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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#371

Post by enraged_camel »

dijit wrote: post #247
enraged_camel wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it ramps up by 250 Mhz increments, over a period of several seconds, and that can be extremely noticeable in some workflows. I went from an 6700HQ (2.6 Ghz base) to a 10710U (1.1 Ghz base) and the difference is definitely there, and it's jarring enough to the point where I kind of regret it. It feels like a huge step backwards, despite the latter CPU being four generations ahead.

> The problem is that it ramps up by 250 Mhz increments Isn't this completely down to the cpu frequency governor in the OS? My impression was that this "stepping" is customisable, at least in linux, I regularly step my CPU manually even. I'm not sure what Apple has here, but maybe it's not what you expect.

I'm on Windows 10 and I'm not aware of a built-in method to change the CPU multiplier.

Re: New MacBook Air

#372

Post by monocasa »

Marsymars wrote: post #362
pyrophane wrote: post #266

Keep in mind that probably the most important spec when considering a new laptop is one that is often not directly stated: the processor series. I'm not talking about i3/i5/i7, but rather U/Y/H. This letter determines the TDP (thermal design power/point) them machine is designed to run at. The TDP will govern the setting for the base clock speed, and, just as importantly, the throttling behabior under load. Processor…

The CPUs in the new MBA have 9W TDPs. OEMs can still control load performance, it's not entirely determined by TDP. Anandtech has a good article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-dr... Depending on OEM settings and cooling capacity, it's possible for Intel CPUs to indefinitely run at greater than their base clocks and TDP.

Totally. To back this up with a real world example, Apple screwed up the throttling of the i9 MacBooks originally, causing them to be over throttled. A software update that pretty much amounted to an MSR write on boot fixed it.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/24/throttling-fix-2018-mac...

Why does Intel let OEMs play with that? It's to give OEMs a knob they can play with to balance perf and price for their segment. It lets OEMs cheap out on cooling (or go with new form factors like the tiny GPD models) and go with the low minimums, or have a full system that's capable of higher TDP like Apple's tend to be.

Re: New MacBook Air

#373

Post by AgloeDreams »

rvanmil wrote: post #3

Anyone here who has experience working with JS/TS development tools (vscode, yarn, webpack, Node.js etc.) on a recent MacBook Air? I wonder if the performance is noticeably worse than a 13” MacBook Pro for this type of work.

Webpack, very very large Angular project with over 2500 jasmine tests. I'm using a 2017 Air i5 8GB (First gen of new design, Came from a 2016 Macbook Pro 15 i7 (so other end of the spectrum)

Node performance has gotten a lot better since some updates, there was a period where CPU use and performance was just bad. I think it was a webpack bug. But now things are pretty good! Runs Sketch and other graphics apps not too bad. As a comparison, It seems to be much faster at compile and test running than running the project on Chrome OS Crostini on my ChromeBook Pixel LS (higher wattage, older, i7 + 16GB ram) I imagine the Quad core in this would smoke the LS.

Re: New MacBook Air

#374

Post by rubber_duck »

pyrophane wrote: post #266

Keep in mind that probably the most important spec when considering a new laptop is one that is often not directly stated: the processor series. I'm not talking about i3/i5/i7, but rather U/Y/H. This letter determines the TDP (thermal design power/point) them machine is designed to run at. The TDP will govern the setting for the base clock speed, and, just as importantly, the throttling behabior under load. Processor…

>You can get away with this machine if your workflow primary involves a text editor and remote servers, but otherwise I would still opt for the pro.

I bought a 2018 15 inch MBP with 6 core i9, 32 GB of ram and vega GPU with the idea that it would be my one stop development machine. The system is terrible, especially considering the outrageous price - it does have sufficient compute power but the thermals are insanely bad - it's constantly turning the fans to 100% and I can't even tune the power usage - when I run a VM/emulator along the IDE people in the office start turning their head in my direction because of the fan noise.

And the performance still isn't even close to a mid range desktop machine which would have cost 1/4 the price.

I'm seriously considering selling my MBP buying this Mac Book Air top config (I need an OSX machine to develop iOS/OSX apps, otherwise I would go for Lenovo X1 Carbon) and building a desktop which will be always on VPN for heavy lifting + it can replace my gaming console.

Re: New MacBook Air

#375

Post by chx »

qayxc wrote: post #153
anentropic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anyone know which model of Iris Plus graphics it has?

My best guess is that they are using an i3-1000G4 for the base model. The i5 option could be an i5-1035G4 with a cTDP of 12W or even an i5-1030G7 with a cTDP-up of 12W and an increased base clock. The description of the i7 matches an i7-1060G7 at 9W TDP. HTH

They won't cTDP-up, they will get custom chips that keep the 9W and has higher frequency.

Re: New MacBook Air

#376

Post by cmurphycode »

qayxc wrote: post #140
chx wrote: post #23

Apple got some custom chips from Intel again. https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ ==== 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i3, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz, with 4MB L3 cache Configurable to 1.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, with 6MB L3 cache; or 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz, with 8MB L3 cache 8GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X onboard memory Intel Iris Plus Graphics ==== https://ark.…

Hold up! Aren't Apple just using 10th gen Ice Lake CPUs? https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/197123/... Ticks all the boxes as far as I can tell.

The i3 you linked matched. But for the i7 model, apple claims 1.2/3.8 and I can't see a match for that.

For the i5, they claim 1.1/3.5 which could be a match for https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/197119/... with the "configurable TDP" of 1.1 instead of base 800 MHZ.

If anyone can solve this mystery, it would be great to compare to other laptops like the Surface Pro, whose i7 is "Quad-core 10th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1065G7 Processor"(1.3 / 3.9)

Re: New MacBook Air

#377

Post by tunesmith »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #27
cytzol wrote: post #19

The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments. This isn't progress. This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK, and they're celebrating as though they've achieved something amazing.

We all (most of us anyway) wanted them to go back to the scissor design. Are we going to now complain that they did what the community has been begging them to do? Was butterfly a mistake? Yes. Were they slow to correct the issue? Yes. Now that they fixed it we should be happy about it. As far as talking about it being amazing, its called marketing spin. This is how it works. However, those two sentences do not say a…

Even with the fix, I'm ddisappointed in their response. II had a 2013 MBP that worked great for years and years, and was excited to finally get a maxed out MBP about eiighteen months ago. The ffirst year was great and then this damn keyboard started doing its thing. I'm deliberately leaving the keyboard errors in place for this comment, they aren't typos. Yes, they havee the keeyboard replaceement program for the enext 3-4 years. But then you have to be wiithout your workhorse for a week while they replace it, and then what, you'll probably have the same problems a year later. (Incidentally, I have a job switch coming up wiith some tiime off - my plan was to use that time to send in the laptop for repairs theen when my clieint isn't relying on my availability, but now that plan is shot wiith the Apple Stores and malls being closed.) And yes, I can fix this by just buying the 16", but this computer was expensive and was supposed to last me at least 3-5 years. I'm supposed to iincrease my spending to Apple? A sane program would be to buy back this lemon at a heffty price so I can buy the new one and be made whole.

Re: New MacBook Air

#378

Post by AgloeDreams »

solat wrote: post #31
rvanmil wrote: post #3

Anyone here who has experience working with JS/TS development tools (vscode, yarn, webpack, Node.js etc.) on a recent MacBook Air? I wonder if the performance is noticeably worse than a 13” MacBook Pro for this type of work.

While this MBA turned out really well, current Windows featuring WSL2 is quite impressive though. Having a full Ubuntu or Debian on your machine is priceless. Or you develop on a remote server, then you just need a good terminal. So currently both macOS and Windows are good for JS dev. It's a matter of taste and price.

Even Chrome OS is pretty great. I found Crostini to be wonderful (esp in v82) and the Pixelbook Go has fantastic haptic impressions to me. The Keyboard is perfection.

Re: New MacBook Air

#379

Post by AgloeDreams »

davedx wrote: post #67
rvanmil wrote: post #3

Anyone here who has experience working with JS/TS development tools (vscode, yarn, webpack, Node.js etc.) on a recent MacBook Air? I wonder if the performance is noticeably worse than a 13” MacBook Pro for this type of work.

I have a 2017 Macbook Pro and the main project I work on brings it to its knees. This is a front end project with a nodejs graphql server, TypeScript, eslint, VS.Code, webpack. I think actually the linting is the worst CPU drain, but all in all with the graphql server and front end tooling running at once, it makes my laptop slower than running the .NET core back end it connects to. Kind of annoying. Working with a s…

Check your package updates! We had the SAME issue in serving the app on macOS and no issue on windows. Updating node and updating to latest packages produced a 80% cpu drop. When I had this issue I couldn't serve the project while running VS code on my Air, the lag from input was way too bad, now it's snappy.
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