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Apple M5 chip

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Re: Apple M5 chip

#421

Post by mavbo »

ironman1478 wrote: post #325

It's surprising to me macs aren't a more popular target for games. They're extremely capable machines and they're console-like in that there isn't very much variation in hardware, as opposed to traditional PC gaming. I would think that it's easier to develop a game for a MacBook than a Windows machine where you never know what hardware setup the user will have.

I play a lot of World of Warcraft on my M3 MacBook Pro which has a native MacOS build. It's a CPU bottlenecked game with most users recommending the AMD X3D CPUs to achieve decent framerates in high end content. I'm able to run said content at high (7/10) graphics settings at 120fps with no audible fan noise for hours at a time on battery. It's been night and day compared to previous Windows machines.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#422

Post by zozbot234 »

liuliu wrote: post #404
zozbot234 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old ANE enabled arbitrary statically scheduled multiply-add, of INT8 or FP16. That's good for convolution but not specifically geared for it.

I am not an expert on ANE, but I think it is related to the size of register files and how that is smaller than what we need for GEMM on modern transformers (especially these fat ones with MoE).

AIUI the ANE makes use of data in unified memory, not in the register file. So this wouldn't be an inherent limitation. (OTOH, that's why it wastes memory bandwidth for most newer transformer models, which use heavily quantized data - the ANE will have to read padded/unquantized values and the fraction of memory bandwidth that's used for that padding is pure waste.)

Re: Apple M5 chip

#423

Post by justinator »

paxys wrote: post #392

M5 is 4-6x more powerful than M4, which was 5x more powerful than M3, which was 4x more powerful than M2, which was 4x more powerful than M1, which itself was 6x faster than an equivalent Intel processor. Great! Looking at my Macbook though, I can say with utmost certainty that it isn't 4000x faster than the Intel one I had 5 years ago. So, where is the disconnect here? Why is actual user experience not able to keep…

You know, 64% of statistics are made up.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#424

Post by outcoldman »

relativeadv wrote: post #194
outcoldman wrote: post #183

Marketing: M5 announcement [1] says 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4. I guess in the lab? Both iPad and MBP M5 [2][3] say "delivering up to 3.5x the AI performance". But all the examples of AI (in [3]), they are 1.2-2.3X faster than M4. So where this 3.5X is coming from? What tests did Apple do to show that? --- 1. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unleashes-m5-th... 2. https://www…

Its not uncommon for Apple and others to compare against two generations ago rather than the immediately preceding one

I referenced everything about comparing to M4. I left outside the comparison with M1.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#425

Post by klooney »

mikepurvis wrote: post #80
linguae wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the first time this has happened in Apple’s history. The transition from the 68k architecture to the PowerPC brought major performance improvements, but Apple’s software didn’t take full advantage of it. If I remember correctly, even after the PowerPC switch, core elements of the classic Mac OS still ran in emulation as late as Mac OS 9. Additionally, the classic Mac OS lacked protected memory and preempt…

Sixteen years ago, John Gruber wrote: > Hardware and software both matter, and Apple’s history shows that there’s a good argument to be made for developing integrated hardware and software. But if you asked me which matters more, I wouldn’t hesitate to say software. All things considered I’d much prefer a PC running Mac OS X to a Mac running Windows. https://daringfireball.net/2009/11/the_os_opportunity At the time I…

Advertisements in Windows seem like a deal breaker to me, but I've been gone for a while.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#426

Post by MobiusHorizons »

vintagedave wrote: post #398
paxys wrote: post #392

M5 is 4-6x more powerful than M4, which was 5x more powerful than M3, which was 4x more powerful than M2, which was 4x more powerful than M1, which itself was 6x faster than an equivalent Intel processor. Great! Looking at my Macbook though, I can say with utmost certainty that it isn't 4000x faster than the Intel one I had 5 years ago. So, where is the disconnect here? Why is actual user experience not able to keep…

What scares me is that my M2 started seeing performance issues in macOS recently. Safari is sometimes slow (I admit I stress it with many tabs, but it wasn't like this a year ago.) Somehow the graphics in general seems slower on Tahoe, eg the effects when minimising a window. I am deeply concerned all the performance benefits of the new chips will get eaten away.

You are probably actually witnessing the reduction in performance of swap as your drive fills up. Check the memory pressure in activity manager. The fix is pretty easy (delete stuff).

Re: Apple M5 chip

#427

Post by School-Cotton »

jandrese wrote: post #418
condiment wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's GPU performance. Spin up ollama and run some inference on your 5-year-old intel macbook. You won't see 4000x performance improvement (because performance is bottlenecked outside of the GPU), but you might be in the right order of magnitude.

Comparing GPU performance to some half decade old Intel IGP seems like lying with statistics. "Look how many times faster our car is![1]" [1] Compared to a paraplegic octogenarian in a broken wheelchair!"

Well, Apple isn’t making that comparison, the OP was.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#428

Post by pzo »

This is quite weird move and confusing (probably on purpose). This chip M5 is released in Macbook PRO but previous macbook pro had M4 Pro or M4 Max so their more like macbook air series to even like ipad pro series.

They say "M5 offers unified memory bandwidth of 153GB/s, providing a nearly 30 percent increase over M4" but my old Macbook M2 Max have 400GB/s

Re: Apple M5 chip

#429

Post by ryandrake »

shantara wrote: post #361
ironman1478 wrote: post #325

It's surprising to me macs aren't a more popular target for games. They're extremely capable machines and they're console-like in that there isn't very much variation in hardware, as opposed to traditional PC gaming. I would think that it's easier to develop a game for a MacBook than a Windows machine where you never know what hardware setup the user will have.

The main roadblock for porting the games to Mac has never been the hardware, but Apple themselves. Their entire attitude is that they can do whatever they please with their platforms, and expect the developers to adjust to the changes, no matter how breaking. It’s a constant support treadmill, fixing the stuff that Apple broke in your previously perfectly functioning product after every update. If said fixing is even…

The company in general never really seemed that interested in Games, and that came right from Steve Jobs. John Carmack made a Facebook post[1] several years ago with some interesting insider insights about his advocacy of gaming to Steve Jobs, and the lukewarm response he received. They just never really seemed to be a priority at Apple.

1: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825...

Re: Apple M5 chip

#430

Post by andrewmcwatters »

exabrial wrote: post #188

> A nearly 30 percent increase in unified memory bandwidth to 153GB/s I'll believe the benchmarks, not marketing claims, but an observation and a question. 1. AMD EPYC 4585PX has ~89GB/s, with pretty good latency, as long you use 2xdimm 2. How does this compare to the memory bandwidth and latency of M1,M2,M3,M4 in reality with all of the caveats? It seems like M1 was a monumental leap forward, then everything else wa…

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