511–520 of 551 posts
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>the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. naa... Amiga had the A2500 around the same time, the Mac IIx wasn't better with regards to specs in most ways. And at about $4500 more expensive (Amiga 2500 was around $3300, Mac IIx was $7769), it was vastly overpriced as is typical for Apple products.
The Nubus in the IIx was great.
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Any proprietary benchmark that's compiled with the mystery meat equivalent of compiler/flags isn't "excellent" in any way. SPECint compiled with either the vendor compiler (ICC, AOCC) or the latest gcc/clang would be a good neutral standard, though I'd also want to compare SIMD units more closely with x265 and Highway based stuff (vips, libjxl). And how do you handle the fact that you can't really (yet) use the same…
Geekbench is a highly regarded benchmark because it effectively reflects the overall performance of various platforms as experienced by the average user. By "platform," we mean the combination of hardware and software—how systems are actually used in day-to-day scenarios. Specint, on the other hand, is useful for assessing specific tasks if you plan to run identical workloads. However, its individual test results var…
>Specint, on the other hand, is useful for assessing specific tasks if you plan to run identical workloads. [...] These tests focus on very narrow tasks that can highlight the unique strengths of certain instructions or system features but are not representative of overall real-world performance.
What? First, SPECint is an aggregate of 12 benchmarks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECint#Benchmarks), none of them synthetic in any way. They're also ranging from low to high level, it's not just number crunching. Sure, it's missing stuff like browser benchmarks to better represent the average user, but it's certainly not as useless as what you seem to imply.
Any "system wide" benchmark is aggregating too much into a single number to mean anything, in any case.
And this subthread is about using benchmarks to compare HARDWARE, not whole systems, so this discussion is pretty much meaningless.
And Macs still can't match that with their crappy keyboards, case strength and ergonomics (no sharp edges), spill-protection and non-glossy screens (remember, these are laptops to be used out and about — though I've only used M1/M2 Airs, M1 Max Pro 14 and M2 Pros 13/14, so maybe the newer ones are better).
X1 Carbons have mostly moved to higher performing Intel chips, and thus lost those silent & cool characteristics, but other than the obvious (performance vs comfort), they are still my preferred choice in laptops.
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I use macOS daily for dev and office work, and to me it doesn’t feel languishing at all. Add Homebrew and Docker or Podman, and we’re off. The only places I can see there could be features missing are: - IT management type stuff where it looks like Apple are happy just delegating to Microsoft (eg. my workstation is managed with InTune and runs Microsoft Defender pushed by IT), - CUDA support if you’re into AI on NVID…
Just basic customisation functionality is missing in MacOS. Recently bought a MacBook and am constantly amazed about the stuff you can't do. Oh you want do use normal scrolling on your external Bluetooth mouse (like everybody that uses a mouse does) and natural scrolling on the trackpad? Nah bro, choose one for both. You wanna just plug in some generic usb hub connected to multiple monitors like you did with your 500…
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I verified Geekbench results to be very tightly correlated with my use case and workloads (JVM, Clojure development and compilation) as measured by my wall times. So yes, I consider it to be a very reliable indicator of performance.
Curious how you verified that? I should possibly do thesame
Run the compilation on another CPU, note down the time it took and the Geekbench score for that CPU.
Now look at the ratios — if Geekbench scores implied the faster CPU was, say, 20% faster, is my compilation 20% faster?
I'm looking at my notes and without digging too much, I can see two reasonably recent cases: 30% faster compilation (Geekbench said 30%), and another one: 40% faster compilation (Geekbench said 38%).
So yes, I do consider Geekbench to be a very reliable indicator of performance.
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Remember too back in the day when you're looking at a Mac with 1/4 the power of a PC, and it's 4x the price. I think we're starting to see those ratios reversed completely. And at the same time, the power, heat, etc.. is just sitting at the floor.
Yeah, this rings true. I'm not an Apple customer, but I certainly remember the days when Mac users had to justify the much worse bang-for-the-buck of Apple hardware (then) with it being the only ticket to their preferred software experience. These days it appears more that the hardware is fantastic, especially in the laptop form factor and thermal envelope, and perhaps the downside is a languishing macOS.
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Geekbench is a highly regarded benchmark because it effectively reflects the overall performance of various platforms as experienced by the average user. By "platform," we mean the combination of hardware and software—how systems are actually used in day-to-day scenarios. Specint, on the other hand, is useful for assessing specific tasks if you plan to run identical workloads. However, its individual test results var…
Lots of appeal to popularity, "most people accept" a lot of things. >Specint, on the other hand, is useful for assessing specific tasks if you plan to run identical workloads. [...] These tests focus on very narrow tasks that can highlight the unique strengths of certain instructions or system features but are not representative of overall real-world performance. What? First, SPECint is an aggregate of 12 benchmarks…
Yet a benchmark of how Xalan-C++ transforms XML documents has shockingly little relevance to most of the things I do. And the M1 runs the 400.perlbench benchmark slower than the 5950X, yet it runs the 456.hmmer benchmark twice as quickly, both I guess mattering if I'm running those specific programs?
As with the strawman that I said it was synthetic, I also didn't say it was useless. Not sure why you're making things. It's an interesting benchmark, but most people (yup, there's that appeal again) find Geekbench more informative.
And, again, most people, including the vast majority of experts in this field, respect geekbench as a decent broad-spectrum benchmark. As with all things there are always contrarians.
>And this subthread is about using benchmarks to compare HARDWARE, not whole system
Bizarre. This submission is specifically about Geekbench, specifically about the M4 running, of course, macOS. This subthread is someone noting that they can't escape the negatron contrarians who always pipe up with the No True Benchmark noise.
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Yea, it’s running via Rosetta. Just install windows steam and launch game. That is with the paid version of crossover though. Don’t expect to play dark souls on it, but for indies and the like it’s fine.
Cool. Just saw it has a 14 day trial, will give it a shot on my M1 Max Studio and see how it goes. (Dark Souls is my favourite game/series…how did you know)
The biggest annoyance I've hit actually is that game controller support is pretty bad. Don't expect generic USB HID game controllers to work, support for that isn't baked into MacOS the way it is Windows (Via DirectInput, etc).
The happy path is pretty much specifically a bluetooth xbox controlle.
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My experience is the same. I only owned one Intel MacBook Pro. Was the only one I needed thankfully. Missed the whole port reduction and power bar mess. I love my M1 Air. It is the first general purpose computing hardware that felt like a real advance. I measured that two ways: How much closer to my mobile is it? How much faster is it? The Air feels like a Mobile Computer if that makes any sense. One USB port expande…
Same. Easily the best computer I’ve owned in the last 25 years in terms of satisfaction/niceness.
Mine is sticky. As in when others get hold of it, next thing I hear is usually, "oooh" and then it takes some time for it to come back!
I got mine for a song. Sweet deal, but it is the 8GB 256GB configuration. Not too big of a deal, but more internal storage would be nice. Maybe I will send it out somewhere to get a boost.
Would have already, but I worry a little about those services.