up with windows computers which had had a considerable performance lead for a while. It didn't really seem magical to just see it finally matched. (Yes Intel Mac's got better then Windows computers but that was later. At launch it was just matching) It's very different this time because you can't match the performance/battery trade off in anyway.

Intel chips had better integer performance and PowerPC chips had better floating point performance, which is why Apple always used Photoshop performance tests to compare the two platforms.

Apple adopted Intel chips only after Intel replaced the Pentium 4 with the much cooler running Core Solo and Core Duo chips, which were more suitable for laptops.

Apple dropped Intel for ARM for the exact same reason. The Intel chips ran too hot for laptops, and the promised improvements never shipped.

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

#355

Post by totalhack »

_hyn3 wrote: post #83
iJohnDoe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but probably getting a Lenovo Legion will be your best bet in the near term.

I'm driving a 2022 XPS. Lots of people will (and should) disagree, but I've completely shifted over from Thinkpads to Dell XPS (or Precision) for my laptops.

Running a 2024 xps 13 with Ubuntu for work and it's been solid. Had a Lenovo before this which was great bang for the buck but occasional issues with heating up during sleep. Would consider trying a Framework next.

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

#356

Post by majormajor »

GeekyBear wrote: post #354
nl wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was around for that. The thing then was it was just Apple catching up with windows computers which had had a considerable performance lead for a while. It didn't really seem magical to just see it finally matched. (Yes Intel Mac's got better then Windows computers but that was later. At launch it was just matching) It's very different this time because you can't match the performance/battery trade off in anyway.

Intel chips had better integer performance and PowerPC chips had better floating point performance, which is why Apple always used Photoshop performance tests to compare the two platforms. Apple adopted Intel chips only after Intel replaced the Pentium 4 with the much cooler running Core Solo and Core Duo chips, which were more suitable for laptops. Apple dropped Intel for ARM for the exact same reason. The Intel chi…

The G5 in desktops was more competitive but laptops were stuck on G4s that were pretty easy to beat by lots of things in the Windows world by the time of the Intel switch. And Photoshop was largely about vectorized instructions, as I recall, not just general purpose floating point.

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

#358

Post by dagmx »

IshKebab wrote: post #215
torginus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even compared to other ARM cores, Apple is in a league of its own.

They also have the advantage that they could break software compatibility with the M1, e.g. using 16 kB pages and 128 byte cache blocks.

They do mixed page mode depending on the program running.

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

#359

Post by dagmx »

jccalhoun wrote: post #353
dwayne_dibley wrote: post #234

How impressed should I be. In terms of Apples history of manufacturing chips compared to, say, intel. This is their 4th generation of the M chip and it seems to be so far ahead of intel, a company with significant bigger history of chip production.

It is impressive but it is also important to remember that Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm make dozens of different chips while Apple makes a handfull. That means they can't be as focused as Apple.

The majority of those different chips use the same cores though as each other, and vary mostly in packaging or binning.

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

#360

Post by TacticalCoder »

philistine wrote: post #120
mortenjorck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the $1599 M4 Pro Mac mini beats the current $3999 M2 Ultra Mac Studio on GeekBench 6 multi-core: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/31/m4-pro-chip-benchmark-r...

Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive a…

> I thought the M1 Macbook Air

I've got one and it's really not that impressive. I use it as a "desktop" though and not as a laptop (as in: it's on my desk hooked to a monitor, never on my laps).

I'm probably gonna replace it with a Mini with that M4 chip anyway but...

My AMD 7700X running Linux is simply a much better machine/OS than that MacBook M1 Air. I don't know if it's the RAM on the 7700X or the WD-SN850X SSD or Linux but everything is simply quicker, snappier, faster on the 7700X than on the M1.

I hope the M4 Mini doesn't disappoint me as much as the M1 Air.

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