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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

#381

Post by MBCook »

ponector wrote: post #306
_hyn3 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 had a MBP 2019 which with default fan settings was really hot from the 1h videocall in Bluejeans. Or 5 minutes navigating in Google maps and street view in Chrome. Only solution was to increase fan speed profile to max rpm.

On my 2019, if a single process hits 100% of one core the fan becomes quite noticeable (not hairdryer though) and the top of the keyboard area where the CPU is gets rather toasty.

It’s way too easy to heat up.

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

#382

Post by ARandomerDude »

syngrog66 wrote: post #309
philistine wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, cough like saying, "Back in the 70s with Paul McCartney's first band, Wings (...)" kids? get off my lawn

Getting older comes faster than you think. I was an adult, blinked, and decades had passed seemingly in a moment.

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

#383

Post by MBCook »

philistine wrote: post #132
whynotminot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but we keep repeating this cycle. A new M series chip comes, the geekbench leaks and its class leading. Immediately people “but geEk BeNcH” And then actual people get their hands on the machines for their real workloads and essentially confirm the geekbench results. If this was the first time, then fair enough. But it’s a Groundhog Day style sketch comedy at this point with M4.

I blame it on the PC crowd being unconsciously salty the most prestigious CPU is not available to them. You heard the same stuff when talking about Android performance versus iPhone. There is a lot to criticize about Apple's silicon design, but they are leading the CPU market in terms of mindshare and attention. All the other chipmakers all feel like they're just trying to follow Apple's lead. It's wild.

I was surprised and disappointed to see that the industry didn’t start prioritizing heat output more after the M1 generation came out. That was absolutely my favorite thing about it, it made my laptop silent and cool.

But anyway, what is it you see to criticize about Apple‘s Apple Silicon design? The way RAM is locked on package so it’s not upgradable, or something else?

I’m kind of surprised, I don’t hear a lot of people suggesting it has a lot to be criticized for.

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

#384

Post by skavi »

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?

GB6 is great. Older versions weren’t always very representative of real workloads. Mostly because their working data sets were way too small.

But GB6 aligns pretty well with SPEC2017.

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

#385

Post by thfuran »

abrookewood wrote: post #338
thfuran wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s, you probably wouldn't want to be using a desktop from 4 years ago, but the M1 is already 4 years old and will probably be fine for most people for years yet.

To be fair, MOST computers are like that nowadays, regardless of brand. I'm using a Intel desktop that is ~8 years old and runs fine with an upgraded GPU.

Sure, apple isn't the only one making good laptops, though they do make some of the best. My point was just that we definitely aren't back at 90s level of progress. Frequency has barely been scaling since node shrinks stopped helping power density much, and the node shrinks are fewer and farther between.

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

#386

Post by MBCook »

m00x wrote: post #373
wtallis wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been announced , within the past two weeks, and as far as I can tell aren't actually available for purchase from retailers yet: the only thing I've seen actually purchasable is Crucial's 6400MT/s CUDIMMs, and Newegg has an out-of-stock listing for a G.Skill kit rated for 9600MT/s. The linked Geekbench result from August running at 7614 MT/s clearly wasn't using CUDIMMs; it was a highly-overclocked system runn…

Geekbench is run pre-release by the manufacturers.

But by definition that means it’s not a production machine yet.

So it doesn’t invalidate Apple‘s chip being the fastest in single core for a production machine.

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

#387

Post by grahamj »

superb_dev wrote: post #249
grahamj wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It might share the title with the M1 Air which was incredible for an ultraportable, but the M1MBP was just incredible period. Three generations later it's still more machine than most people need. M2/3/4 sped things up but the M1 set the bar.

The airs are incredible. I’ve been doing all my personal dev work on an M2 Air for years, it’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned. I’m only compelled to upgrade for more ram, but I only feel the pressure of 8gb in rare cases. (I do wish I could swap the ram)

I was the same with the M1 Air until a couple months ago when I decided I wanted more screen real estate. That plus the 120Hz miniLED and better battery and sound make the 16" a great upgrade as long as the size and weight aren't an issue. I just use it at home so it's fine but the Air really is remarkable for portability.

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

#388

Post by MBCook »

brigade wrote: post #320
SamAsEnd wrote: post #274

Am I missing something? I don't know where this informations came from, but you can check out GeekBench v6 single-core benchmarks here. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore

The better chart is https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks/ which tries to discount outliers that might be liquid nitrogen cooled and/or faked

The M4 is almost 1/3rd faster than the top Intel (on this benchmark)?

I had no idea the difference was that big. I don’t know what a normal geek bench score is, so I just sort of assumed that the top of the lung Intel part would be something like 3700 or 3800. Enough that Apple clearly took a lead but nothing crazy.

No wonder it’s such a big deal.

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

#389

Post by bscphil »

thejazzman wrote: post #367
dimgl wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about getting a Mac mini as a small server box due to how powerful it is.

It's my plex server and nas (m1). I've abandoned all the complicated complications and just have an 8 bay thunderbolt enclosure full of drives (JBOD) And pg server. And a few web sites server. And something running in orb stack. It's the 8gb model and I have around 2gb free most of the time

What enclosure do you have? Do you like it?

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

#390

Post by nox101 »

nox101 wrote: post #347
alpaca128 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you only really encounter that when pushing the CPU to 100% for more than a few minutes. The cooling is objectively terrible, but still easily enough for most users, that's the crazy thing.

maybe? as local LLM/SD etc get more common it might be common to push it. I've been getting my fans to come on and get burning hot quite often lately because of new tech. I get that I'm a geek but with Apple, Google and everyone else trying to run local ML it's only a matter of time.

After posting this I thought of a few possible use cases. They might never come to pass but ... Some tech similar to DLSS might come along that lets streaming services like youtube and netflix to send 1/10th the data and get twice as good an image but require extreme processing on the client. It would certainly be in their interest (less storage, less bandwidth, decompression-upscaling costs pushed to client) Whether that will ever happen I have no idea. I was just trying to think of an example of something that might need lots of compute power at home for the masses.

Another could be realtime video modification. People like to stream and facetime. They might like it even more if they could change their appearance more than they already can using realtime ML based image processing. We already have some of that in the various video conferencing / facetime apps but it's possible it could jump up in usage and needed compute power with the right application.

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