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2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

anandtech.com

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Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#521

Post by ebg13 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #95
d3nj4l wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like most people here haven't seen the SPEC benchmarks AnandTech performed (and they're partly to blame for that; their UX is awful). But the M1 is toe-to-toe with desktop Ryzen: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... E: And multi-core SPEC: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... , where they're on par with mobile Ryzen.

I looked up multi-core Cinebench R23 and the AMD 2990WX comes in at 33,213 vs. 7,833 was given for the M1 in the article. Apple markets this as a "Pro" device for professional video editing. That's why I believe it is fair to take their word and compare it against my other options for a professional video editing rig. And in that comparison, which Apple has chosen itself, the M1 comes out woefully inadequate at a mer…

> the AMD 2990WX comes in at

Oh, neat. What kind of battery life do you get on your AMD 2990WX ultralight laptop?

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#522

Post by sudosysgen »

asimpletune wrote: post #457
tonyhb wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insane perf/watt. x86 backwards compatibility may have gotten us to where we are, but it's certainly holding it back. Arm is looking great, and maybe it's time for x86 to die.

Honest question. Does the ISA, as a language, really matter? Or is it more a by product of who owns the ISA, eg intel sucks, arm is more liberally licensed. I used to work at intel, and no one I knew there thought ISA mattered at all. That’s just a few people though, so I’m curious if people think there’s something better or worse about the different ISAs as a technology in their own right, or if it’s more about the…

It really doesn't. AMD has essentially the same perf/watt coming in a few months. ISA doesn't change anything nowadays because it all gets decoded into a per-CPU specific actual instruction set anyways.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#523

Post by markholmes »

megablast wrote: post #515
testfoobar wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome and 20-50 tabs, and my Intel Macbook can be used as a blow dryer. Assuming Chrome's power needs don't change, it seems that the only way to control for overheating an M1 is going to be throttling down - slowing everything down. Curious how M1 machines feel during day to day usage.

Chrome is just awful on a mac. I am not sure why anyone uses it. FF is much nicer to use.

I’ve been using Safari as my daily driver for some time and it’s quite nice to use. Don’t be afraid to give it another chance.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#524

Post by stevehawk »

xuki wrote: post #92

Performance per watt of this thing is INSANE, take a look at the battery left after compiling WebKit, compared to older Mac: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WebKit-Com... https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... IMO the all day battery will be THE killer feature of the new laptops.

will it? do people really spend that much time away from an outlet while on their laptop?

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#525

Post by sudosysgen »

JAlexoid wrote: post #435
StreamBright wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. We need more competition because the #1 reason we got to this situation is mono culture and a single platform (x86). We need Apple to succeed of creating an alternative ARM based desktop/laptop platform and for more competition we could add in Mips64 from China to the mix. I am really hoping that by 2025 we are going to have 3 major platforms available for end customers, so that there is real competit…

And where are those chips going to be made? The issue with Intel's dominance is it's complete dominance on the supply side as well. You fail to realize that this isn't like 3D printing, or other low volume manufacturing. You can't just setup a 100nm Si lithography lab in your spare room and churn out RISC-V chips. In 5 years - realistically we will have a few high performance(non-mobile) ARM chips manufactured at eco…

China already has 14nm online, and should have 7nm in a year or two, so that means that we will probably see some real RISC-V chips from there soon, if sanctions continue.

So I think that we will have a four way competition between Intel, AMD, Apple, and Chinese RISC-V chips.

That being said, I don't see x86 dying, I think AMD and eventually Intel when they wake up will be competitive.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#526

Post by _djo_ »

jdeibele wrote: post #470
chrismorgan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AnandTech split some articles onto multiple pages. The print view gets you the whole article on one page, so I rather prefer it: https://www.anandtech.com/print/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-test...

As I remember, they charged a membership fee for being able to download the whole article as a PDF. It seemed somewhat reasonable that an article that would be passed around the department or on to your boss would require a fee. I can't find any mention of it on their website, though. Am I getting my websites confused or did they drop it altogether?

You're thinking of Ars Technica, I think.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#527

Post by hajile »

ric2b wrote: post #257
kllrnohj wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Zen2 4800HS also outperformed the M1 in the Specint2017 multi-threaded results, too. The M1's float results are weirdly good relative to the int results, though. Not sure why Apple seems to have prioritized that so much in this category of CPU.

Maybe because of javascript, where all numbers are floats?

Not strictly true.

Taking a loop and adding a bunch of `x|0` can also often boost performance by hinting that integers are fine (in fact, the JIT is free to do this anyway if detects that it can).

The most recent spec is also adding BigInt. Additionally, integer typed arrays have existed since the 1.0 release in 2011 (I believe they were even seeing work as early as 2006 or so with canvas3D).

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#528

Post by mycall »

megablast wrote: post #515
testfoobar wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome and 20-50 tabs, and my Intel Macbook can be used as a blow dryer. Assuming Chrome's power needs don't change, it seems that the only way to control for overheating an M1 is going to be throttling down - slowing everything down. Curious how M1 machines feel during day to day usage.

Chrome is just awful on a mac. I am not sure why anyone uses it. FF is much nicer to use.

Does Edge Chromium for MacOS have the same awfulness?

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#529

Post by legulere »

interestica wrote: post #210
xuki wrote: post #92

Performance per watt of this thing is INSANE, take a look at the battery left after compiling WebKit, compared to older Mac: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WebKit-Com... https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... IMO the all day battery will be THE killer feature of the new laptops.

These gains are just through improvements in processors. Now, combine that with parallel leaps for battery tech... It's also good that battery tech hasn't jumped too far ahead already - the constraint has helped in the development in these mobile chips. The display panel is still the biggest energy draw on my laptop. There's a lot of chance for improvement there too. A 2 day battery in 5 years isn't that crazy.

Apple is slowly moving to mini led displays and probably micro led displays after that. That should also improve energy use.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#530

Post by sudosysgen »

foldr wrote: post #137
Deukhoofd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In single core performance, yes, but as the next page on the article shows, it's more comparable to the 4900HS, AMDs mobile CPU in multithreaded performance. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

The 4900HS has a 35W TDP, though. The M1 in the Mac Mini is estimated at around 20-24W TDP.

The 4900HS has way more I/O and is on 7nm, as well as has more powerful graphics.
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